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Archive for the ‘Restaurants’ Category

Cafe Fiorentina

06 Aug

Tina Leckie, owner-chef of Cafe Fiorentina, and her partner, Alex Chong

It was the pickled cherries that got me. There they are in the centre of the picture – black and juicy with a peppery, spicy, sweet-sour tang – a brilliant and unexpected condiment to a small collation of Café Fiorentina’s deli delights. The Café is a brand new arrival on the Danforth, taking over the old Dash Kitchen location roughly opposite Allen’s, and is a true labour of love for owner Tina Leckie, long-time sous chef at Célestin, and her partner, Alex Chong. Having two such good cooks in the kitchen takes the place well beyond the average café. The quality of soups, salads, pizza, quiches and panini – all made from scratch – soars. Tina has also been a pastry chef so the sweet side of things and the baking is also first class, from house-made breads served with the soup to miniature brioches. The espresso – espressed from a Faema E61 (a considerable investment for the new business) – is the Danforth nonpareil.

All in all, this is a great addition to the street and I wish the place very well indeed. Café Fiorentina is at 236 Danforth Avenue.

A delectable deli collation from the Cafe - pickled cherries in the centre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Fishbar

24 Jul

Deep-fried smelt stuffed with olive tapenade - 40 are never enough

Fishbar, on Ossington, is open at last – the long-awaited new project from William Tavares (an original partner in Salt, a few doors north) and chef David Friedman (Vancouver-trained and most recently sous chef at Table 17). We took some friends there on Friday and had a very good time. It reminds me of Kitchen Galerie Poisson in Montreal (at 399 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, to be precise), one of my favourite, merrily informal spots in that talented town,  only Fishbar lacks KGP’s kick-ass foie gras. What they do have in common is a cool but unpretentious décor of open brick walls and wooden tables, not to mention excellent oysters and a laid-back party atmosphere. Fishbar’s wooden benches are a bit hard on the bum and I’ve probably seen enough Edison light bulbs by now to last me a lifetime, but all such teeny issues evaporate once the food starts to arrive.

 The oysters come from Rodney’s and we tried three different kinds – some mild, sweet beauties from New Brunswick; briney, substantial, temptingly metallic Mystic Cocktails from Connecticut; and great big, full-flavoured Marina Top Drawer from B.C. They were accompanied by three sauces: a classic red cocktail, a decent ponzu and a tart, spicy “apple orchard” sauce like fruity mustard. Oysters are also served as pogos – in other words heavily breaded, stuck on the end of a stick and deep-fried to a mahogany colour. Moist, greaseless and delicious, they were even better when dipped into a loose tomatillo salsa that balanced the corn sweetness of the breading with a sharp, fresh tang.

 I love deep-fried smelt especially when they’re on the big side – but not so big that you have to clean them: then you can taste the funky, bitter flavour of their fishy innards. Friday’s smelt were bigger than that so Friedman did clean them but then had the brilliant idea of stuffing them with olive tapenade before fritting them in tempura batter. So I had my bittersweet fix anyway, crispy and piping hot.

 Thus we began to work our way through the menu of small plates, a piece of paper divided into “starters,” “cold,” “hot,” “sides” and “dessert.” Almost every dish showed the Ocean Wise symbol, reassuring us of the kitchen’s commitment to using sustainable, ocean-friendly seafood. Halibut ceviche is a case in point, the juices of the soft, tender fish seized but the flavours more to do with salt and coriander oil than citrus. There were lime wedges for a squeeze-your-own moment that perked the dish up considerably. Hair-thin sweet potato fries were too thin to offer much tuberous presence – more like a heap of frying.

Wild sockeye tartare with apple instead of onion

 Salmon tartare was a champion – the wild sockeye cut into large pieces and tossed with shiso, soy and chopped apple – a great idea and undeniable proof that a tartare doesn’t always need onion. The kitchen pairs it with ethereally thin fried wonton wrappers which are much too delicate and brittle to bear the weight of the fish. I guess we’re supposed to take a forkful of salmon and then a bite of crunchy crunch. As a system, it works admirably.

