This year I will serve a boiled fetus for Christmas dinner. That’s right – a boiled fetus. Turkey? B-o-r-i-n-g. Roast goose? Tiny Tim can keep it. Eggnog, fruitcake, roasted chestnuts: it’s all crap really. This year I intend to sit down with my loved ones - well, my family actually - and slurp up a fertilized embryo. It will be the beginning of a tradition I hope.

Every family should have its Christmas traditions. Growing up, mine mostly consisted of bickering and ugly recriminations. And as the glorious day approached I developed an increasingly agitated and morbid frame of mind. The sight of so many people being happy – or pretending to be happy – disturbed and confused me.

Perhaps that is why balut appeals to me as a Yuletide meal for my own family. Balut, a Philippine delicacy, is fertilized duck egg. Gastronomically, balut is a journey to the gates of Hell. It is the singularly most terrifying food available in Canada, beyond even head cheese or a Swanson Hungry Man Dinner.

Continue reading The Fetal Position »

Kakayo Chocolate Company
1584 Queen Street East
647-346-2936

Anyone rooting for chocolates truffles in Hogtown will inevitably end up at Kakayo. Kakayo is the enterprise of Colleen Wong-Sala who for ten years worked in the fast-paced world of I.T. before devoting herself to the painstakingly slow work of creating hand-made chocolates. “I wanted to do something more in line with who I am as person.” Wong-Sala says from a table at the back of her cozy store. “And this is it.”

Wong-Sala who has been “about organic and fair trade” since high school, came to a point in her life where she says had to “stop worrying about my pay cheque and what bills I had to pay.” Thus a dramatic career change ensued. I.T’s loss became a gain for Toronto’s chocophiles.

Continue reading Ethichocolate »

Farhat Restaurant
2020 Lawrence Avenue East
416-285-5010
Dinner for two with soft drinks and all taxes: $20

“Feel awful, ha, ha, ha! You’re having a feel awful!” That’s what my room mate Morton used to guffaw whenever I ate a falafel for dinner. Now I never liked Morton and I’m glad he’s doing twenty-to-life at Kingston Pen. But there was some truth in his witless, annoying braying. Falafels are a food I associate with student indigence, cramped, insalubrious restaurants and horrible room mates. Did I actually like falafels? After an intestinal upset from one rancid, oil-soaked “falafel special,” I abandoned my pious vegetarian lifestyle and apprenticed as a butcher.

Continue reading Awfully Good Falafel »

Nasr Foods
1996 Lawrence Avenue East
416-757-1611

Last week, overcome with hunger, I traveled to the Mid-East. During my sojourn in that troubled area, I gorged myself on sheep cheese, fresh dates and halvah. My plump, manicured fingers snatched Turkish Delight from a tray. Satiated, I reclined languidly as I partook of a water pipe.

Of course, when I refer to the mid-East, I am referring to the mid-East of the G.T.A.. This area - Lawrence between Pharmacy and Warden - has emerged as a sort of Arab Strip or Little Lebanon, awaiting discovery by the falafel-craving foodies of downtown Toronto.

Continue reading Arabia Scarberia »

Freshman’s Food Boutique
627 Mount Pleasant Road
416-484-0040

Are you a Toronto foodie too tired to slave over a stove after a day spent slaving in your cubicle? Are you unwilling to provide take-out pizza or rotisserie chicken for your clamouring family? Well, in uptown Toronto, Freshman’s Food Boutique offers gourmet prepared foods for those with a discriminating palate but a busy schedule. Here the weary but hungry gourmet can take out and take home Kafta Tajine or Lamb Dijon.

Stew Cohen, the affable owner of Freshman’s, moved to Toronto from New York five years ago. In Manhattan, where he worked as a financial planner, Cohen was accustomed to bringing home meals from top-notch prepared food places like Dean and Deluca and Yura and Company.

Continue reading Prepared to a Different Level »

T&T Supermarket
222 Cherry Street
416-463-8113

I came to T & T for the duck tongues and stayed for the pig stomachs. And the chicken feet. And the quail eggs. T&T, inevitably described as the Chinese Loblaws, opened its first downtown store in August on Cherry Street at the former Knob Hill Farms location.

For foodies, T&T is Chinatown under one roof without the smell of rotting vegetables. It’s gleaming, antiseptic aisles hold thousands of Asian food products as well as Western staples. Where to start? The seafood section alone is worth a visit: there are tanks brimming with tilapia, pickerel and eel. All of them seem lively, even downright feisty.

Continue reading Duck Gizzards and a Loaf of Bread »

I once met the food chemist who was responsible for developing fruit-flavoured potato chips in the 1970s. The chips were a historical marketing failure and he never quite recovered from the Canadian public’s rejection of his efforts. I understand that afterwards he spent many months in state of anxiety and depression, attempting to develop “booze-and-pain killer” flavoured chips.

The actual technique of seasoning potato chips was invented by small, family-run Irish company – Tayto – in the 1950s. Salt and Pepper and Cheese and Onion were the first flavours. Soon giant American companies were beating a path to the Old Sod to learn this innovative technique. Now, as snack food has become globalized, the humble potato chip contains the essences and aromas of countless different countries. In Japan, one can enjoy octopus dumpling chips; Argentinians devour Patagonia Lamb chips, and various curry-flavoured chips are the snack food of choice in India and Southeast Asia.

