In Lauren Simmons’ piece earlier this morning, we ran what we’ll refer to as an essay from a server working at a local restaurant. The article started out as the details of a basic restaurant service day, but one comment from the subject caught my attention as I was editing the piece. It was about how customers who order half fries/half salad make the server “cry inside”. I asked Lauren to delve further, hoping to truly find out why this order creates such a fuss at many establishments, and her piece this morning was the response she received.

When the essay arrived in my email inbox, my first thought was that it completely and utterly exemplified the rude, snotty attitude that we, as customers, fear from restaurant servers, and that has given particular areas of town a deplorable reputation in terms of restaurant service. (Okay, actually, my first thought was that it was a huge joke, because I can’t strip the little faith I have left in humanity to believe that there are people out there who think like this.)

Continue reading Would You Like Fries With That? »

There is an unspoken rift in Toronto’s foodie community. Bloggers lament the death of good service, reviewers pan otherwise fantastic dining experiences when neglectful hosts fail to take their coats, and in even the city’s trendiest rooms, diners sit pouting in wait for water refills and bread baskets.

In an effort to peek behind the scenes of the perhaps-not-so-well-oiled-machine of food service, I sat down with  a self-declared waiter par excellence who has worked in some of the city’s hottest restaurants. What came of the interview was an interesting conundrum: while many in food service consider themselves professional and take their jobs quite seriously, many whom they serve do not.

Continue reading A Spectre Hanging Over the Restaurant Industry »

Yesterday morning I walked past St. Philip’s Pantry on King Street West at about 7am, and stopped to scratch my head because there was a Global TV van parked in the curb lane. They had claimed a prime spot for the 10am press conference where it was announced that Parkdale’s only food bank would be closing down.

During the press conference, local politicians were on hand to announce that they had collectively raised enough money out of their own pockets to keep St. Philip’s Pantry open until Christmas; the generous donations from MP Peggy Nash, MPP Cheri DiNovo and councillor Gord Perks totaled $2000.

But this little food bank needs more than that to stay afloat. For the past 20 years, St. Philips Pantry has been run by nearby Holy Family Church, but with operating costs of $33,000 a year, that figure has become unsustainable for the church to maintain. Rent alone is $2,000 per month.

Continue reading S.O.S. - Save Our Food Bank! »

Dear Councillor Filion,

This morning, upon reading the news of the backtrack on the issue of funding street food carts, my husband said prophetically, “He’s gonna fuck it up.”

While I think the idea for the city to purchase carts and rent them out to vendors is noble - that many potential vendors cannot afford the purchase of a new custom-built cart is a definite hurdle in getting this programme off the ground - I have an issue with your reasoning.

The Toronto Star quotes:

“We don’t want a repeat of what’s happened with hot dog carts,” said Filion. “We want a uniform look. We want something that’s good for branding the city as a food destination.

“We do not want a hodge-podge of carts that someone makes up in their garage.”

No. No, no, no, no. Please, can the city just once NOT look at something from a marketing perspective? Why do the carts all need to look the same? As long as they meet the safety and sanitation requirements, what does it matter if they ultimately look different? Doesn’t it make more sense to be able to tell the empanada cart from the pad thai cart at a glance?

Continue reading An Open Letter to Councillor John Filion Regarding Street Food Carts »

When I lived in Savannah, Georgia with my brother one summer, I wrestled with the frustratingly slow pace of life, of traffic, of humid and lifeless Sunday afternoons. My brother and his two roommates lived on Budweisers, frozen hotdogs and tobacco, so there wasn’t much cooking happening. No one had any interest in leaving the city. Life was fast enough for them, but for me, it felt like a trap.

Soon enough, I, too, was “Ma’am-ing” and “Sir-ing” people, sitting in friends’ garages clinking beer bottles on Sunday evenings, telling crass stories, dipping and chain smoking unfiltered Camels. That’s a lie. I mean, I don’t smoke, but if I did I’d roll my own.

Continue reading A Slow Goodbye »

The trend of eating locally, while nothing new for many people, seems to have brought some additional concerns with its renewed popularity. Maybe it’s the necessary role food plays in our lives, but we as consumers seem to want a lot more from our food shopping experience than any other shopping we do. Where we are encouraged to get to know the people selling and creating the food we eat, this philosophy doesn’t seem to extend toward other items we purchase. No one is insisting we develop an ongoing relationship with our real estate agent, or form a “community” with the salegirls from the Gap. Heck, for that matter, the “buy local” trend seems to go no further than food, as the same people who search out wheat grown within a 100-mile radius have no qualms whatsoever about wearing yoga pants made in China, or shoes that have come from Italy.

