National Post Review: Arriverderci Pasta The future of food may lie with those who cannot eat it. This morbid speculation is fuelled by Hilary, one of my oldest friends, calling to say that she and her husband Jerry, who live in Pennsylvania, are passing through Toronto and want to eat Italian. She adds, remember I'm a celiac - I can't eat wheat.   more »

National Post Review: Shingle with a shimmy and a shake (Breakfasts) When dinosaurs roamed the land,eating breakfast out was a cheap thrill. Any self-respecting diner could come across with Blowout patches (pancakes), Blonde with Sand (coffee with cream and sugar} Fry two, let the sun shine (two fried eggs) with Noah’s Boy (ham) and Sweep the Floor (hash) without the soup jockeys (servers) going into the weeds (breaking down). As I ate my austere breakfast of Hug One (oj) birdseed (grapenuts), boiled leaves (tea), on the city (water),and yogurt (a food unknown to the self-respecting diner) I had a sudden urge to go out and have shingle with a shimmy and a shake (buttered toast with jelly) – but where in a city awash with lungo lattes, caffe macchiato, double no fun (nonfat milk and decaf espresso) and thunder thighs(double moccacino)?    more »

Four Star Corn Bisque .....The corn bisque lays our fears to rest. We are embarked on the French food narrative. The French have a black belt in flavour-making. It is how the ingredients are treated that makes their flavour (taste and smell) more intense. The French used to feed sweet corn to pigs until they learned from the Americans that the blend of sugar and crunch was irresistible. Now anyone, well almost anyone, can make a tasty corn soup, but Mr. Challet has transcended the obvious chowder, he has bisque’d corn, crunched, pressed, pureed it so smooth that only a tiny nubbin or so is left, flavoured it gently with fennel. The toppings are a little crab cake and a fennel roulle, created by mixing a puree of potatoes and fennel cooked in fish soup, then added to a mayonnaise of garlic, saffron, piquillo pepper and fennel puree. The roulle is a mere squiggle but it’s impact is 1000% more. When I sip the pale gold soup, I have a mouthful of flavour – corn plus - informed by a dozen complementary tastes. After such food, we wax philosophical. The pureed corn is as deceptively spontaneous as Roger Federer’s forehand, the fennel roulle vibrates like Feist’s voice.   more »

Nine names on everyone's tongues These emerging chefs aren't flashes in the pan. As restaurant critic Gina Mallet writes, they're changing the foodscape of the city Fifteen, even 10 years ago, this story couldn't have been written. Toronto just didn't have an expansive or inclusive enough food culture. Sure, restaurants were on the rise, but Hogtown took time embracing the sensuality of food and drink. Now, of course, restaurants open (and close) all the time, and menus are rich in variety and luxury -- fresh foie gras, dozens of types of oysters, black and white truffles, pork belly, lamb shanks, beef cheeks, roasted sweetbreads. Multicultural influences are no longer marginal but mainstream--even changing its course. That being said, it's both the best and worst of times to be a chef in Toronto. Food and cooking are moving at the speed of light: Like everything, they are Web driven, vulnerable to pressures building in the ether -- the 24/7 news cycle, food scares, health and diets, not to mention the latest demographic spin. And while we have better restaurants and a tribe of foodies (and their credit cards), the industry is ever-changing.   more »

Where’s the Chateau Indage? An Indian wine bar! I love it. I couldn’t wait to go to Tabla Wine Bar to order a Sula Chenin Blanc from Maharashtra or a sparkling Marquise de Pompadour from Chateau Indage, India’s largest winemaker. Indage recently bought Tandou, one of Australia’s top l0 wine producers so it could meet India’s growing demands for wine. I just read a clip that the Hyderabad Wine Club welcomed Napa Valley’s Christopher Creek winemakers who were exploring the Indian wine market. Who would have thunk it? India, once dry,has the potential to be an humungous wine market. Millions drink despite religious and social taboos. Last January in Madrid I met Subhash Arora, who founded the Delhi Wine Club in 2002; he was tasting Spanish wines for his membership. He calls the wine explosion “The Indian paradox.” India is already a food power – will Indian wine be next?    more »

Localvore’s Dilemma After reading how B.C. journalists Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon went on a 100-mile diet for a year as a reproof to global food distribution, I decided to go localvore with my own half-mile diet. I am going to limit my food shopping and eating to within half-a-mile of where I live, thus saving energy. No more car-jaunts to far-off emporia. It’s fine to shop organic but not when I have to travel miles to the St. Lawrence Market or to the Dufferin and Riverdale organic markets. No, local commitment requires I buy where I live. I look forward to changing my expectations of food. I never felt more relaxed about food than when I lived in a small village. Without a car, I had limited choice. Our local market depended on villagers shopping regularly with them, as a result they stocked what we wanted. In turn we paid higher prices for the food but it was worth it in terms of convenience.    more »

The Perfect Dish

The gloves came off last week in the ongoing battle for markets. For as long as I can remember, the civilized world has cowered under the oppression of the 25 demographic, the young and restless with money to burn, willing to spend it forever on extending their sex appeal way beyond the sell by date. But now marketers have cried uncle and acknowledged that the biggest market of all is the sixty-something boomer cohort with trillions to spend and not much time to do it. Not that the natural limits are emphasized. Marketers always emphasize the positive (the mortician’s journal Casket and Sunnyside was thick with tips like “The corpse must be placed in a welcoming position”) The message is still sex  - but coy, exhausted couples giggling as they totter late to the opera after popping Viagra.

And while boomers are health fanatics and sincerely believe they have a fighting chance to make 100, this is balanced by a more realistic taste for luxury. I mean, I’m not going to be offered caviare by the cafeteria in the sky.  Gourmet cruises are up, if it’s Finland, it must be Aland potatoes. Luxury hotels have cooking classes and eatertainment. Last summer I went to a gourmand lunch at Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel where several hundred better-than-young people, tanned, fit and choosy were OD’ing  on Nicholas Feuillete Champagne and then sautéing lobster along with a celeb chef.

Braced by the memory, I slap on Davi’s Le Grand Cru Face, anti-aging cream for vintage skin, made from grapeseeds by winemaker Robert Mondavi, and throw off the yoke of the barhopping finger foodies by dining retro – cooking based on the French classic cuisine. I want to see if cooking can still be an epiphany as it was for MFK Fisher, a wide-eyed Californian who discovered her sensuality at Aux Trois Faisans in Dijon in the 1920s. She traveled through the belly of Ribaudot’s restaurant, seeing, smelling for the first time the hot kitchens, the piles of of raw food, glimpsing the men’s room through a swinging door before she arrived at the orgy that was dinner…”a series of blurred legendary words: pate truffe Charles Le Temeraire, poulet en cocotte aux Trois faisans, civet a la mode bourguignonne……”

My pick for immortality is the unlikely-named Cru which is eco-situated opposite the Royal York subway stop. The Bon Vivant reluctantly agrees to go green on the TTC but says “there really should be a bar car on these long trips.” The space is sparkling Art Deco, originally a Woolworths, and strikingly elegant, caramel trending to earthy Umbrian with huge windows and a high ceiling that baffles noise.

The menu is short but engrossing. We dither over the tartares, either yellow fin tuna with intriguingly, a fillip of gooseberry, or beef with lotus chips but then plump for a cone of fresh crab salad and an enchanting zucchini blossom stuffed with crabmeat floating in crème fraiche and garnished with cucumber.

Excellent, we murmur, a palate teaser, and turn attention to our second choice, fresh sardines with a shellfish sausage.

Silence and serious eating - and then the Bon Vivant and I lay down our forks. Simultaneously we cry “this is it!” The perfect dish.

Surprising, unfamiliar, a knockout. The chef Shane Waite understands what fusion means - not a clash of civilisations but an ability to discriminate among cultures, using the best of each to complement the other. The two fresh sardines, a coarse fish, are encased in tender Japanese tempura, the airy pastry mellowing the sardine’s assertively salty taste. Each sardine is accompanied by a French classic, a boudin blanc, a slim silky sausage of lobster and scallop lapped by an exotic coriander juice. Combining the bristly sardine with the effulgent shellfish creates an intricate fugue of flavours and textures.

