Things to eat this weekend…

• roti
• doubles
• jerk chicken

That’s right, it’s Caribana weekend and pretty much every food writer in the city has a roti round-up (and we thought we were being so unique doing our own - D’oh!).

At Eye, Sean Kelly Keenan tries a couple of Parkdale roti shops but also has a selection of places from around the city.

Over at NOW, Steven Davey checks out the West Indies offerings at Pam’s Carribbean Kitchen, and has his own nicely organized round-up of places grouped by country. In his Drink Up column, Graham Duncan has a couple of fancy rums and coconut water… which would work well together, no?

Also at NOW, Wayne Roberts looks at the real reasons behind the global food crisis.

As of publication time, the food section of Metro’s website hasn’t been updated.

One of the hi-lights of last summer’s harvest season for anyone with a love of good food was undoubtedly the Picnic at the Brickworks. A partnership between Slow Food Toronto and Evergreen, the picnic paired producers and growers with 50 local chefs and offered an afternoon of culinary delights to all who attended.

The picnic was so popular, selling out well before the actual date, that Slow Food Toronto and Evergreen are back this year to do it again, this time with even more of a focus on the food producers taking part.

Currently, tickets are still available from the Evergreen website, at a cost of $90 per person.

TasteTO has one pair of tickets available to give away. We will draw a winner from the correct answers tomorrow at 9am. NOTE - The contest is now closed - thanks and good luck to all who entered. The winner will be notified by email.

Please note that the Picnic at the Brickworks is a 19+ event.

They’re cleaning up Beijing in preparation for next week’s Olympic games and the many street food vendors are getting pushed out of the main tourist areas. Ian Marlow reports in the Toronto Star on how vendors are finding other places to set up shop, along with a Top 10 list of Beijing street foods, as well as 5 to avoid. Closer to home in the street food world, Corey Mintz checks out Tasty Thursdays at Nathan Phillips Square. Mintz also features soursop in his occasionally-occurring column on tropical fruit.

Also at the Star, Pamela Cuthbert has a piece on grass-fed beef, Josh Rubin sips a Kostritzer Schwarzbier (go ahead, say it three times fast), and Marion Kane offers a recipe for Thai Tofu salad.

Continue reading What’s Cooking - Wednesday July 30th »

When it comes to versatile drinks, besides water, tea and coffee have probably seen more reincarnations than the James Bond movie series. Focusing on the former, some may find it surprising that the mere presence of some simple dried leaves is enough to add the extra oomph required for basic foodstuffs to reach culinary epiphanies. We’ve previously featured green tea flavoured snacks, biscuits, and sweets found at Asian markets, however tea can wear various masks, as shown below.

Continue reading Tea, More Than Your Average Celestial Beverage »

As I’ve noted in this column before, the pub and brewery culture of the United Kingdom has a tradition of lower-alcohol ales that seems foreign to many beer drinkers who are accustomed to the 5% lagers that have become the standard throughout much of the world. The most obviously named of these less potent quaffs are Mild Ales, which are usually brewed to an alcohol level between 3% to 4%, but other ale styles - particularly those brewed primarily as cask ales - are often in that range as well.

When brewing both cask and bottle versions of a beer, many UK brewers will create a stronger version for the bottle trade, with some varying 1% or more in strength. In the case of this week’s beer, though, there’s no variance between the two, and the result is a 3.4% ale which may be light in alcohol, but certainly not in flavour.

Continue reading Beer of the Week - Brakspear Bitter »

The debate could go on for hours. Long into the night, likely with much ranting and arm-waving, the people of Parkdale are always willing to argue over which neighbourhood roti shop is the best. In an area where residents are alarmed if they don’t wake up to the smell of curry, preference is based predominantly on location and proximity, but the fact that each roti shop offers a different style of roti also plays into each person’s choice. Many of the ‘Dale’s roti shops are also long-standing family-owned businesses, so allegiances can run deep based on how long each customer has lived in the neighbourhood.

