When I went to Joe to pick up the cucumbers and wild dill for my annual batch of pickles he had a case twice as big as last year. 40 pounds! “That’s how they come from the guy down there,” was his explanation. Joe runs Augusta Fruits (65 Nassau Street), a produce wholesaler in Kensington market, one of dozens a few decades ago, now one of the handful left. “The guy down there” he’s referring to is one of his suppliers at the Ontario Food Terminal, where nearly all of the produce in Toronto makes a stop. The Terminal is where growers and large-scale wholesalers sell their product to local wholesalers, who in turn supply Toronto’s restaurants. And I’ve always been way-curious about this Shangri-La of fruits and vegetables despite many people telling me how unexotic it is.

Joe agrees to take me with him. When I arrive at the shop at 11am Brad the delivery guy asks me what’s up. I tell him and he asks, “Why would you want to go there?” Why indeed.

Continue reading Where Apples Really Come From »

Perola’s
247 Augusta Avenue
416-593-9728

A few months ago I discovered Irma in the back of Perola’s market, grinding out beautiful pupusas. Tragically it was too late. She was retiring. Just as I was settling into the solitary ritual of wolfing down greasy hunks of cornmeal, languidly licking my fingers at the corner of Baldwin and Augusta, while watching Kensington market blossom early on a Sunday morning, it was over.

Continue reading Return of the Real »

Somethin’s Fishy
213 Augusta Avenue
416-260-7493
Dinner for two, with all taxes and tip: $25

It’s okay for a new restaurant to run out of items. When they first open they’re hemorrhaging money. To the consumer, a new stop for noshing has just opened. For the small business owner, a brutal period of negotiation, money borrowing, and DIY renovation (all of which has taken 2 or 3 times longer than expected) is at an end. And their lifetime of servitude is just beginning. So once they flip the open sign it’s a good idea not to overstock perishable items that they don’t yet have the clientèle to maintain.

Even without the seafood, deep fryer oil will begin to smell fishy after about five pounds of potatoes pass through it at 350 degrees. With the halibut, salmon, cod, haddock, tilapia and shrimp wafting out the door of Somethin’s Fishy, Augusta Avenue begins to hype the chip shop’s name. Why not? The four Portuguese fishmongers on Baldwin already have half the block locked down on some coastal odour.

Continue reading Fish (singular) and Chips »

The Butchers
2636 Yonge Street
416-483-5777

I showed up at the organic meat tasting schvitzing like a pig. Which was figuratively significant because I was there to eat a pig. I was late and ran 10 blocks (ok, I walked for one block and stopped in to the Puma shop to catch my breath and look at sneakers). In the past two weeks I’ve gone out, three times for Chinese, twice for ribs, and arranged an all-chorizo dinner. Sheryl, maybe for my next assignment you can send me to a colonoscopy party.

Continue reading He Ain’t Pretty No More »

C5
100 Queen’s Park (in the ROM)
416-586-7928

Though C5’s reception hinges more on James Chatto, Joanne Kates, and those old ladies on bus tours, Chef Ted Corrado is hurt by a recent review impugning the freshness of his fish. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, But the thing that really upsets me is when she mentioned the bass, that she can smell it two tables away. From Taro!” Taro is one of Toronto’s priciest purveyor of sushi-grade fish. “We’re having trouble keeping enough of everything. He’s flying everything in from Japan for us. And our fish is coming every day. Carlos is back there butchering the cod, butchering snapper again. And we’re so busy that we’re not even sitting on anything. Every day we’re selling out of something because we didn’t order enough. For her to say that (the bass failed her freshness test) is impossible. There’s no chance. So that pissed me off.”

Continue reading View From the Top »

Segovia Meat Market
218 Augusta Avenue
416-593-9904

In America sausages are victims of urban myth conjecture. They are rumoured to contain every repulsive, undesirable animal part our collective unconscious can will us to imagine. Carried through the back door and assembled in a dank horror movie slaughterhouse. That’s the sausage we’re going to get when looking at a menu that gives us a choice of bacon or sausage with our five-dollar breakfast.

Otto Von Bismarck, first chancellor of Germany, said, “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making”. And maybe he was right. But he never met Leonardo Segovia or tasted his chorizo.