We hurriedly scrap our order for a quaffing white and send for the wine list. The perfect dish must have wine to match. Among the whites, one stands out, a Savennieres, Clos de St. Yves 2002, flinty, structured like a McLuhan apercu with a coda of melancholia, the perfect match for sweetish shellfish. Well worth going over budget for. Particularly as we have more shellfish to come.

How to follow up perfection? Anything will seem an anti-climax. But the ricotta gnocchi with lots of rich tasty chunks of lobster stands splendidly on its own, bathed in tarragon,lobster and tomato sauce. Caramelized sable fish (black cod) is good enough – the problem is that fish relies on texture for taste, and black cod flesh tends to flab, unlike such toned hunks as Monkfish, Halibut and Salmon. The accompaniment of Israeli (big) couscous is delightful, so is the white bean puree and the slice of scarlet grapefruit on top is another inspiration, tart without being bitter.

Now we’re up for a grand finish – dessert. Disaster! The desserts are - to put it politely - execrable, hazelnut daquoise is like crumbs and cream cheese, hot rhubarb crumble is topped with a  magenta soggy shape of rhubarb and strawberry. The chef gave us the sun and the moon but now he’s snatched away the stars.

Instead we look for finis among the wines but no luck. Cru has a daily vin ordinaire and a table of bin ends, but no Montbazillac. And come to think of it, the sommelier apparently cut out early. Our Savennieres was served by a charming enthusiast who we learn later from our waiter is a partner in the restaurant. Oh well.We raise a glass of fizzy Moscato to toast a dinner that flirted with greatness.

*** 1/2 Cru. 946 Royal York Rd,Etobicoke. 416 237-1282. Dinner for two with tax $130. Wines by the glass start at $6. Good wine list. BYOB $20. Hours: Lunch: Tues-Fri 11:30am - 2pmDinner Tues-Sun 5pm-10pm. Prix Fixe dinner Mon-Wed $32 for three courses. Wheelchair Access.
 

Can General Tso march uptown?

Should Toronto restaurants come with a Best Before date? A couple of months on the job and I’ve come away dismayed from several restaurants which won plaudits last year. What’s going on? Surely restaurants are not letting themselves slip once the reviews are in? I have a suggestion: instead of going twice to restaurants when they open, maybe reviewers should go only once and then return in a few months just to make sure.
 
Lai Toh Heen has just been given the hi-sign as one of the best new restaurants of 2007 by Toronto Life.. Will this be the breakthrough Chinese food experience for me? I know Chinese cuisine can be complex and subtle from the occasional piece of eye-opening  dim sum, and from the Mongolian-American restaurant Susanna Foo in Philadelphia where I ate a never-to-be forgotten tea-smoked squab. I’ve only found it matched by chef Neil Baxter at Rundles in Stratford.

Instead, my idea of Chinese food is an Asian version of Big Macs, sinostyle fast food, pungent takeaways and drop-ins to the ruggerscrum of a Chinese restaurant where you struggle through the masses for a seat, shout to be heard and are identified only by number.

I had a fave greasy spoon called Champion House - now shuttered - where they banged a gong when the Beijing Duck came out and served 3-fire-alarm Gongbao shrimp – erratically. I never knew whether the food would be as good as last time because Champion House, like all Chinese restaurants of my acquaintance, had a revolving door for chefs, or as the writer Saki quipped “She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went.” There was no communication between Chinese hosts and our Western selves. They didn’t speak much English, we spoke no Chinese. To them we undoubtedly looked all alike. We joked about being hungry again in an hour, a joke  since been amended  by the avalanche of cheap Chinese products. Now it’s “I hardly finished eating before my Made-in-China sweater started unraveling.”

Going uptown must mean better communication. I want in to the world’s oldest-running civilization. First impression: Lai Toh Heen is elegantly black and silver. I know from a Californian blogger what upscale means in today’s Chongquin – hostesses in long lavendar dresses with matching rabbit chubbies (short fur jackets). But we didn’t get a chance to spot any kind of a chubbie before we were whisked into a small back room redolent only of a viewing chamber in a mortuary. It’s even got concealed strip lighting and Muzak. The only other mourners are a gloomy couple who share with us their irritation at not getting the pan-seared scallops they ordered.

Two things strike me. First, either the restaurant thinks that surroundings don’t matter. After all,Confucius, who wrote the bible for Chinese eating, never mentioned décor. He concentrated, like today’s nutritionists, on food as fuel, the higher starch the better.

Alternatively, Lai Toh Heen believes its food is so good that we won’t notice we’re sitting in a mortuary.

Well that gets blown apart almost immediately. I’ve invited along the Gourmand Couple who eat regularly at Eisenginn Farm, the cathedral of food in these parts, with the promise of a unique Chinese experience. Beijing Duck is perfect for four. “Hah” says the Skeptic – “you gotta count. If the duck comes out too quickly, it’s been deep fried rather than roasted.” Apprehensive, we sample the soup Hot and Sour is glutinously pink and mild. The eyebrows of the Gourmand Couple rise simultaneously. Why, you can eat spicier, tastier Hot and Sour from Soup’s On’s version at the supermarket. The Skeptic reports the Wonton soup is listless.  

The Beijing Duck takes atleast twenty minutes and looks wonderful, like a shard of French polished walnut, but the little pancakes curl drily and the glistening crackly skin is lined with unwanted fat. Sill even a second class combination of skin,scallion and pancake tastes good – then the second course arrives, a terminally bland mixture of chopped duck and veg on an iceberg lettuce leaf.

The Gourmand Couple had in mind juicy fried orders, remembered from eating on Chesapeake Bay. What they get is unrecognizeable as the conventional oyster. I had high hopes for tea-smoked shrimp: the shrimp look real but we have to check the menu to find out whether they were meant to come with flavour.

We have a last wistful glimpse of the Shanghai we missed as the Skeptic hails the valet for his car. The bill is $10 and the Skeptic asks for change for a twenty spot.The valet asks “How much should I take?”

To restore my belief that there is a Wizard of Oz er great  Chinese cooking, I drop by Cha Liu, a little dim sum place above Eglinton. The steamers are slapped down one two three on the table, the server barely notices us, same old same old. But not the tastes! Fried Salmon Milk custard bar is sensational, Fried taro and chicken cake is a little hemisphere of stuffed light pastry, Fried shrimp and mango roll is a crunch of fried scented cream….. Get over here Lai Toh Heen and take instruction!  I ask our server what is the sauce on the table. “Spicy sauce” he says tightlipped. Then he gives a slight smile. When we order more, he smiles more. By the end of the meal, he shows teeth. Finally, we’re communicating – great food’s done the trick.

*Lai Toh Heen 692 Mount Pleasant Road
(one block south of Eglinton)416-489-8922
Food plus tax:$140 Wines by glass start $7.50. Uninspired wine list. No wheelchair access.

Comeback Kid
By Gina Mallet


Wearing a blue knitted cap with his whites, Greg Couillard makes pals of the diners in his new spot, Spice Room & Chutney Bar in Hazelton Lanes, a suburban-lonely mall, lit by heartless fluorescents and patrolled by the ghosts of the city ís golden age ñ the eighties.  That was Mr. Couillard ís golden age too when-doing-your-own hadnít yet morphed into mantra, and foodie was a brand new definition. Twenty years ago, I piled into a taxi with a bunch of new-minted foodies and scooted along Queen Street West to Couillardís Stelle, a shiny white box of a restaurant coloured violent red, purple, viridian by the palate-numbing flavours of Jump Up Soup. How deliciously novel - as was the boisterous Mr. Couillard.