No, we have a twisted and sometimes perverse relationship with food and with the act of procuring said food. We’re no longer content to just go, shop and bring the stuff home. Now we need events, family-friendly activities, entertainment, a sense of community and added value. That’s a lot for your average farmer and a table of tomatoes to live up to.

Continue reading The Market Basket - What do YOU Want From Your Farmers? »

For those folks following the ongoing issues surrounding Amato pizza, the saga continues. We wrote last week of new locations opening up, despite the fact that many of the older locations had been shut down for non-payment of rent, and a lack of funds that included stiffing employees and more.

David Topping of Torontoist has written a rant, published today, about his recent experience ordering from the chain…

The problems were not one big thing so much as an endless accumulation of them: we had to call the main phone number to get the new location’s phone number (as it wasn’t on their website), had to wait five minutes after I called the Dundas West number as the phone rang and rang and rang, had to call the main number back several times (it was busy for ten minutes) to make sure I had the right number for the Dundas West location, called the the new number again, waited two minutes, finally spoke to someone, was disconnected, had to call back. Though the deliveryman had my phone number to call if he got lost (which the company used to do), he didn’t bother, and we saw someone driving up and down our block before we called the location’s number back to find out what was going on. The food was thirty minutes late, our order was completely wrong (we got one dish we didn’t order, and were missing two salads that we did), and the deliverer didn’t give us (or show us) a receipt. When we called to get our missing food, we were told it would take ten minutes to get our food back. It took fifty. And the salads were about half the size of the salads of one year ago.

Personally, I’ve never ordered from Amato - I’ve either never been able to get through or have gotten stuck on endless hold any time I tried. So while I too will miss their tasty late-night slices on the way home from a club, it might really be time for the whole business to fold and make room for someone else.

Like, oh… Massimo’s.

Quote used with permission.

If you’re reading this website, the odds are good that you know where your next meal is coming from. Unfortunately, there are thousands of people in our city who don’t. According to statistics, 20% of people in the GTA paid at least one visit to a food bank in 2005/2006, and the use of food banks has increased almost 80% in the last dozen years.

While we should obviously be trying turn things around to the point that food banks will not longer be needed, the sad fact is that they will likely be necessary for some time to come, so we need to support them in the meantime. Which is why it’s important to note that the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Spring Food Drive is wrapping up this Friday, April 27th, and they’re hoping to reach their goal of raising roughly a million pounds of food to keep their shelves stocked for the next few months.

While any and all contributions are welcomed, there are particular foods that are especially needed. These include baby food and formula, powdered or canned milk, canned fruits/veggies and soups, pasta and rice, and protein-rich foods such as canned meat and fish, beans, lentils and peanut butter. And of course, donations of cash are always appreciated. Donations of food can be made for the rest of the week at your local firehall and all Loblaws or Real Canadian Superstore locations, while cash donations can be made at any time via the Canada Helps website.

The National Post is running a couple of pieces today on kids in restaurants. One is an op-ed piece by CityBites editor Dick Snyder, the other interviews a couple of folks (including TasteTO writer Paul Wernick, as well as yours truly) about our own experiences.

It looks as if they’ve cut down my “changing the poopy diaper on the restaurant table” story to one line, which is really a shame - it’s truly horrifying, and I still can’t eat Huevos Rancheros without thinking of that incident.

So what say you, TasteTO readers? Is it cool to take your kids to restaurants? What about if they’re screaming and running around and generally making a nuisance of themselves? And to the child-free - how do you react when you’re trying to have a nice meal and the folks at the table next to you are letting their kids run wild?

Imagine for a moment that you’re walking down the street and you pass a punk-looking kid wearing a black t-shirt with Anthony Bourdain’s face on the front. Or you’re in the mall and the gaggle of girls outside of Old Navy are all wearing sparkly pink shirts emblazoned with the Rachael Ray logo. Or maybe you’re watching the news to see thousands of women mobbing the airport when Jamie Oliver deplanes and races to a limo to be whisked away before someone gets injured.