 Chef Friedman does hearty as well as refined – witness a mound of PEI mussels smothered in big chunks of juicy grilled tomato with lumps of chorizo lurking in the tomato sauce. Many slices of baguette were needed to make sure every drop of the sauce was accounted for.

 Battered Pacific cod from the Queen Charlottes lies at the heart of his fish and chips – surprisingly the weakest dish of the evening. The chips were fine – unpeeled, slender, crisp where they should be and tender inside – but the flavour of the fish was missing in action, smothered by the taste of the batter. A side dish of fresh bright green peas with flecks of bacon and the wicked sheen of bacon fat totally stole that particular scene.

PEI mussels with a robust sauce of tomato and chorizo

 Dessert restored smiles to faces. They make their own ice creams here and serve a trio of chocolate, honey and goat cheese ice creams, the latter undeniably cheesy and brilliantly framed by the more conventional treats. A giant, crusty chocolate brownie covered in cherry jam and vanilla ice cream ended up as a sort of blue-collar homage to Black Forest cake, swiftly eaten and enjoyed.

 Veteran sommelier Jamie Duran is in charge of the wines at Fishbar and has put together an attractive little list that includes a dry Muscat from Terre di Orazio in Basilicata ($44), a crisp, aromatic white that smells like a bunch of lilies, a lovely match for many things on the menu.

 Early signs are that Fishbar will be a hit for the team behind it – original, affordable and above all blessed with a chef who understands how to cook seafood and have a little fun while he’s doing it.

 Fishbar is open for dinner only, closed on Mondays. 217 Ossington Avenue (a few doors south of Dundas). 647 340 0227. www.fishbar.ca.

 
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Campagnolo

22 Jul

Zucchini carpaccio - fresher than a summer's day

 

I’ve been looking forward to going to Campagnolo ever since Joanne Kates gushed so enthusiastically about chef Craig Harding’s “dreamworld pasta” last March. I called often during the spring but there was never a table available, then I forgot about it for a couple of months. This week I called again and while the place was still fantastically busy I was finally able to get a reservation, but only if our group of four arrived promptly at 6:30. Not 7:00… 6:30. Ever obedient, we did as we were bidden, though the scorching sun was a little high in the sky for anyone to be thinking much about dinner. Perhaps the restaurant sensed that, because we had to wait 40 minutes for our repeatedly requested plate of bread and gougères and bowl of warm olives in orange-scented oil.

I don’t do outrage – I’m really too easy-going to get flustered by that sort of thing – but it was odd. Campagnolo has an open kitchen and we could see the four cooks standing and talking, could see our waiter explaining our needs. We could also see a basket of loaves of bread on the counter. It was obvious that they were baking new bread and cooking new gougères – which is just silly when you make customers come at 6:30. No one offered an explanation or thought to send out something else to take the edge off our hunger. Oh well. Hey ho.

At least we had plenty of time to study our surroundings. The corner spot was once a Coffee Time and you can still see the old lines in the shape of the space. There’s a new bar with a fancy light fixture above it that looks like a miniature Dale Chihuly zoomorphic glass sculpture. Big caramel-coloured plush curtains soften the angles of the walls and help control the sound of merry voices that bounces up and down between the tiled floor and low ceiling. Little brass candelabra and blue-and-white china water jugs add a quaint charm.

But no one is here for the décor. It’s Craig Harding’s food that has caused such a fluttering of fans amongst the critical community. And I do see why. It’s very good food – thoughtful, balanced, beautifully executed – rooted in Italian traditions but with a contemporary refinement.

A little dish of zucchini carpaccio, for example, was a simple but brilliant little hymn to summer – crunchy ribbons of fennel sliced so thinly they were almost translucent set over broader strips of raw zucchini, strewn with shaved parmiggiano reggiano and peppery baby nasturtium leaves, all refreshed by a deftly harmonious tomato vinaigrette.