Toronto was smaller then and so was the cityís restaurant culture. Wherever you went ñ to celeb central, the Yoohoo CafÈ as Sid Adilman dubbed the Courtyard CafÈ, an amusing aviary in the Windsor Arms Hotel - to the raucous Noodles Pasta Bar, to Lotus where Susur Lee cooked in a way he has never again cooked, to Stadtlander where you waited five hours to finish a meal, to Scaramouche, still stately after all these years, to Beaujolais, opened by Vancouverites Barbara Gordon and Bob Bermann, to John Maxwellís clone of Broadwayís Joe Allen, to Sandy Staggís Fiesta which offered Chicken in Bondage, homage to Rough Trade  ñ you ran into someone you knew.

And of course Fenton’s which symbolized Torontoís coming of age as a food destination. When I was theatre critic for the Toronto Star, I used to take visiting firemen to Fentonís, Ralph Lauren channelling Henleyís Leander Club. They sipped Leek and Stilton soup and ordered Eton Mess with pleased surprise. How Toronto had changed was a theme of all conversation. ìFrom nothingî said Sir John Gielgud one of the last great stars of the English stage to play the Royal Alex, ìto a sophisticated cityî. Lunching at Fentonís, Expatriate Bernard Braden who had fled Hogtown to become a BBC star, said he was tempted to move back, .

As the piano player ripples out ìYou must remember thisÖî, I have a tweak of pain as I watch an older, humbler Mr. Couillard work a room of people whoíve never heard of Stelle or know that heís the last individualist, a chef whoís ricocheted from kitchen to kitchen all over town. Most of his  contemporaries are either gone or settled into executive chefdom. Fusion, his original calling card, is often criticized as confusion. His ace was fiery spice, but now heís aced by fiery multicultural cuisines.

Yet here he is with Jump Up Caribe style still on the menu ñ  What brass! This guy is one hell of a survivor. Heís morphed shock into something more subtle, the room is a symphony of sand and black, a page out of House and Garden featuring African gracious living. The lighting is so low that itís hard to see the menu, the table lantern having been designed to flatter aging women on safari. The trek guides are all charming.

The menu is printed on gold paper roams the world and cries out for translation. Michael, who has come along hoping spice will clear his sinuses, explains the references. Lamu is an island in the Indian ocean. What is Nonya as in Nonyaís peppered beef tenderloin? Answer: someoneís Malaysian grandmother. Another question: why is it always assumed that grandmothers were good cooks?

Pakora (vegetable fritter) mash invites. We hover over the lobster and seafood bisque but coconut cream tends to drown other tastes. We share and enjoy the fresh acid tinctures  in  spicy Afro Samurai, slices of seared raw tuna on wakame (Japanese seaweed) , crunchy jicama coleslaw, quartered figs and a black sesame seed cone. Pomegranate seeds and slivers of pineapple are strewn on the plate and they seem to pop up on other plates too..

We pick duck and wonder. Michael says ìduck itself doesnít taste of anything.î Surely  Lucknow Breast, suggesting the influence of the greatest of all spicemeisters, the Indians, will correct that. Too bad then that the sliced duck breast, while tender and rare, hasnít been tea-smoked long enough and the sticky tamarind, pomegranate and star anise molasses doesnít register beyond sweet.

Zanzibar Rubbed Berbere lamb is very good indeed. An incendiarily-spiced rack of lamb glazed with tomato, jaggery (unrefined sugar), and fig and cooked perfectly to order, medium rare. ìFinally!î cries Michael sneezing happily. The free range young chicken doesnít have the chops of lamb, which can hold its own with any spice. Even so, a dip in a bath of yogurt, cardamom, garlic, green chili and coriander isnít enough to give it coherent flavour. At the same time cous cous pearls with mango and date are a nice idea.

We end with Japonaise Orange Blossom, a tower of praline meringue and mascarpone which is an excellent way to end a spicy meal, if only the meal had been more spicy. I’m too impatient. The restaurant has been open only three weeks and itís still finding itself as Mr. Couillard is quick to tell customers. Fair enough.  Spice Room is also a reminder that dining out isnít just about the food, itís an experience involving all the senses - including memory. The past is another country; they do things differently there ìwrote the novelist L.P Hartley. Fusion may be yesterday but Mr. Couillardís take has the freshness of nostalgic naivete ñ like taking a trip to eat schnitzel in old Vienna.

**Thanks for the memory. Spice Room & Chutney Bar, 55 Avenue Road (Hazelton Lanes) 416-935-0000. Dinner: Tues-Sat. Food: dinner for two with tax: $150. Reasonable wine list. Glasses start at $7. Wheelchair accessible.
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Scaling the Heights

“Where is Vertical?” I ask the security guard at Canadian Place. “You go left, then right, then left, then up the escalator then right and then left.”

I step off the escalator to be anesthetized by the fermented soy and multicultural grease billowing from the fast food joins in Canadian Place’s vast food ghetto. But “where’s Vertical?” I ask a cleaning lady.” Well, you go left, then right, then left, just beyond Jimmy’s.’ My eyes uncross just enough to spot the little sign Vertical.  

If it took me more than ten minutes to reach Vertical via the yak route, it took Ken who’s meeting me, double that. He took the Lhotse Face route by following signs on King Street that led him to hike up outdoor steps to the mezzanine and a locked door. It wasn’t until he threatened to break it down that  kindly Food Court personnel let him in.

Once we remove our oxygen masks and rehydrate, we look around. Vertical is a square room with views you wouldn’t want to see shrouded with sheers, and a scarlet-tented ceiling punctuated by fat lozenges of lights. It’s a riff on a sultana’s boudoir. But after initial amazement, we don’t laugh. The room works. It’s friendly and it’s relatively quiet considering it’s packed for lunch with Bay Streeters celebrating TGIF with bottles of wine and lots of gossip. Best of all, from the moment the fresh baked bread lands on the table with a glass of prosecco, I get this niggle of anticipation that the food here is going to be good. In fact, it turns out to be excellent.

Ken earns his living by watching TV. He eats vicariously via the Food Network. He says he’s looking forward to the real thing. “ Nigella just opens the fridge door and pulls out everything and cooks it.” How about St Jamie (Oliver). ‘He’s got chubby.” His eyes roll back at the mention of The Barefoot Contessa. “I thought I’d be seeing a rerun of the Ava Gardner movie –instead she’s a Hamptons hostess.”

Vertical’s menu is posh Italian which means hold the cheese and canned tomato and don’t overdo the “evoo”– “What is “evoo” and why does Rachael Ray slosh it on everything?” asks Ken.  Chef Tewfik Shehata uses Extra Virgin Olive Oil discreetly - he has compiled a menu of austere but robust flavours. Hard to decide what to eat from this tempting list. Twice cooked pork belly garnished with mustard, or gnudi, ricotta gnocchi made with mushrooms rapini and parmesan. Grouper is roasted and comes with blood orange marmellatar (a rare slip into menu bafflegab),  a slowcooked veal breast….Finally, Ken picks two big scallops, cured so they’re tangy, then seared to perfection with blood orange vinaigrette. Ken thinks that Martha Stewart did scallops interestingly, but he’s gone off her. “She’s patronizing.’ No wonder. Celeb-mad Food network has robbed Martha of teacher-diva status and made her put up with jokester stars like Oscar,Tony,Emmy,& Grammy Award Winner Whoopi Goldberg.

I pick lobster and crab ravioli and cross my fingers. This luxury mixture sounds great but is often cloying, rich paste, richer sauceHere they are light and lucid, two large ravioli stuffed with salty strands and fibres of shellfish and draped with tomato-lobster sauce, yes you can have tasty fresh tomato sauce in these days of ever-advancing tomato technology.

Branzino is the Venetian’s favourite fish, one of the many bass that swim the sea. You can call a fish anything and get away with it – there is no fish-naming protocol. The little pan-seared filets come from a fish farm-raised in the Mediterranean and flown here from Greece, but the fish is still sweet and tender and complemented by the bitterness of sautéed arugula. I order lamb osso buco which is terrific, lamb melting off the bone and if I use my knife I can winkle out a little bone marrow, accompanied by a few wellcooked green beans and little chunks of roasted celeriac.

