Lady and Son Butchery
1175 Queen Street East
416-913-2598

As soon as customers enter the door, proprietress and butcher Voula Mantis, will most likely try to feed them. It may be the tennis ball-sized clementines just in, or decadent Belgium butter wafers, or perhaps some grilled chorizo. Even regulars who’ve just popped in to say hello as they were passing by are sent off with some homemade meatballs. Those who’ve come for dinner ideas get mouth-watering preparation advice along with their choice. For example, veal - egg wash dip, fresh chive and garlic seasoned bread crumbs, sear in hot cast iron pan with a light oil and a little butter, finish in a hot oven - and serving suggestions, to boot; “A mushroom ragout would go really well with that.”

Continue reading First Lady of Meat On Queen »

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck

I can’t testify to the accuracy of the above quote, at least when it comes to laws. But Mario Fiorucci, co-owner of the Healthy Butcher (565 Queen Street West), may be able to as a former Bay Street lawyer. And despite his years in the muck that is lawyering he still decided to open a butcher shop and actually make sausages.

And of course there is always the old saying about sausages and hotdogs – It’s all tits, lips, and assholes. That may be true at the big meat production companies, I can’t say, however the sausages at the healthy butcher are in no way representative of the factory-produced versions. In fact, to find out the truth about sausage making, simply sign up for one of the Healthy Butcher’s sausage-making classes.

Continue reading Wurst Night in Toronto »

Just before the holidays a group of activists staged a protest outside of Pusateri’s. What was it they were protesting? Child labour? Underpaid employees? Unsafe foods from China?

No, they were protesting the sale of foie gras.

Foie gras gets a bad rap in the press. It’s an easy target. And because it’s an easy target some anti-animal-agriculture groups use it as a wedge issue in their campaigns against meat eating in general.

Some of the most vocal carnivores often draw the line at foie gras (The super-fatty liver of ducks or geese) for its perceived cruelty. Gavage (a fancy word for “force feeding”) is an unsightly process, but most of the meat we eat, even the green, organic free range stuff is the product of unsightly processes.

So what’s an omnivore to do?

Continue reading Foie Gras Ducks the Issues »

Local, traceable, and meaty are in, while equatorial fruit and small plates are passé.

A quick not-statistically-accurate-at-all poll of a few city chefs shows that the buying local trend hasn’t run out of steam, although being able to intimately map a food’s source is quickly gaining ground.

Continue reading Tapas Out, Meat In »

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 »

With the buzz surrounding the taste and texture associated with the amount of marbling found in Kobe, Wagyu, USDA Prime, Black Angus, or Alberta AAA beef, and where more is often better, it’s no wonder that Torontonians have neglected the leaner red meats. Not trying to draw attention away from the vast array that a diner can choose from, but I am speaking specifically of horse.

Now before this post is bombarded with any nasty comments or readers reeling in disgust, let me justify this choice by stating that equine is commonly consumed in many European countries. Although unfamiliar to many North American palates, our city does host a handful of restaurants bold enough to offer this scrumptious cut in the midst of the Wagyu/Kobe hype. To further support this claim, I’ve had the fortune of sampling various versions belonging to the family Equidae over the last number of months. I love horses (and apparently in more ways than one), but dare I admit that equine is a delightful treat? I shall and have on numerous occasions as documented below. Read on with an open mind (and stomach), and for readers who still have issues with this concept, I’d like to redirect their attention to the continuing controversy with the readily available foie gras (unless they live in Chicago, that is).

Continue reading Horsing Around T.O. »

I tried to be a vegetarian back in my early years of university – “tried” being the operative word. I could not turn my taste buds off of pork, as it is a staple ingredient in Cantonese cuisine, which I grew up with. Yes, I am a fan of this “other” white meat, and noticed that many pubs and restaurants in the city now have a slow-cooked drool worthy entrée on their menu – the pulled pork sandwich. What’s not to love about this sandwich? It has super tender meat enrobed in a barbecue sauce and cupped in a bun that soaks up the fat and sauce… yum. I did an overview of a few places to see who makes the meanest pulled pork out there. To slow the process of clogging up my arteries and decrease the risk of chronic stomach-aches, I limited myself to three places offering this “low-fat” handheld snack.

Continue reading Pulled Pork Put to the Test »

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 »

The ready-to-go (a.k.a home meal replacement) market has become all the rage, where you can pick up almost anything for dinner on a run-through in a food store of some sort. The meal is on the table fast, and it takes the worry out of what to cook up for dinner. Sure, it isn’t the same as a homemade, slow-cooked meal, but admit it – there are times where this is the alternative for those time-pressed days. My curious mind wanted to put a popular home meal replacement product to the test – the rotisserie/roasted chicken. So who makes an acceptable rotisserie chicken? Since there was only so much chicken I could consume without becoming one, I narrowed down the choices to three outlets that have their unique advantage in attracting the consumer:

My husband was my fellow designated eater for this taste test. We tried the products all within one week, and maintained the same side dishes of rice and corn. Plain yes, but the focus was on our poultry companions. Here are the results…

Continue reading Battle of the Rotisserie Chickens »

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 »

Cynthia Beretta tells me she was raised on garden-grown food by an Italian mother who was “ahead of her time” when it came to eating organic.

The key to spotting trends must run in the family. When Cynthia and her husband Mike bought their first farm in Wingham, ON, in 1993 and converted it to organic to raise their livestock, there wasn’t much public awareness about a green lifestyle. But after moving to a bigger farm in King City and experiencing an organic craze about three years ago, the business at Beretta Organic Farms is booming.

Continue reading An Organic Kind of Life »

“Twenty five pounds of beef? Where are we going to put it?” asked my husband.

“In the freezer.” I said.

I’d wanted to try getting meat directly from a farmer for a while. I wasn’t sure how my husband would react when I told him I was going to order twenty five pounds of grass fed beef from Beef Connections, nine small farms who have a co-operative sales and delivery service. After an initial surprise at getting that much meat at once, my husband agreed that it was a good idea. I placed an order online and the next weekend found us driving to a parking lot on Bloor Street, where I was to pick up the meat and give them a hundred and thirty dollars.

The people who brought the meat were the farmers themselves. They were very friendly and quickly found my order. It comes in a big cardboard box, which they helped me carry to the car. Twenty-five pounds of beef seems like a huge quantity, but it fit in our freezer with plenty of room to spare. I could have even ordered the fifty-pound assortment.

Continue reading Grass Fed Beef »