Continue reading Sausage Party »

Cluck Grunt & Low
362 Bloor Street West
416-962-5050
dinner for two with all taxes, tip, and beer: $80

I am eating fat. The fat that I’m enjoying used to be stuck between the ribs of a pig. It eased the wear of musculoskeletal expansion/contraction of the ribcage and acted as an insulator to help preserve core temperature and prevent heat loss from the pig’s thorax. Not anymore. The bone resting in my slippery hands was one of the fourteen that protected the lungs and heart. It’s now, stripped of meat, dripping with its own rendered juices mingled with chilies and herbs. The fat was hard, elastic-like. Now it’s soft. It pulls apart at the dull tear of a human’s teeth. I am mesmerised by this rib. Not to be a sore winner but ribcage, you got served. I’m getting ahead of myself though.

Continue reading Smoked Carnality »

Perola’s
247 Augusta Avenue
416-593-9728

In Perola’s market, where I get my tomatillos, chilies, and Oaxaca, in the very back, with the racks of bottled mole, sickly-sweet Mexican sodas, and horchata, is the pupusa lady. On Friday, Saturday, and Sundays Irma (or “Signora”, as she answers to) can be found in the back of the Spanish market forming balls of masa de maiz dough with her thick, old hands, stuffing them with cheese, beans, and meat, and flipping them on the flat-top grill, also with her hands.

I stay away from Kensington on the weekends so it was only at a friend’s behest that I made it there at pre-yokel 9:30am Sunday. After a few minutes of watching Irma slapping dough to palm with no trace of interest in me, I piped up and asked for a pupusa. Disinterestedly she told me that it would be ready in a minute and kept on flipping and chatting with a friend. The pupusa ($2.50) was a great way to start Sunday morning. Crispy exterior, soft, doughy, cheesy interior. To say any more is a disservice to how simple this treat was. I followed it up with a fried oval of plantain stuffed with sweetened condensed milk ($1). I kind of wish I spoke Spanish so I didn’t sound like such a goon saying “gracias”.

I felt a tinge of sadness for anyone who was going to spend that morning stuffed into an overcrowded patio waiting 45 minutes for some cold eggs benedict. If people are complaining about food in Toronto they aren’t digging deep enough. Word on the street is that Irma is only going to be at Perola’s for a few more weeks. So go get a pupusa before she’s gone. ‘Nuff said.

Swatow
309 Spadina Avenue
416-977-0601
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and Budweiser, $40.

So I’m having a soak with a couple of my jackass friends. Gideon says, “I’m hungry, who wants to go for Chinese?” If it were my home I would just make dinner because I keep food in my fridge. But the only thing offered to me is stale matzo so of course I wanna go for Chinese. Now Steve refuses to go to Swatow. In fact he goes on a tirade about how he’ll go anywhere but Swatow. And over the week several other people join in the chorus of disdain. It turns out just about everyone hates Swatow. So now I’ve got to go. Admittedly, spite is not a good reason for going to a restaurant. But it’s a potent motivator. My grandmother Flo is gonna live another thirty years on spite alone.

Continue reading Knucklebone »

I pulled myself away from my four-day Mission: Impossible marathon to swing by the farmer’s market at City Hall. I may not like hippies and they might not like me. Well they probably like me because they’re all Taoist. But I don’t like them because I’m small-minded and inflexible and my parents were hippies and my mother left when I was three and I have abandonment issues and… well, anyway, I’ll save it for my shrink. But apparently they grow healthy produce.

Foolishly I went during the lunch hour and found myself in a throng of Bay-streeters swarming over the produce stalls like carrion. The house band kept on rockin’ in the free world at a nerve-wracking level. The noise and crowds made it difficult for me to shop in my normal fashion (that’s when I’m shoving people, not the other way around).

Continue reading Life Of Leisure »

Torito
276 Augusta Avenue
647-436-5874
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $70

Torito is the restaurant most chefs dream of opening. Breaking their backs making coulis for a coolie’s wage, cooks fantasize about owning/running a modest 30-seat restaurant, repeating the mantra “I’m here to get an education, that’s why I’m being paid so little”, while fearing they’ve become just like the whore who tells herself, “my pimp loves me.” This dream is based on the desire to serve unpretentious food made with the best ingredients as a rebellion from the circus of infinite garnishes and needlessly bizarre pairings like red snapper with coffee gellee (I’m not making that up).