 “When I watch Emeril, I feel full before he’s even cooked anything” says Ken who is sending for the dessert menu. Mr. Shehata not only has a nuanced food personality but he has a delicate touch: after two courses, we feel satisfied but not full, a tribute saved for the finest eating experiences. And how great it is to have a food’s identity stamped firmly on a single big plate, rather than lots of little mix’n’match plates that often seem interchangeable.

More surprise to come. Desserts are usually grace notes, the end of the arc of a meal. “Who’s the pastry chef?” I ask our peripatetic waiter who covers the room with élan. He says “Carla – but she’s not here.” He adds hastily “ But she was here this morning to make the desserts.” He then delivers two superb plates, an airy but smooth chocolate cake with sprinkles of sea salt and crème fraiche, and a caramelized pear with hazelnut gelato. CarlaTK has beautifully balanced the sugar with the taste of the ingredients. The icecream is revelatory, full of crunchy chopped nuts. Pastry cooks are too often marginalized as specialists. I hope Ms. TK is ambitious, perhaps even channelling Michel Richard, author of this year’s cookbook phenom Happy in the Kitchen. Mr. Richard is a pastry chef turned master chef and restaurauteur – he  transforms and reinvents savoury dishes with pastrymaking techniques.

We’re reluctant to leave and rope up for the descent. Climbing down is worse than climbing up according to Everest summiteers. From the bar, Canadian Place’s Hillary Step looks daunting, a crazy pavement of steps going in all directions. We make the street safely full of praise for  Vertical, -  and advice. This chef deserves better access. Go horizontal, get a street storefront and call it Safe Harbour.

 *** Not to be missed.. Vertical. First Canadian Place, mezzanine at 100 King St. W.416 214 2252.  Lunch plus tax: $115 Wines by glass:$8 up. Good wine list; BYOB $45. Wheelchair access

OUT TO LUNCH

Every day in every way, my metabolism tells me or rather my body to eat lunch. This conversation is conducted in a series of signals flashing between different parts of my body. My metabolism needs regular feeding to chomp into the energy that keeps me going and the diet guru Marc David says that the metabolism is strongest when the sun is highest in the sky and wanes with the light. So that explains why lunch tastes so good and why dinner often disappoints. Eating takes a lot of energy and around noon, I can feel my energy surging.

Sun’s out, my metabolism is purring, I am on my way to lunch, a good one, I hope. The restaurant’s name is Cava, and I’ve dined here before and eaten a toothsome boned and stuffed quail on spicy strands of spinach. But the noise drove me out. Seems unfair to be kept away from promising food by bad acoustics and when Cava announces it is open for lunch, I can’t keep away. Out of the high decibel downtown corridor, lunch is  more sensual, a meal which attracts quiet people over thirty, the ones already gone deaf from sony walkmen and ipods. Reservation is a breeze – so nice to have the phone answered by someone who isn’t in Bangladesh.

 It’s conventional wisdom that the most rewarding restaurants come disguised as shacks. In Geneva I ate handthrown spaetzle among other handwrought miracles in a tumbledown cottage, and amazing wild spinach ravioli in a hovel on top of a Ligurian mountain. Cava is tucked in Delisle Court, a gloomy mini-mall. The décor is minimal, four hams hanging at the bar, a tip that Chris McDonald, a co-owner with Doug Penfold who is doing most of the cooking, is making his own charcuterie. We wonder why it isn’t mentioned on the long menu - the first of several questions.

Our waiter is swiftly attentive.  I consider having Cava, a Spanish take on Champagne because Champagne tastes best at noon, an opinion supported by everyone I’ve ever drunk Champagne with at noon, but settle instead for pleasant unoaky Chardonnay from Sicily ($8).

“I suppose they’ll have black cod” says my companion, a business analyst, “Black cod is the hot stock on the fish exchange.’ In fact, Cava has an eclectic menu. “You can have Caldo Gallego or Venison Antichuchos.” He is alarmed,  “Am I going to have to call the waiter over all the time for translation?”
 
The waiter tells us that cider-glazed sablefish is the most popular item. “What’s that” says the business analyst suspiciously. “Black cod?”  Yup. I suggest the three minute flank steak ($15) but  he’s put off by WYSIWYG ( What You See Is What You Get) so unlike a tip sheet’s usual hype. “I can’t eat meat without knowing the animal’s got an impeccable lineage, was treated kindly and was raised on hand-grown organic dandelions.”

Cava serves food on fashionably small plates which implies small helpings. We order three and have to grill the waiter for translation, provoking another question. Why make a menu deliberately unintelligible?  Even the French translate these days. The business analyst wants to know what cavatelli as in cavatelli with arugala ($7.75) looks like.. A Cazuelita (little clay pot) of Mexican gulf shrimp comes with capers, tomatoes and cabra feliz, sweet goat cheese. ($16) I ask about Lamb Pozole Verde Zinhuatanejo style.($12) Pozole is a famous Mexican street food made from hominy grits and lamb shoulder. We say we’ll ponder something else, but the waiter says it’s going to get busy so order now. A bit put out, we agree on the papas fritas ($5) once the business analyst realizes they’re fried potatoes.

All the dishes arrive almost at once! The business analyst nixes the cavatelli as tasteless. I concur. The shrimps taste as if caught just today in the gulf – and I could have another order. I’d say the lamb’n’grits soup doesn’t live up to Zinhuatanejo if I’d ever had Zinhuatanejo cooking. It is overwhelming lamby broth with a slick of fat on the surface. A side dish of radishes, lime, chopped onions, dried oregano arrives. I add them. Later, the waiter is full of apologies. He should have been there to explain that I first taste the soup, then add the garnishes to get the full flavour experience.
The business analyst is not surprisingly still hungry. A sandwich?  We order a grilled wholewheat tortilla wrap of beef cheek (cooked 48 hours) with white puree (cauliflower and turnips) chimichuri (steak marinade) and mushrooms. Lunch enough for two. At this point, we both feel exasperated. Look it. Building a sandwich isn’t making a soufflé. A toasted  bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich with mayo is the crunchy apogee of the art. But lean beef cheeks, lean tortilla , bland puree don’t blend into great flavour and have no traction, there is lamentably no crunch.  Desserts however are good: a fried custard with lots of lemon cream($8) and one of those chocolate lava cakes that spurt molten chocolate. ($9)

We’re wanting to, we’re yearning to like Cava, a quirky individualistic and affordable eating spot which makes me want to order seconds of boned quail and spicy shrimp. The restaurant is almost full but not noisy. I’d love go back and try a salt cod cake and then broiled hake– but Cava’s ‘tude repels enthusiasm. My way or the highway. But My Way demands perfection and Cava is erratic. Cava reminds me of New Zealand Tourism which told me that it only wants the right kind of tourist, the implication being keep the rabble out.
 
Two stars. Try It.Cava,1560 Yonge St.416-979 9918 Open Lunch 12-2-00 pm Mon–Fri.Dinner 5-10 pm Mon-Sun. Food: lunch $85 all wines by glass starting$6. corkage $30  Wheelchair access.

IT”S THE BAR SCENE STUPID

I’ve  seen the future and it’s Colborne Lane.

I couldn’t wait to eat at Colborne Lane which has been promo’ed for months as Toronto’s first molecular restaurant. I assumed that Chef Claudio Aprile would be applying the techniques pioneered by Spain’s Ferran Adria who is to the 2000s what Paul Bocuse was to the ‘70s – a cooking revolutionary. I haven’t found a local restaurant/lab experimenting with the full palate of hydrocolloids, calcium chlorides,methyl cellulose, thixotropy, used by Mr. Adria and his peers, England’s Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz of Chicago. The only visible influence is foam – now a cliché on all the smartest menus  –Mr. Adria’s original inspiration. It was after he spotted a can of instant foaming Reddiwhip in a supermarket that he had his Aha moment and went right back to his kitchen to foam a potato – a spurt of spud never before imagined.