Scrumptious marrowbone with oxtail and nectarine marmalade

Testina was a very different proposition but equally well achieved. Testina is head cheese but instead of slicing the jellied brawn as a terrine, Harding turns it into a patty, breaded and pan-fried, which warms up the various pieces of pigface and turns the matrix of jelly into rich juice. Flavours are released and the unusually large size of the bits of meat lets you experience their different textures. A good, tart gribiche sauce around the plate cut the fat when required while the frisée topknot looked pretty.

An even richer treat for carnivores used half a vertically sawn marrowbone as a vessel of pleasure. The marrow was still in the bone but hidden by morsels of tender braised oxtail and traces of nectarine marmalade adding a lovely fruity sweetness. A close look revealed chopped herbs and tiny gratings of lemon zest – a sly gremolata that was as scrumptious as it always is with oxtail. A spoon was provided to scoop out bonemarrow, oxtail and fruit together to be spread onto crunchy toasts. Though it sounds like a heavy dish for the hottest day in Canadian history, it wasn’t. Sumptuous, yes, but so nicely balanced it almost seemed dainty.

Having heard so much about Harding’s pasta, I had to try the agnolotti that headed up the list of main courses. Yes, they were superb. The pasta itself was perfectly textured, soft little pouches that held a fresh pea purée. Whole peas, pea leaves and shoots nestled in amongst them while awesomely tender lobster meat lolled about on top. A mild fennel purée and a sort of bisque-like sauce lurked in the bottom of the bowl, bringing all the flavours together.

If peas and lobster is a classic combination, so is chorizo and octopus. There is no nonsense about the relationship on Harding’s dish – you get a big juicy, spicily seasoned fresh chorizo sausage hot off the grill and a single tender octopus limb that has also been finished on the grill (just a moment too long, I felt, because the diminishing curl of the tentacle was over-charred). Between the two principals is a soft, deliciously tangy peperonata while a puck of firm polenta represents the world of starch.

Saddle of lamb, perfectly pink

A subtler textural game is played on another main course – perfectly seared scallops, moist and creamy at heart, share the plate with smoked steelhead trout the colour of a carola rose, not sliced but cut into juicy chunks. Little new potatoes, a lively caper aioli and some shavings of radish complete the moment.

Roast lamb saddle represents a more conventional aesthetic, the succulent meat paired with cannelini beans but then perked up with a dark cherry balsamic and some shaved parm regg. The cheese was great with the beans but I’m not sure it sat so happily with the lamb, but that’s because the flavour of the meat was so good, especially when enhanced by some shavings of black summer truffle, that I would have resented any extraneous interference.

Two desserts were offered. One was a flaky canoli filled with chocolate-flecked, amaretto-spiked ricotta and served with a spoonful of gentle orange marmalade. The other was a slab of “chocolate paté” with the gelatinous texture of pudding – yummy in a childish sort of way – topped with crumbled macaroon and some boozy figs that had ended their lives poached in red wine – a great match for the chocolate.

Campagnolo’s wine list is rather clever – about 50 wines in total with four sparklers and lots of interesting, aromatic whites. Reds are a more serious gathering – only two under $50, seven in three figures. I was glad to see some decent representation from Ontario but the big guns were mostly Italian – which suits an Italianate menu, to be sure.

Craig Harding is clearly the real deal and success has allowed him to build a large brigade in the kitchen and front-of-house. I hate the fascism of a reservation policy so obviously built around turning the tables but the temptation is irresistible, I guess, when you have less than 40 seats. Still, that sort of “screw the customer” attitude can bite you back in the long run. And there’s one other element missing from the evening – any sense of verbal connection between the kitchen and the table. I would have loved to have had a brief word with someone about any of the dishes – some little tidbit about where an ingredient came from, why the chef had done this or that, even a standard enquiry about whether we were enjoying the food. So many other, less interesting restaurants do this as a matter of course, but there seems to be an endemic lack of gastronomic communication between the staff and the customers. It comes across as arrogance and, no matter how good the cooking, that always leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

Campagnolo is at 832 Dundas Street West (just at Euclid Avenue). 416 364 4785.