Chef-owner Carlos Hernandez has realized this dream. His cozy tapas restaurant Torito has scored with its elegant, honest food and relaxing décor and now it’s bursting at the seams. Hernandez and co-owner Veronica Laudes have doubled their capacity with front and back patios and work the room with the guileless grace that only stakeholders will. They don’t take reservations so we arrived at six. When we left at eight (on a Tuesday), every seat was full.

Continue reading If We Don’t Save Our Pork Fat, the Terrorists Have Won »

Greg’s Ice Cream
750 Bloor Street West
416-962-4734
Single scoop: $2.95

The Big Chill
367 Manning Avenue
416-960-2455
Single scoop, $2.95

Greg’s Ice Cream, we need to talk. You’re a great kid and we’ve had some terrific times together. Any other Torontonian would be so lucky to have you. But, I think I need to see other ice cream parlours.

And it’s not you. You have so much going for you. You have all these great, unusual flavours. Most of your experiments, like cinnamon, ginger, pumpkin, honey vanilla, or stout, are winners. The sincerity of your real ingredients is always palpable. Some, like grapenuts or durian, are Frankensteinian monstrosities, sending casual ice cream eaters fleeing to the safe embrace of more traditional flavours. Your flagship concoction, the roasted marshmallow, with its smoky, baked egg white tones is never sickly sweet (like a real marshmallow). It keeps tourists lined up and I don’t doubt that you’re going to find that special customer soon.

Continue reading It’s Not You, Greg, It’s Me »

Tacos El Asador
690 Bloor Street West
416-538-9747
Lunch with all taxes, tip and dos Coronas: $30

I met my friend Jason for lunch ostensibly to talk about my girlfriend and I splitting up. All week I’d felt terrible and it was affecting my appetite. The case of gorgeous, yellow mangos in my fridge sat barely half-eaten (hello mango jam). I was only sleeping on my half of the bed. But talk quickly turned to comics and movies and our basic understanding of Spanish (it turns out that Bumblebee Man is not an accredited Spanish language teacher) resulted in my eating tripe for the first time in a decade.

Tacos El Asador, a Salvadorian restaurant made up of six picnic tables in the middle of Koreatown, pumps out fresh, hand-made tacos, burritos, tamales, and pupusas to a loyal clientèle of Annex-westers. A hockey-themed gumball machine takes up space that could fit a much-needed stand-up a/c unit. A friend asked me not to hype up his favourite take-out place because he doesn’t need it getting any busier. It was packed when we ate there but they managed to take care of us in a languid sort of way. What do we expect when there is no table service (or call waiting or answering machine)?

Continue reading Tough Medicine To Stomach »

Susur
601 King Street West
416-603-2205
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and four Salty Dogs: $300

My friend Max gently reminds me, as my birthday approaches, that I’d totally forgotten to get him a present last year. Never let it be said that I’m a welcher. But I am an opportunist. Inspired by the win/win theorizing of the comic-book villain Yellow Claw who once quipped, “perhaps the heads of two could fall with but a single stroke,” we find ourselves opening our wallets to a six-course tasting meal at Susur ($110) as a joint birthday present to each other.

Continue reading High-end Meal Earns High-end Price Tag »

Global Cheese
76 Kensington Avenue
415-593-9251

When I was twenty and still throwing my garbage off the balcony, my room-mate Max and I made our first trip to the grocery store together. We were young and poor and uneducated. He picked up a piece of havarti and exclaimed, “Wow, cheese is expensive!” and I didn’t really keep cheese in the house for the next five years. Then I found Global Cheese. Now I believe that cheese might release endorphins or make me a little high because if my stock runs down to one piece of cheese I start detoxing (dear dairy industry, I am not actually claiming that cheese is a narcotic).

No disrespect to Cheese Magic which, as my pal Natalie puts it, has the cutest boys, or Cheese Boutique which imports price-prohibitive rounds of artisanal cheese, but Global has the best selection, prices, and service.

Continue reading Cheesology 101 »