Liquid pea ravioli followed: Mr. Adria mixed fresh peas, mint and water, calcium chloride, the stuff that keeps cement from hardening, sodium alginate, the stuff that makes McDonald’s apple pie gluey, to produce a fresh intense taste previously accessible only to rabbits. Now budding chemist-cooks are buying foaming kits from Canadian Tire and sending abroad for the correct chemicals.*   I wonder when the first MC home kitchen will explode.

LOL (laugh out loud) to think that after all the trashing of the ingredients processed foods, no nutritionist has uttered a peep about the haute chemical kitchen.

Colborne Lane almost trembles with anticipation. The staff exude a pride in themselves which is catching. I’m guided past a long bar with a washed silver wall into what looks like the Munster dining hall, a rectangle held up by big wooden pillars and on the walls, mirrors with their centres scratched out. I half expect the late Fred Gwynne to come up from the kitchen with a tray on his flat head.

Colborne Lane takes reservations at 7 and 8.30. I tell my companions that if they’re doubtful about making the 7 o’clock deadline, I’ll be there to hold the table. As my friends drift in, so does a service glitch. The cocktails take ages to arrive, it’s forty minutes ‘til we are able to toast each other. But the waiters are charming and the wine service is attentive and knowledgeable.

The menu is called  Volume I.The Editor among us cries ‘Not more work!” She is revived by the lobster bisque ($16) a fragrant coconutty creamy broth with a few tender mussels and a small lobster raviolo which comes in a flower vase. The Bon Vivant goes overboard about the ceviche of lobster on saffron new potatoes and we’re all jealous. Meaty undercooked lobster chunks. The Man- About-Town orders the tart with potatoes mashed with white truffles truffles and a poached egg on leek puree. Oh, dear, the egg is hard. The dish is returned. The tart improves with a soft poached egg but I think it should have been foamed.

The chef generously sends out a freebie  of rare tuna  perhaps because, the waiter informs us, our second plates are  going back to the kitchen even before we get them. “It’s like a new car being found faulty and returned to the factory for retooling” grouses the Bon Vivant.

So far, we haven’t had a magic moment when a food is transformed to produce an unexpected taste. But then Colborne Lane is really retro, fusion/confusion, overloaded with garnishes, as many as five of six flavours per plate. How I wonder could  I taste the lamb ribeye ($23) which has to compete with dried olives and pumpernickel crust, caramelized eggplant, mint chutney, toasted-cumin rosti and green tea yogurt?

Not to worry. When the delectable tea-smoked squab arrives, I need a magnifying glass to identify the garnishes, two chocolate sauces, one hibiscus scented, the other with smoked cardomon, and the spiced-quince crepe stuffed with foie gras. Same goes for the tiny clumps of pineapple and black bean relish, Stilton-scented risotto, beet puree,tonka bean and sweet potato puree with Madeira that surround the Hoisin-flavoured pork tenderloin and pork belly. When I consider Stilton and pork, I’m glad the garnishes are too small to taste properly, but if they can’t be properly savoured, why are they there?

The pork is braised “sous vide”: to retain moisture, the meat has been vacupacked and immersed in a thermal bath for 36 hours. Last year, the NYC health department temporarily banned this  MC technique. The reason: the potential danger of reheating cooked food. Better reason: the pork is dry.  The five-spice scented breast of duck is a downer, tepid and accompanied by a dayglo orange brick of squash flan which actually jiggles.

But wait: the crispy-skinned striped bass in black truffle and miso broth ($21) gets the bon vivant’s blessing. The consensus is that the lobster ceviche and the squab are worth a return visit – if only the restaurant wasn’t so noisy. We communicate in shouts. Diane Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue nailed the customer-driven business’s  dilemma when she told the president of Lord and Taylor “It would be ever so much nicer if it was less crowded.”
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As we leave around 10.30, the bar is filling up with metrosexuals and twentysomethings downing brand name cocktails, adjusting ipods and texting Puff Daddy. Boy did we ever get a wrong number thinking we were here for the cooking. The cybermoola card drops. The future belongs to the echo boomers, the huge rich cohort moving into the power position. The real point of Colborne Lane swims into focus. It’s the bar scene stupid.

*For details go to hungryinhogtown.typepad.com

** Try it. Colborne Lane 45 Colborne St.Ph:416-368-9009 Open Tue-Sat 5.30-11 pm. Food: Dinner for two with tax: $145. Wines by glass start at $11. Thoughtful winelist. No Wheelchair access.

S’WONDERFUL S’MARVELLOUS

As I cut along Wellington Street to Le Select, Toronto’s enduringly popular translation of a French bistro, I find myself humming “I’m on top of a rainbow, sweeping the clouds away.” This Maurice Chevalier standard was cannily crafted by an American to be more enchantingly French than the French. Ditto Le Select which could have come from the set of An American in Paris, more like a Paris bistro than a real Paris bistro. When I call for a reservation I am welcomed by a cock crowing and a few bars of La Marseilleise. I laugh aloud. Hokey but oh so charming.

The charm offensive keeps up as I pass a poster of Marlene Dietrich in a ‘50s Clouzot flick and hang my coat on a handy hook. In no time, the maitre d’ has me seated in a corner of the doublesided red leather banquette, topped with a brass rail, that runs the length of the well of the room. Dark panelling is punctuated by wine racks, a reminder that co-owner Frederic Geisweiller’s cellar contains 12,000 bottles. I sit opposite a woman eating alone. Nothing could better underline the democracy of a bistro where everyone is made welcome.

The menu is full of earthy regional dishes  - pissaladiere, choucroute garnie, tripe sausage, confit de canard, cassoulet, but I order my favourite Bistro standbys – a fat slice of terrine de foiegras with kumquat chutney ($18) and a glass of Gerwurztraminer ($7) and striploin, sanglante, crispy potato cake and haricots verts, lots of them,  and as I eat the deliciously anorexic beans I raise my glass to the Kenyan farmers who grow them.

Ile Flottante, actually Oeufs a la Niege but who cares what perfection is called, a pillow of egg white floating on a pool of custard. My Francophile companion can’t get over the featherlight smoked white fish mousse with grilled eggplant and another Bistro standby.roast leg of lamb with fluffy potatoes.Three handmade cheeses from Quebec ends the meal. We toss two ears and the tail to chef Albert Ponzo.

If anything Le Select is more charming at lunchtime with  sun pouring into the tiled bar. I want to sit down with a cappuccino,and read Patricia Wells’ review of the latest Paris restaurant in the courtesy Herald Tribune. But my fellow luncher wants pigs trotters, today’s special, so we sit comfortably before the fire. I order calf liver. I’m apprehensive. Liver isn’t a nobrainer like steak. Unless cut slim and cooked medium-rare, it has a pasty texture. This, helas, is the case with the thick wavy slices that come with solid potato cake and sautéed pea shoots. But what’s this? Sticks of barely cooked carrot, “hot raw” as Julia Child dismissed the fad for veg al dente.

“Your feets too big” I want to say to the becrumbed trotter that easily laps its plate. The trotter presents another problem. Like other regional dishes, it has evolved from the terroir - tasty trotter cooking comes from a lifetime of eating them. Only someone with a pigless childhood could have stuffed the boned porker paw with so much fat, not much meat and few mushrooms.  
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Oh well, Le Select, like any real French bistro, is a club for regulars who stick with their faves. This is not so true for Thuet Bistro Bakery, last year’s sensation, hailed as the vrai taste of La France and on all the best of 2006 lists.

I ate a superb medallion of horse cooked by Marc Thuet when he was at The Fifth, so my hopes are high as I climb the stairs to his new home. They are dashed immediately.