 
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La Société

18 Jul

 

Does the newly dandified Bloor-Yorkville area need a big, brassy French bistro? Apparently. La Société has been packed since it opened in June, taking over that upstairs location that used to be Dynasty on the Colonnade. There’s a patio outside the restaurant on the terrace and another down at street level where the fountain once plashed, all generating the sort of lively, bustling vibe rarely seen on stately Bloor Street.

Charles Khabouth is the guy behind La Société and that means Munge Leung are the designers. They’ve done a fine, eye-catching job on the enormous space, borrowing all the bistro clichés from padded brown leather banquettes with brass rails and a mosaic tiled floor (of curiously reflective tesserae) to a magnificent stained glass ceiling and a long zinc bar. Lots of mirrors and framed posters hang on the nicotine yellow walls and some magnificent displays of delphiniums bring a moment of nature into the oh-so-urban setting, effortlessly stealing the show. If the final stylistic statement ends up as a hotch-potch of art nouveau and art deco, well, the same thing happens in Paris, too.

The name is appropriate, for the place has already become a favourite rendezvous for the well-healed condo-dwellers of the area, somewhere to be seen but where they can also bring children and grandchildren. Tony Longo, the man in charge of the operation, knows most of them from Centro days and makes everyone feel welcome and important. His team of uniformed servers and bussers must number in the dozens but they know their onions. When I challenge our waiter’s description of our oysters as “kumos from California,” he sticks to his guns – and he’s right. These are sweet, creamy little guys from Baja – not as good as the pure-bred kumos from Puget Sound in Washington, but perfectly acceptable when you’ve been deprived of oysters for days.
La Société’s executive chef is James Olberg, a John Higgins protégé who was most recently exec at Queen’s Landing, so he’s comfortable with big numbers. It’s a long menu with just about every bistro standard in place and a few extra dishes thrown in as plats du jour. What it lacks are two or three unique signature offerings that might set the menu apart from the card at Biff’s or La Sélect – something unpredictable or even slightly challenging that this bistro could own. But I’m cavilling because the first few things we had, in our hunger, were very good.

Butter-poached lobster risotto

A duck liver terrine arrived in a glass jar, sealed beneath a meniscus of tart cherry jelly. It was sinfully heavy and rich, as silky as butter with a beguiling hint of booze beneath the swirl of ducky flavours. A little dish of caramelized cherries provided extra sweetness and acidity and there were plenty of crisp toasted baguette slices upon which to spread the gorgeous stuff.

A generous risotto studded with crisp, fresh asparagus and peas was topped with a perfectly cooked, butter-poached lobster tail and claw. The moisture level was exactly as I like it (not wet but seeping) and the broth had a pleasant lightweight summer freshness to it. The carnaroli rice was a bit too soft – cooked just a tad longer than necessary so the grains had lost that secret heart of chalky firmness – but that’s how they cook risotto on the West coast and maybe chef learned to make it out there.

Mushroom velouté was just that – a great bowl of velvety, creamy mushroom purée with just enough truffle oil drizzled onto its surface. Beside it was a long toast topped with a quenelle of truffle-flecked crème fraîche and a single, whole black morel as an irresistible treat.

By now we were getting quite full but we were having too much fun to slow down. Even on a hot summer’s evening, I felt I had to judge the kitchen’s cassoulet. The braised lingot beans had a good texture and plenty of seasoning but the breadcrumbs that would normally be sprinkled on the surface to form a crust during the cassoulet’s long, slow time in the oven were dredged around the edge of the beans, unintegrated and meaningless. A confited duck leg was 85 percent of the way to perfection, its flavour excellent but a couple of its extremities dryish. There was a fat slab of pork belly and a big, juicy, dense, fine-grained sausage called a “Niagara sausage” on the menu. I wasn’t keen on it. It was very salty and over-seasoned. A cassoulet is supposed to be heavy going, of course, but the whole point of the dish is that its components should be cooked together so that their fats and juices commingle and collaborate and enrich. This one felt as if its separate parts had been cooked separately and then assembled.

