Posted by Greg Clow in in the papers, news and media on February 16, 2008 at 1:59 pm

I'm not someone who reads the business section of the newspaper regularly. Or, well, ever. This is mainly due to my not having any money to invest in anything, combined with a complete sense of confusion regarding the stock market. Plus, it's boring.

Today was an exception, though, as two of the papers coincidentally have reports on Canada's booming farm business. In the Globe & Mail, Joe Friesen and Marcus Gee explore how the rising demand for pulses, grains and dairy in Asia has had a positive effect on farmers in the Canadian prairies. Over in the National Post, there's a whole series of articles on the "food boom", including: a look at the increasing demands for grain, pulses and corn; the impending threat of food inflation; tips on how to invest to best take advantage of the argi-business explosion; the impact of biofuel on the corn industry; and how rising food prices are affecting business and investments at casual dining chains. And the Post also has a story by Holly Shaw on the pressure being felt by food manufacturers to stop marketing junk food to kids.

Moving to the usual Saturday food coverage in the Post, Gina Mallet declares Harbord Street to be "Toronto's top restaurant row" in her effusive review of the freshly opened Harbord Room:

[Chef Cory] Vitiello is a star example of the way good cooking is evolving in Toronto. He has digested the random influences that enrich the city and fused them into a deceptively simple menu, which limns unfamiliar combinations along with tastes that deftly complement each other. I'm thinking now of fragrant pink slices of olive-and-citrus roasted leg of lamb with braised Swiss chard and, what gets my personal gold medal, brown-butter cauliflower in crushed potatoes. Salsa verde mingles ineffably with the lamb jus. The lamb is from Dingo Farms and has a slightly gamey taste, which I love. I really miss the gamey mutton of my English childhood, not to mention the taste of wild game, which is impossible to find here unless you've personally hunted it and allowed it to age uneviscerated. Yes, it's the rotting insides that impart taste, just as the bacteria eating into Brie provides the cheese with its unique flavour.

Mental images of rotting mutton aside, everything she describes in the review sounds delicious. And elsewhere in the Post:

• Margaret Swaine reviews some organic and bio-dynamic wines from last weekend's Return to Terroir tasting event.
• Zenya Sirant does a Q&A with Colleen Wong-Sala of Kakayo Chocolate Company, Toronto's trendy chocolatier du jour.
• An article lacking an online byline investigates the coffee wars brewing at Bloor & Bathurst, with the impending opening of Green Beanery at the already over-caffeinated intersection.
• Jon Bricker and Kate Swoger head north to North, a Persian eatery in Thornhill.
• Jody White checks out a cooking class for singles.
• A. Brouwer & A. Wilson's Shelf Life column puts several brands of frozen french fries to the test, although the online version inconveniently excludes the names of the fries from the reviews.
• Bonnie Stern suggests using Monday's half-assed holiday, Family Day, to cook with your family.
• And actually, cooking at home doesn't seem like such a bad idea after reading that popular Chinatown restaurant Dumpling House has been shut down due to an infestation of rats. (Insert lame "Year Of The Rat" joke here.)

Continuing in the "cooking for yourself" theme - the Globe's Joanne Kates isn't very happy that she has to do so at Stonegrill on Winchester, where the server gives her a spiel on how it's impossible to overcook things on the gimmicky 700-degree cooking stone that they bring to your table, because the "very special stone responds to moisture, so it will only sear". Kates proves the clueless (or at least seriously misinformed) server wrong:

We leave some of blue marlin on the stone too long and it overcooks rather promptly. The menu says we can leave the food on the stone and eat from there, "as the cooking intensity is reduced after searing," but neither the marlin nor the shrimp lies. I overcook one of them too - before I learn my lesson and pull the rest of them off the hot stone more precipitously. Same for the two venison chops, which, if I say so myself, I cook very well, searing them on both sides, but leaving the interior blood red and juicy.

The sides that come with every main course are both insufficient in quantity and pathetically boring: Baby bok choy and a little pot of sauce, none of which is of any interest. The marlin comes with yellow liquid that they call tri-citrus emulsion. Lemon juice by any other name. The venison comes with nominal chocolate-chili jus that to me is something acrid and brown. And so it goes.

Also in the Globe:

• Beppi Crosariol reviews a selection from today's Vintages release, including an excellent bargain from Argentina.
• Domini Clark finds out that fondue is making a comeback.

Over in the Toronto Star, Amy Pataki gives Delux an enthusiastic 3.5 stars out of 4, even despite being disappointed by a couple of the mains. Personally, I think she was seduced by the baked-to-order cookies that are available for dessert (seriously, who wouldn't be?), but she likes a lot of other stuff on the menu as well:

Appetizers go beyond the standard, like the crushed walnuts encrusting rounds of melting Woolwich chèvre married to sweet roast beets. Puréed leek and potato soup ($7) is all creamy comfort buoyed by the subtlest trace of fennel seed and tarragon.

Similarly sophisticated is the rich cauliflower purée underpinning moist trout ($18) drizzled with brown butter and lemon. This, plus the excellent pear-blue cheese salad ($10), is what food lovers fly to Paris seeking.

Also in the Star:

• Gord Stimmell catches a couple of cabs and three other wines from today's Vintages release.
• Vanessa Richmond looks at how women's lib spawned a generation of women who can't cook.
• Bill Taylor confirms that most of the things our moms told us about food - from "an apple a day..." to the healing powers of chicken soup - are actually true.
• Mark Bittman admits that sun-dried tomatoes aren't so bad after all.
• Rita Zekas visits Sweet Bliss Baking Company to decorate some cupcakes with Chris Hyndman and Steve Sabados, the CBC daytime hosts formerly known as "The Designer Guys".