1, Mr. Thuet is on a mini vacation which means we must rely on his team, an unknown quantity. 2. The formal tawny room says banquet not bistro. 3. No solicitous maitre d’ hurries to make us feel at home. Instead a pokerfaced Buster Keaton hands us the menu, or rather two menus in one, the Lord Black edition and a regional one for the little people.

My corporate friends go Black with Napoleon (two slices with garnish) Of Quebec pate de foie gras ($23) and terrine of wild hare and wild wood pigeon, the game smuggled personally into the country by Mr. Thuet, and topped with a slice of black truffle. Stuffed lamb loin has a tiny leg of wood pigeon on top. This shred of vapid flesh is worth risking a fine for? The chestnut and date crusted medallion of red deer ($42) doesn’t taste like Bambi. Both dishes have the blandness of highend takeout not the passion of a signature chef which Mr. Thuet most certainly is – or was. Maybe he’s on more than a vacation.

That’s what I have to think after veal liver quenelles, the famous regional dumplings, turn out to be five grey ground meat patties in UBS (universal bistro sauce with a burnt caramel flavour).

Buster Keaton removes my barely touched plate with sang froid.  We order black truffle bavarois on a disc of roasted pineapple (good) which arrives forty minutes later with a cheese plate prompting Buster Keaton to make his first suggestion of the evening. “Port?” he barks.

Just as we are leaving a friendly man in blue shirtleeves approaches our table. Was everything alright? Who are you? “I’m Stephen, the operations manager.” Er.. the heating was fine, it was the eating…  but it was too late. Stephen shows us the dear little bakery, empty now except for a bag of dog biscuits labelled  “Woof Woof a foie gras”

For the Black hound I guess.


***Le Select Bistro 416-596-6405 432 Wellington St West
Food: Dinner for two,taxes,tip  $95 Wine by the glass starts at $6.75. Huge wine list.  No wheelchair access. BYOB $18.

*Bistro Bakery Thuet 416.603.2777.609 King Street West
 Food: dinner for two, taxes, $185.Wine by the glass starts at $10. 4-page wine list.  No wheelchair access  BYOB $40

Star system
**** High Fives
*** I’ll go back
** Try it, you’ll like it
*  Disappointing

The Celeb Nabe

What’s for dinner? I’m hungry after an afternoon of infosnacking. If only I had a cook who while I had been surfing the world’s problems, was pondering mine. If only I had a wife, the generic housekeeper whose job it was to construct delicious meals daily. Now housekeepers are ogling YouTube. So I am left alone to solve the most pressing issue of the day. Is it to be the lamb curry growing penicillin in the fridge or poached egg on spinach which my inner dieter cries out for. Forget it, I’ll go out.

Nothing fancy mind you, but food as comfortable as the proverbial old shoe. A nabe in other words, a place where locals gather companionably to eat simply at no great cost, and where you can bring your own bottle of wine.  Easier said than found in midtown, my neck of the woods. Instead I have to pull on my Uggs and trek to the fashionable lower West Side to find Niagara Street Café.

I love NSC right away, It’s cozy, a cottage really,no more than 32 seats, warm with flickering votive lights, a great welcome from owner/sommelier Anton Potvin, and a $20 corkage fee. The BYOB drill is that you take an expensive bottle which would cost you double if it was available at a restaurant where wine usually carries a 100% markup. Or you unearth a treasure from your cellar if you have one. Alternatively, you just take along a special wine you’ve been dying to share.

The Oenophile has been nursing a Chateau La Vielle Cure 2003 for just such an occasion and Mr. Potvin offers to decant it right away. He’s already busy decanting, we see over the rim of our glasses, big burgundys from the renowned cellars of Rush’s Geddy Lee and lawyer Clayton Ruby. I should add that the NSC’s wine list isn’t to be sniffed at, our aperitif is a delicately-oaked Chalk Hill Chardonnay ($12 a glass).

One look at the menu and those who worship at the alter of St. Alice Waters and her organic dogma will fall on their knees. Chef Michael Caballe has constructed an imaginative menu made from local and seasonal ingredients. Not a green vegetable in sight! I feel as if I’m participating in one of those remembrance-of-past-deprivation TV shows where volunteers suffer authentic 19th century life. I remember laughing my head off when a Californian family had a great time building their spiffy log cabin out West, but deprived of such mod cons as makeup they grew tetchy then low and finally took to crime – smuggling in lipstick. They were shunned by their fellow pioneers. Will the day come when those of us who yearn for the fresh snap of an out-of-season green bean have to go underground and sneak home illict veg in brown paper bags to avoid heckling by our green neighbours?

First courses range between $8 and $9. Tripe is always in season, and I can’t resist the deep fried tripe with marinated onions and spicy tomato sauce. It’s like eating crunchy confetti. Courage, mon brave, I want to say to the chef. I know, I know the inner lining of a cow’s third stomach is not at first gonna wow Torontonians, but exposure to the mature pleasures of ropey tripe in a rich stew might change their minds. The Ontario beet is the root du jour – I think the city is sinking under beets. Beet Carpaccio is not as the name suggests, raw, but lightly poached slices served with house-made goat cheese, wild arugula and hazelnuts, and it is predictably delicious. I think it’s impossible to mistreat beet.  The only disappointment is the rather muddy mixture of swiss chard and duck confit in a tart with manchego (sheep’s cheese).

The second courses ($18-19) confirm the chef as a promising texture meister and frugal gourmet. It’s good to see lamb neck on a menu, not as goodlooking as the pricey glamour cuts, but so much tastier. Here it is braised with crispy parsnip and rutubaga gratin. Meltingly tender and stuffed Cornish hen is matched with nutty pearl couscous and slippery braised bitter endive. Crunchy red onion petals swirl around a grilled hanger steak (toughish) and creamy celery root puree and a surprise -  a grilled slice of veal tongue, another great innards’ texture, slick and thick.

Our Bordeaux, a Billie Holliday of a wine, plummy with the metallic aftertaste of selfpity, goes swell with this earthy food. Tempting desserts include something crackly  called Meringata  and a rice pudding, yes!, and honeyed fromage blanc. The cappuccino is the best the Oenophile ever tasted, and he must rush to the bartender to ask where to buy the coffee beans. It isn’t the coffee, I bossily insist, it’s the coffeemaker. I see out of the corner of my eye that the bartender is nodding. Only Italians can bring forth crema from the espresso machine. Only Italians have the coffee gene.

The bartender’s name is Joe. But he’ll always be Giuseppe to me.

I leave wondering how NSC could be cloned a couple of blocks from my home.

Niagara Street Café, 169 Niagara, at Wellington West, 416-703-4222). Dinner for two including wine, taxes, tips $100 Dinner Wed, Thurs, Sun 6-10 pm. Fri/Sat 6-10,30pm. Sunday brunch 10.30 am. BYOB corkage $20. Wheelchair access limited by two doorsteps.

The Incredible Shrinking Dinner Gets a Break

Amuse-Bouche – a palate teaser.
When I heard of a restaurant actually called Amuse-Bouche, I shuddered. So it’s happened. The three course dinner is dead, supplanted by luxurious, exotic foodbites. For a while now, people have been reporting second course ennui because the amuse-bouche, a freebie, and the hors’ d’oeuvre, is too often the best food of the evening. What wouldn’t be disappointing after you’ve been dazzled by a disc of foie gras which when sliced leaks bloodlike beet juice on to green peas processed to the texture of soil, or tiny pink melon balls masquerading as caviare?

Such ingenuity promotes eating a la carte (cherry picking the menu) which plays right into gastronomic ADD, attention deficit disorder. And chefs have followed right along. The tasting menu, tiny multicourse promos for the chef, has proliferated. Once only star chefs put out tasting menus but now everyone’s doing it - this is haute fast food with all the immediate sensation implied.
 
What’s vanishing is a leisurely savouring of a dinner with complementary courses. Multisensory is gastrophysicist Heston Blumenthal’s buzzword for his newfangled food. Well a good dinner is multisensory in a good oldfashioned way.