To people in the industry, the concept of chefs as celebrities seems vaguely uncomfortable. The people who cook the food for restaurants, events, and hotels are meant to be behind the scenes. They’re part of the great machine that makes a dinner or an event happen seamlessly and beautifully; the kitchen is called “back of house” for a reason. Most dedicated cooks don’t want the attention – they want to do their jobs and do it well, and don’t much care for the cameras and interviews and face time.

But most is not all, and as more and more of the celebrity chefs we watch on TV sign endorsement deals or create product lines of their own, the desire - we’ll even call it a “need” to be seen, to be out there promoting the gadgets, the cookbook, the product lines and oh, yeah, the restaurant - becomes overwhelming.

Continue reading Chefs Are the New Rock Stars »

The Toronto Star is reporting that Joe Badali’s restaurant has backed down from a proposed $2 levy against their servers to cover the costs of cleaning aprons.

A popular Toronto restaurant has backed down after trying to claw back most of the extra 20 cents an hour it has to pay its minimum-wage waiters.

Joe Badali’s, on Front St. at University Ave., told servers it would start charging them $2 a shift to cover the costs of washing their aprons and providing notepads and cash envelopes.

This charge would essentially strip the staff of any increase they might expect to reap in yesterday’s rise in minimum wage.

While Joe Badali’s now says they will leave the charge at the current 50 cents per server per shift to cover cleaning costs, even that seems a little miserly to me. Laundry bills are part of the cost of running a restaurant, and servers or staff shouldn’t have to pay for the cleaning costs of items necessary to the job like aprons or chef’s whites. Having worked at establishments where there was an enforced uniform that had to be purchased from head office (a tacky little vest while working as a barista at a local coffee chain), I’d even go so far to say that uniforms that cannot be readily supplied by the servers themselves (ie. white shirt, black pants) should be offered to staff free of charge.

What’s next - is Joe Badali’s going to start charging the dishwashers for soap, or the bartenders for ice?

Before we even officially launch this site, I want to make something perfectly clear – while TasteTO was created in order to celebrate all of the wonderful food choices we have here in Toronto, we should never ever forget that there are a lot of people in our city who do not have those options. Sure, we’ll be running reviews of nice restaurants, and features on wonderful products and ingredients, but it would be remiss of us not to report on other food issues that affect Torontonians aside from whether this year’s truffle crop is as good as last year’s.

An article in yesterday’s Toronto Star advocates a meal subsidy for people on social assistance, calculating that a family of four receiving benefits has only $396 left after paying rent to cover all of their bills for the month, including groceries.

For instance, the average monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment for a family of four in Toronto is $1,272. That family would receive $1,668.35 per month in social assistance benefits, child-related tax benefits and GST tax credits.

That would leave only $396.35 for food and other basics, far short of the $538.43 a month called for in the Nutritious Food Basket, which is based on the Canada Food Guide.

$396 – I bet that’s less than what that family of four would pay for dinner at one of the city’s high-end dining establishments. And that total has to include other bills such as utilities, transportation, medication, and clothing.

There’s an imbalance taking place that seems terrifically unfair.

Not to mention that the Nutritious Food Basket relies on a lot of basics and a decent knowledge of cooking for it to work economically. There’s no room for snacks and treats, even cheap ones.

“It’s based on purchasing basic food ingredients,” McKeown said.

“You have to have the skills to cook from scratch all of your meals. … It’s not a rich diet. It takes no account of any kind of pre-processed or prepared food or eating out. It’s just the basics.”

Many would argue that if you work hard for the salary you make, you have the right to spend it any way you see fit, and a two or three or four-hundred dollar meal is your right if you can afford it.

But everyone should have the right to safe, healthy, nutritious food. Ensuring that people eat well now prevents illness and eliminates medical costs in the long run. Children learn better with full tummies when they can concentrate on their school work. Healthy employees take fewer sick days. All of this is well-known. I don’t have the solutions, and I’m not trying to preach, but doesn’t it seem amazingly illogical that we don’t have a subsidy like this in place already? That we’re allowing people to go hungry or forcing them to go to food banks?

And that’s just the folks living on social assistance. The working poor trying to live on Ontario’s crappy minimum wage don’t fare any better.

I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty about their own food purchases - I’m not going to stop treating myself to those $6 single-estate chocolate bars that I love so much - but I’m going to find a way to ensure that TasteTO does its part to advocate for this meal subsidy, for lunch and breakfast programmes in schools, and for a higher minimum wage ($10 should be just a start) so that everyone can afford a delicious and nutritious meal, not just the folks making the big bucks.