Continue reading Rolling Out the Roti for Caribana »

The big news on the Toronto dining scene this week is, of course, the opening of Nota Bene on Queen Street West.  While critics from mainstream publications sneak in under pseudonyms, Suresh of Spotlight Toronto thought to show up, camera in hand and be the first one to shoot the food and give a quickie preview.

At Torontoist, Catherine’s “review” of STEAK creates a fuss as the comments section fills with critique because it turns out the meal is comped. This is not an uncommon practice, but there is some hair-splitting as to whether it’s appropriate. (Incidentally, here at TasteTO, a “review” is always anonymous and is always paid for, whereas a “profile” is a situation where we meet the chef and restaurateur and the meal may or may not be comped.)

Continue reading The Wide, Wide World of Web - Monday, July 28th »

Nathan Phillips Square Farmers Market
100 Queen Street West
Wednesdays, 8:30am - 2pm
June 4th - October 15th

I’ve got to admit that the Wednesday morning market at Nathan Phillips Square is still my favourite of all the farmers markets in the city. There is no face-painting, no snack stalls, no fun activities for the kids. Heck, usually there are no kids. And while there are “Fresh Wednesdays” concerts from noon to 1pm, it’s mostly just farmers and customers who are serious about their produce.

Continue reading The Market Basket - Nathan Phillips Square »

Ultimate Café
293 King Street West
416-977-9690
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $30

Ultimate is a big claim when it comes to a restaurant. Working with the definition “not to be improved upon or surpassed”, calling yourself the ultimate anything sets the standard of quality pretty darn high. Higher than most places can achieve at Sunday brunch.

The Ultimate Café wasn’t even our ultimate destination – we simply headed out in the rain to the strip of King Street West cafes known as “tourist’s row” to see what was open. Looking like the standard late-90s “Italian restaurant from a kit”, the space boasts an exposed brick wall (check), a yellow-ochre sponge-painted wall (check), some vague prints of impressionist fruit (check), and a whole lot of patterned brocade on the seats (check).

Continue reading Sunday Brunch - The Ultimate Café »

Amongst certain foodie factions, the “authenticity” of a meal trumps all other criteria when judging ethnic food. Sure, that stewed goat spleen with boiled roots might taste like crap, but as long as it’s prepared exactly the same way as they make it in a remote mountain village in some country on the other side of the world, then it’s automatically fantastic!

Others, however, are more concerned about how their food tastes, and are willing to accept some variations from tradition if it means a more delicious culinary experience. Based on his review of Bread Bar in today’s Globe & Mail, it appears that Chris Nuttall-Smith falls firmly in this second camp, as he declares their Indian-with-influences cuisine to be amongst the best he’s ever tasted:

[Y]ou’ll find a vindaloo beef tenderloin, fork-tender and pink in the middle, served with roasted cherry tomatoes and soft, smoky pearl onions. And a watermelon and ginger shooter as an amuse bouche - a sip of summertime sublime that prods the palate and cools it all at once. And prawns rolled in lemon sole and served over a spinach sauce. And chocolate garam masala truffles.

Which is to say that Bread Bar is wildly, unapologetically inauthentic. It’s also very nearly the best Indian food I’ve encountered in Canada, second only to Vij’s, in Vancouver.

Continue reading In the Papers - Saturday July 26th »

I’ve purposely gone through my RSS feed this week and picked out blogs that don’t get featured here that often - either because of overall lack of posting, or just because other bloggers are more prolific. Not that we don’t love you prolific bloggers, just gotta mix it up a bit, yanno?

• At Beer Beats and Bites, snarky bastard Greg (it’s okay, he’s my husband, I can call him a bastard if I want) sees through the media spin and swag of a corporate beer event aimed at bloggers
• Keri of Breakfast in the City has appropriately low expectations of Eggspectations
• The first blueberries are ready and Eric of Do You Know the Muffin Man? makes blueberry pie
• Daphne of Edible Tulip whips up a cool gazpacho for a summer evening supper
• Gina Mallet has an interesting post on the other uses for methylcellulose, the ingredient in molecular gastronomy dishes that makes stuff foamy - it will bring new meaning to the term “food porn”
• There’s lots of news and interesting local food tidbits in the latest post on James Chatto’s blog
• Marusya of Recipes For Trouble is filling her summer with picnics
• At Save Your Fork, I remember the food emporiums at Eaton’s and the Bay
• Tara of Seven Spoons reviews Chocolate Ephipany
• And Lindsay at The DeLish Bite writes about Niagara wines
  

Xococava
1560 Yonge Street
416-979-9916

One of those secrets that no one ever tells you about Spain until you get there is that, in addition to tapas and bull-fighting, the country is crazy about candy. In train stations, in tiny beach towns, in department stores, it’s easy to find a respectable selection of sugary goodness that would put any Sugar Mountain to shame.