 
I googled Amuse-Bouche to find out how far the rot’s gone. Sure enough, three tasting menus. But wait, I also find an inspiriting lineup of second courses which is how the menu refers to the main course (I’ve never liked “mains” which in England means electric power and suggests food has to be plugged in). My eye alights hungrily on Fig and Tarragon stuffed Quebec rabbit loin, confit leg, French beans, marsala and smoked bacon emulsion, and how about  veal three ways: roasted tenderloin, cheek ravioli, sweetbread pudding, kaffir and coconut jus. Promisingly complex mouthfuls.

Amuse-Bouche is just off Toronto’s restaurant row, King Street West, a formal little box of orange and chocolate with little chi, vital energy, flowing freely. I was momentarily unnerved. Was this the right place for my experiment? Three friends were joining me, all pledged enthusiastically to eat a second course. But that was yesterday.

I couldn’t order anyone to eat what I wanted them to, and as soon as they flipped open the menus, I saw their attention straying treacherously to the stars of the first course… Pan-seared Quebec Foie gras, sticky dulce de leche pudding, cranberry and orange blossom reduction, Kobe Beef Carpaccio and Tongue terrine, tete-de-moine (a strong Swiss cheese), Cognac Crème Fraiche and Butter poached Maritime Lobster, Scallop “en chemise” and Vanilla-Licorice Emulsion. However, a bribe of Champagne cocktails helped focus them on the job and after the amuse-bouche, a shrimp dumpling with ginger mayonnaise, a freebie we couldn’t refuse, we were comparing notes on how best to combine the courses.

The herbivore had no trouble: “I love beets” he said and ordered a Rainbow of Beets garnished with organic seedlings and white Balsamic candied capers, and then he succumbed to the three-way veal. His wife, a wonderful cook, went for balance, Traditional Fish soup with rouille, garlic croutons and shaved grated emmental cheese, followed by Tamarind Marinated Duck Breast which came with spaetzle as well as rhubarb coulis and a cocoa reduction. The editor was traditional, foie gras followed by Grilled Alberta Beef Tenderloin (dry aged – we checked) with herbed potato gnocchi and sauce marchand de vin (beef stock and ham).. . I had Snail Ravioli maitre’d’hotel (herbed butter) with braised pork belly and pearl onion bourguignonne and Roasted Alaskan Black Cod with chorizo, yam puree and almond milk foam.

Now how do you order wine for such an eclectic meal? I like the custom of pairing wines with dishes so we asked Sarah Lyons, the maitre d’, to help us out with excellent results.

Ok here’s how it played out. We ate the whole thing with increasing gusto. No problem cleaning the plates of both courses. The chefs, Jason Inniss and Bertrand Alepee are gifted cooks of the Rococo school. Toronto has a small but rich tradition of Rococo cooking, flirtatious, imaginative,  and feminine – I think of Barbara Gordon of Boba who used to put initials on pie pastry and who made a marvelous hors d’ouvre plates that anticipated tapas, and Renee Foote, now a caterer (gingerisland.com) who invented chocolate sushi.

Not everything worked 100 percent. What’s with all the foams, jus and emulsions? Sometimes you hardly taste them, other times, they’re too much. The black cod with spicy chorizo spread over the skin was terrific, but why the bath of almond milk foam? The foie gras-beef and the soup and duck were the the most seamless pairings. The beets were an alluring purple still life on a little round plate, a perfect set up for the long dish of three-ways veal.The tenderloin was pinkly pleasing, the cheek ravioli audacious. Nice try with sweetbread pudding but the only reason to eat sweetbreads is their spongy consistency.

But I’ll forgive anything for the sublime taste of the bronze chunk of velvety braised pork belly, so good that I hardly noticed the failure of snail ravioli-a snail is just an eraser unless drowned in garlicky butter. Welcome back pig from the dark ages of fatless,tasteless meat -  an era when fallible food science condemned animal fats and boosted deadly transfats.

Desserts were the coup de grace. We skipped house crème brulee – what more can be done to corrupt a once perfect dessert? I wish there was a food moment in The Queen to show HM is no food slouch.I saw a doc where she okayed crème brulee for a state banquet but struck off the redundant garnish. But I think my fave Gianduja (chocolate and hazelnut) Mousse with saffron ice cream, and the Chestnut and Praline Millefeuille with truffled ice cream  merit a couple of gongs.

Amuse-Bouche, 96 Tecumseth Street. 416.913.5830 Dinner Tues-Sat 6-10.30 pm.Dinner for two with wine, taxes, tip: $210. BYOB corkage $30.No wheelchair access.

Bull in a China Shop or JK at the Gardiner

“Why is a plane wing sticking out of the top of the Royal Ontario Museum?” asks Bill, my lunchtime companion. “What happened? Why wasn’t it on the news?”

We’ve just been seated at Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner,the restaurant in the ceramics museum overlooking the front entrance of the doughty old dowager of Queen’s Park.

‘Oh no, Bill” I say, “That’s the exciting new addition to the ROM. Some people are calling it the Dowager’s Hump.”

The DH dominates the room because the glass walls are partly obscured by floor-to-ceiling black bars. We are  boulversee by the restaurant’s charmlessness. We’re sitting with a score of others in the museum’s party room which provides for the overflow from the restaurant proper. That can be glimpsed through the open door, battleship grey institutional with functional furniture. I find an eerie parallel with the Stasi cafeteria in Lives of Other People which I’ve just seen. Only men in misleadingly sexy leather are missing. The message is eat and run instead of stay and have fun.

I can’t believe it. I thought franchising the JK name meant cloning the JK Wine bar, wildly popular with the echoboomers  who line up to eat alongside chatty stovetop cooks at work on tapas-style small plates. JK Wine Bar glows with a wall of large jars of preserved fruit and veg. It beats me why JK at the Gardiner isn’t atleast referencing the museum’s collection of enchanting 18th century eating vessels – our ancestors ate so beautifully, off plates scattered with wild flowers.

Then the penny dropped. I read again the small type. JK Gardiner is a part-time restaurant, open  seven days for lunch, dinner only on Fridays. The rest of the time the kitchen is catering. Lots of restaurant chefs do catering as well but in this case, the tail seems to be wagging the dog. Friends told me that they saw a sign saying that lunch was off the next day because of an event in the party room

Such multitasking may explain our tepid reception. We had  reserved for 1.30 – the only time available – but before I took a pre-prandial browse among the Minton, I dropped by the restaurant and saw several empty tables. “Oh could we….?” The maitre d’ wasn’t best pleased by our eagerness. We felt we’d somehow violated protocol.

Now to the food. This is the hard part. I hate to criticize Jamie Kennedy (billed as executive chef). He’s an inspiring leader, one of the pioneering chefs who have made Toronto into a food destination. He’s led the way with organic food and he’s now laying his celebrity on the line for Michael Schmidt, the dairy farmer who is our very own Jean Valjean and who is being hounded to eternity by a remorseless Inspector Javert, the Ontario government. Schmidt’s crime: selling raw milk to a few consenting adult foodies.

Even so, I can’t ignore that Mr. Kennedy  and daily chef Michael Dixon are responsible for my fitful,disordered lunch. It isn’t as if JK at the Gardiner has just opened – it’s had a six-month shakedown cruise.

The menu, which is changed daily, has twenty items listed tersely. We order the famous frites as a starter. Bill has Winter Vegetable and Wild Rice Soup which tastes of herbal water. I go out on a limb with Hopper with Curried Lentils and Carrots. A Hopper is a Sinhalese mother food. I don’t think I’ll be taking a culinary tour of Sri Lanka soon. Can’t faste a trace of curry in the lentils, chopped carrots and brussel sprouts. The sambals are delectable, crispy shallots, mango pickle, raita, roasted eggplant are delectable – on their own. I tried the fiery pickle with a brussel sprout – excruciating! Bitter and sour, one of the most unpleasant taste combinations I’ve ever experienced. Only a computer could have come up with this recipe.