Continue reading Marmite Crisps »

Hodo Kwaja
656 Bloor Street West
416-538-1208

Helen, the owner of a variety store near my house, emigrated to Canada from Korea. Korea is known as the Land of the Morning Calm. Helen is calm in morning when her store opens. And she is calm at midnight when her store closes. For sixteen hours a day she sells milk and chips and lottery tickets to a clientèle that consists mainly of the damned and the dispossessed. Helen, of uncertain health, keeps a jovial disposition, despite spending so many hours on her feet dealing with her often vexatious customers. She has always treated me and my family warmly. It is time, I thought, to return her kindness in some way. Chips and lottery tickets hardly seemed like a meaningful gift. And so I journeyed into Little Korea to Hodo Kwaja.

Continue reading Hodo Kwaja and a Coffee »

Mercury Organic Espresso Bar
915 Queen Street East
647-435-4779

Bulldog Coffee
89 Granby Street
416-606-2275

“Don’t play with your food,” my mother snarled as she snatched away the ketchup dispenser. I never completed the clown face I was squeezing onto my meatloaf. And so my efforts at creative food presentation were squelched at a tender age. I was only twenty-nine. It’s tragic really. Had my mother encouraged me, I may have grown up to be a great barista, a latte artist producing masterpieces out of milk foam.

Continue reading Picture Perfect Latte »

Hansen’s Danish Pastry Shop
1017 Pape Avenue
416-425-8877

Pape north of the Danforth is a somewhat gritty neighbourhood, filled with oddly named businesses such as Coffee Lime Café and Eleven-11 discount store. It seems like a funny place for a Danish food store but Hansen’s has been a fixture in East York for forty years.

I’m old enough to remember the Danish Food Centre on Bloor near Balmuto: so Scandinavian, so clean, so functional and well lit. Open faced sandwiches (smorrebrod) with bodum coffee. I used to go there with my girlfriend. I proposed to her there and suggested a passionate getaway to Legoland – the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark. She broke my heart. Such is the passion and folly of youth.

Continue reading Danish Anyone? »

Square Boy
875 Danforth Avenue
416-461-2571
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and soft drinks: $12

Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde kept scrapings of mutton and lamb to form into flat patties. The meat was tenderized by being placed under their saddles and eaten raw. This allowed them to loot and pillage with one hand while eating with the other. There’s a good reason fast food was invented.

French fries were a little more problematic. And there is some dispute as to whether the Mongols were responsible for the first Happy Meal. Anyway, the conquered Russians took a liking to this raw meat; hence Steak Tartare.

Sailors from Hamburg calling on Russian ports brought back this ground meat back to Germany, and now, after a few centuries, there are a billion members of the Golden Arches Horde. (You can take my research as impeccably accurate; I read it on the internet.)

Continue reading Square Boy: Legend on the Danforth »

El Sol Restaurant and Galleria
1448 Danforth Avenue
416-405-8074
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and beer: $40

Authentic Mexican? The place is filled with the aroma of cumin and chile. Mariachi music blares from the stereo. After a lengthy explanation of my desires, Ernesto closes his note pad and replies “No habla Inglese” before storming away. Ernesto is my latest psychoanalyst.

Caveat emptor I guess. And the session wasn’t a total loss. I find the phrase “No habla Inglese” is useful in dealing with telephone solicitors and my wife. It also provoked a craving for Mexican food which I satisfied at nearby El Sol Restaurant and Galleria.

Continue reading El Sol »

Safari Village
1690 Danforth Avenue
416-406-0534
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and beer: $30

It’s Thursday and the drums are silent in Safari Village. By Friday, though, the Village will be electric with music and dance. King Achilla Koru will be playing the kalimba. The aroma of barbequing meat will enthral the customers. But on a quiet Thursday evening we can enjoy a fascinating talk with Tony Mbugguss.

As a photojournalist for The Nation, Kenya’s largest paper, and for Reuters, Tony Mbugguss covered wars and coups and disasters. He has a large scar running from his hand because his work displeased an African despot. Today, as co-owner and chef at Safari Village he uses that hand to make chomas and rotis and curries. And he carries on the journalistic tradition of his family as managing editor of The Scene, a magazine dealing with African affairs.

Continue reading Safari Village »

The Rectory Café
102 Lakeshore Avenue, Ward’s Island
416-203-2152
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and beer: $75.00

Canada’s Aboriginal people regarded the Toronto Islands as place of repose and spiritual renewal. The Mississauga First Nation, understandably enough, still lays claim to the area; for the Islands offer a tranquil escape from the tumult and stench of the city centre. On a heavenly June day, I and my lady friend use bicycles to explore its leafy pleasures.

After pedaling around the island’s perimeter, searching for the ghost at Gibraltar Point, taking in the charming cottage gardens on Algonquin Island, and playing strenuous nude volleyball at Hanlan’s Point, we are ready for rejuvenating food and drink. And so we coast along the boardwalk to the Rectory Café on Wards Island, one of only two lakefront buildings that survived demolition by the city in 1960s.

Continue reading By Ferry to the Rectory »

Cerealicious
BCE Place
161 Bay Street, Concourse Level
416-214-9991
Bowls of cereal for two, all taxes: $9

I decided I should open my own restaurant while lying in hospital recovering from a schnitzel biryani eaten at an Indo-Nazi fusion café. Now becoming a restaurateur isn’t something to be entered into lightly. I knew fully well that restaurants are like marriages: most of them fail after a lot of excruciating stress and ugly recriminations.

Some sort of extraordinary theme, I felt, would ensure my culinary success. “Hospitilization” seemed like a promising concept. Unfortunately, I learned that it was already being done.

Continue reading Cereal Thrillers »