Though the tapas at Chris McDonald’s much-loved uptown restaurant Cava are influenced by Italian and French cuisine as well as Spanish, Xococava (pronounced “sho-co-ca-va”), its new next-door neighbour, plays firmly into the Spanish sweet tooth. Decorated with marble counters and a wall covered in broken dishes from Avalon painstakingly glued on by McDonald, Xococava opened a month ago. Taking over Mother’s Sweet and Nuts, a candy shop whose owners had retired after years of serving the neighbourhood’s kids from bins of confections, McDonald saw an opportunity to create an off-shoot of his brand that would speak to the same tastebuds, just a different audience.

Continue reading Xococava »

We all know that there are some fantastic wines being produced in Ontario, but often, the only way you can taste many of them is by taking a trip out to Niagara or Prince Edward County to visit the wineries. Parkdale’s cafe Taste will be changing that this Saturday with their first ever Ontario Wine Fair, featuring wines from 20 Ontario wineries along with cheese, meats and other nibbles from local farms.

A few blocks away at Exhibition Place, the annual Masala! Mehndi! Masti! festival will be presenting the best in South Asian culture all weekend, including music, dance, film, and of course, lots of tasty food from Udupi Palace, Mirch Masala, Chandni Chowk, White Gold and other vendors.

The full list of happenings for the next week follows below, and as always, our Events page has more information on these and many other upcoming events in Toronto and area.

Continue reading T.O. Events for July 25th-31st »

Most people think the life of a food critic is all about $300 tasting menus and expense accounts but in the search for great food, sometimes it’s really just some dishes from a take-away that offers a discount if you bring your own containers. This week Steven Davey of NOW eschews the upscale and digs in to some tasty Thai at Thai To Go on Gerrard. Of course, given all the new places opening in the next few weeks, Davey’s got his work cut out for him in the upscale restaurant department - some new places we can expect to see reviewed in all the papers over the coming weeks get a mention in Davey’s Fresh Dish column today. Also, Graham Duncan has some bottles of bubbly in his Drink Up column.

Over at Eye, they’ve got exclusive coverage of Wakestock. This has nothing to do with food, other than the fact that the Wakestock logo shows up as wallpaper on every page of the Eye site, including the restaurant review. And perhaps in keeping with that “water” theme, Sean Kelly Keenan reviews Deep Blue Fish and Chips, where despite the pretences, it’s really just an authentic, down-to-earth chippy.

At Metro, Billy Munnelly has some Ontario wines perfect for pairing with goodies off the BBQ, and Barb Holland has blueberry breakfast bread pudding. There’s a review and recipe from the book Fabulous Fairholme: Breakfasts and Brunches, and a piece from last Friday that previews the Tastes of Thailand festival last weekend.

Café du Lac
2350 Lake Shore Boulevard West
416-848-7381
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $135

My first visit to this newly opened little bistro was on a Tuesday evening. And Tuesday evenings are All-You-Can-Eat Mussels nights at Café du Lac. Anyone who likes mussels is in for a treat. $20 includes a starter of a nicely dressed, super fresh mixed green salad, an enormous (and bottomless) bowl of steamed mussels in either a tomato sauce or white wine broth, a huge portion of double-cooked frites (excellent), and a pudding of the sticky-toffee variety with fresh berries. For those who don’t like mussels, they also offer the steak frites. And while the steak isn’t all-you-can-eat, the frites certainly are. $20. That’s got to be one of the best deals around.

Continue reading Try It, You Might Lac It »