I strike lucky with Hokkaido Sea Scallops with Celery Root and Beurre Blanc, a half dozen medium sized scallops perfectly seared in an ethereal butter sauce But Bill’s Hot Smoked Mackerel with Roasted Pepper Vinaigrette arrives while he’s still eating soup, and it’s cold chunks of barely-smoked and soggy mackerel on toast with a dab of something pink.

Ontarian wines are paired with each course. Wildass, a white blend, is recommended with the scallops. I’m so tired of snickering wine labels. Imagine asking a guest “How about some Cat’s Piss?” I ask instead for a sober Riesling.  

Our young waiter draws his eyebrows together earnestly: “That’s the antithesis of the suggested wine.” Bill is shocked. “I’ve never heard a waiter use the word antithesis.” From now on, the Mr. Erudition can do no wrong. Sure, he muddles up a couple of things – he forgot to bring the frites right away but what a godsend when they came. And when he sees us looking around for our desserts, he calls across the room ‘It’s ok, the kitchen knows about it.”.

Bill picks bland Apple strudel and Nutmeg Ice. Chocolate Mousse in a Brandy Snap is my nostalgic choice, the brandy snap recalling the epic teatime of my English childhood, a ginger biscuit rolled and usually stuffed with whipped cream. But what’s this? A scoop of mousse on its own – chocolatey enough but failing the weightlessness test. And where’s the brandy snap? My Proustian moment lies in shards. What’s going on? Even I can make a brandy snap, it’s just a question of paying attention to detail. Now I realize this goes for most of our lunch. This kitchen is in meltdown.

I drift past a chrome yellow Sevres plate. Looks good enough to eat. Shame so much of our lunch wasn’t.

Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner. 111 Queen’s Park, Toronto. Reservations: 416 362 1957. Lunch Monday-Sunday 11,30 am-2.30 pm. Dinner Friday 5.30-8.30pm  Wheelchair accessible.
Lunch for 2 including wine, tax and tip: $110.

Non violent sushi not just for sissies…
By Gina Mallet.


The fashion may be foam and Spanish chef Ferran Adria’s ability to turn food into hot air, but the persistent influence on North American food remains Japanese. Any chef worth his toque owes something to the exquisite Japanese minimalism that infused nouvelle cuisine. Not to mention raw fish, the inspiration for such popular dishes as salmon tartar. The street is even more Japanophile. I bet there’s more Maki(raw fish and rice rolled in seaweed) in downtown Toronto than Big Macs, partly because the witch doctors (nutritionists) have deemed raw fish and rice healthy.

Too bad, I thought, as I pushed aside the bubblegum aka raw squid. I prefer pseudo-sushi which I find ever so much more delicious. California rolls, Crunchy sushi bristling with tempura, Sushi pizza topped with smoked salmon. The Japanese are fuming at such dissing of their culture.Sushi police are about to fan out to award cherry blossom plaques to only those restaurants found authentic. Too late! As I swallow a toothsome mango,gravlax and cream cheese concoction, I reckon that Pseudo sushi is now as North American as apple pie used to be.

So when I heard a new apostate Sado Sushi had opened on a featureless stretch of Eglinton West, I hurried over. Sado must mean a menu of rice’n’shackles. Not implausible. I’ve always been attracted to Japanese food by its inherent violence. What after all is the Iron Chef but Kung Fu kitchen? When I look at the impassive face of the sushi chef I can’t believe that after a lifetime polishing knife skills he isn’t longing to perfect his art on something more challenging than a dead tuna.

 The first Japanese hit in North America was “eatertainment” those table-top barbecues featuring a Samurai with an armoury of giant knives, who growled as he massacred onions, occasionally tossing a mushroom in the air and slashing it in half  with a cry of “Banzai!” He grilled chicken, steak and shrimp throwing a morsel now and then into the open mouths of the diners  -- seated before him like so many hungry seals.

A thrill of fear passed through me when I read of a diner who died from injuries sustained as he ducked a flying shrimp. Another thrill: the recently opened Kobe Club in Manhattan has a ceiling hung with 2,000 ceremonial swords pointed at the customers. The waitperson polls the diners “Are you scared?” Yes – scratch the Chrysanthemum Cuisine and you’ll find Throne of Blood.

What a surprise then to walk into the pool of tranquillity that is Sado Sushi, recessed halogens softening the harsh reality of a plain-jane space. The Thai Maitre D’ glided to welcome us and promptly brought the two uncivilized Gaijin dry martinis (stirred not shaken, three tiny olives, how novel) without even suggesting warm sake -  a taste I’ve never acquired. She cleared up the restaurant’s name. Sado means the tea ceremony.Omigod, are we to meditate our meal? Then I remembered the Zen injunction – don’t dither, just eat.

Babyfaced Sonny Nguyen, the Vietnamese owner/chef, is at the sushi bar. He looks as if he might cry if asked to behead a fish.  I was among those who sat agog/aghast at this year’s Madrid Fusion, the last word in avant garde chefs, as Japanese  sensation Seiji Yamamato of Nihonryori Ryugin  in Tokyo demonstrated an ancient technique: he used piano wire to remove the spinal column of a stunned seabream and so release all taste-tainting blood. Yamamoto went on to poach an egg yolk blood red, dehydrate lobster brains, and using squid ink paste, he silkscreened an article about himself onto a plate along with a barcode. His colleague scanned the barcode with a cellphone and was directed to Ryugin’s website. Elucidation of this supreme act of gastrotech was lost in translation and the standing ovation.

By contrast, Chef Nguyen constructs food as lambent as a Dutch still life. What’s that? we cry as a rain forest brushes by. The happy eaters at the next table tell us it’s an a-ok vegetarian plate made just for them. Sado Sushi is innovative: diners may order omikaze (chef’s choice items) at a price they set themselves. Average cost: $40.

Our food comes fast: we share everything. The  deep fried soft shell crab with sour ponzu sauce (lemon juice, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, bonito flakes) is not freshly crunchy. However, our spirits rise with the trio of Chef’s specialties that follow; they range from $13-15. A crustacean shell rears dramatically  over four grilled lobster rolls, chunks of cooked lobster with coriander,assorted greens, and scarlet flying fish roe and musty black sesame seeds, a house motif,  crowding a square plate. The rolls taste terrific but they’re too large. If I crammed a whole one into my mouth I might choke, and it’s impossible to halve the roll neatly. I like my sushi bitesized:  it’s so much easier to eat – and with my hands as taught by sushi 101 at Edo, the granddaddy of sushi in TO.

Tataki, yellowtail tuna slices marinated in ginger and Japanese vinegar fanned out on the plate with ponzu sauce, is fresh and tasty and followed by Sado’s Sunlight, four crisp rice cakes topped with mild and creamy Cambozola (a German blue Brie) and tuna tartar sprinkled with coriander. Miso sauce provides the umami (the fifth, savory taste). Very much a bit of alright.

My still-hungry co-diner says let’s try Secret Garden which includes mixed greens and cooked jelly fish, but the Maitre D’ suggests the chef go off menu for us. Beef Lambas is sirloin grilled then marinated in homemade Teryaki sauce, added to mixed greens, flying fish roe, shredded cucumber and finally handwrapped in rice paper. The dipping sauce mixes Kewpie (Japanese mayonnaise), orange and lemon zests and sea urchin.  The world assumes a rosy glow. This is my kind of comfort food - piquant, titillating and hard to resist.

Only space left for a showgirl, not a shogun,of a dessert, a banana pancake flambéed at the table. The meal’s ending not with a bang but with Anne Nicole Smith.  We have our own Green Tea ceremony to boost our antioxidants and we’re all mellowed out.

SADO SUSHI, 1116 Eglinton West, at Old Park, 416-783-8111 Lunch: Mon-Fri 11.30 am-2.30pm. Dinner: Mon-Thurs 5-10.30 pm. Sat/Sun 4-11 pm. Licensed. Access: barrier-free,washrooms in basement. Dinner for two $120, including wine (small modestly priced list).