The cassoulet

Our other main course was a Dover sole amandine – at $44 a rash extravagance – but it’s been ages since I had a real Dover sole and I miss them. It was the real thing, cooked in a pan, the two fillets served one on top of the other and dressed with melted butter, slivered almonds, parsley and lemon. With sole, it’s all about the texture (the flavour is so refined and shrimpy it’s almost bland) and this one was just right – half way between firm and delicate and so hard to describe I’m not even going to try. There was more of the almond-butter sauce served in a little jug but it wasn’t needed.

Vegetables are offered as side dishes. French beans were just right, very fresh and dressed with almonds. The frites, however, were oddly dry and dull – not the best frites in town by a long shot.

Is it enough to offer only six cheeses, charging $18 for three 25-gram tastes? I think so. Six cheeses is plenty if they’re well chosen and La Société has covered that base. We had profiteroles as our finale and found them exemplary, the pastry fresh and soft, the chocolate sauce dark and authentic and lo, yet again, almonds strewn over everything.

As for wines – it’s a good list with enough pricey treats for the condottieri, decent recognition for Niagara (nice to see Daniel Lenko’s Chardonnay) but $25 for a small flute of Champagne is a bit steep. And more choices by the glass is essential when the menu is so enormous.

La Société is not really a French bistro, of course. It’s in Toronto, owned and operated by people who aren’t French so the best it can be is a sort of superior pastiche. But it’s just what the neighbourhood wants and the patios will be packed for as long as the summer lasts.

Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner (brunch on Saturdays and Sundays).

La Société is at 131 Bloor Street West, just east of Avenue Road. 416 551 9929. www.lasociete.ca.

 
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Niagara College

19 Jun

Chef Michael Olson in Benchmark restaurant at Niagara College

On Friday I was up at the crack of dawn to drive down to Niagara College to deliver a convocation address to some of the students and to receive an honorary diploma in Media Studies. It truly was an honour to be thus gowned and hooded and the graduating students were impressively polite and patient with this old geezer at the podium. The trip also gave me a chance to check out Benchmark, the restaurant in the College’s Niagara-on-the-Lake campus. It has been thoroughly worked over in the last ten months by Michael Olson, the renowned chef (Liberty, On the Twenty) who also teaches at the College. He runs Benchmark as a classroom where students in the culinary and hospitality programs can learn the realities of the business.

That’s how Niagara College works, with excellent and famously hands-on courses. It also has 40 acres of vineyards on the beautifully landscaped 114-acre campus, tucked up under the Niagara escarpment, where students can learn viticulture, growing the grapes that they then turn into wine in the teaching winery. Those wines are routinely entered for professional competitions and have so far won 140 awards! I remember coming across one years ago when I was one of the many judges for the Ontario Wine Awards. I thought it was a joke until I tasted it. Dazzling! Renowned winemaker Jim Warren was il professore at the time, which explains a lot. I believe it won gold that year. The College also has its own brewery, beer store, greenhouses and now a chic, ultra-modern wine boutique beside the vineyards where anyone can buy the wines. Production is very small, obviously, so this is actually the ONLY place to do that. Reserve wines are referred to as Dean’s List and some of the labels are designed as report cards filled out by none other than Tony Aspler. I strongly recommend you visit and buy, next time you’re down in Niagara.

Our very own spargelfest

And stop for a meal at Benchmark. Our lunch there was delightful, set in the restaurant’s airy rotunda with its wrap-around view of the vineyards and escarpment. The place is open to the public and is a local favourite, especially now that Olson has done away with much of the formality of service and dramatically lowered prices. The five of us were served family style with platters of food set down in the centre of the table for the appetizer courses. We began with silky slices of Mario Pingue’s yummy local prosciutto and slices of Guernsey Gold from the Upper Canada Cheese company in nearby Jordan. The College’s own semi-dry Riesling was a fine accompaniment.

Crispy battered shrimp with coleslaw and a peppery aioli followed, then Olson emerged with a casserole of perfect white asparagus grown by farmer Peter Janssen in Simcoe. He doesn’t grow enough for the commercial market but advertizes in German-language newspapers and sells the lot to ex-pats who miss Germany’s obsessive spargelfest. Olson’s students cooked it beautifully, dressing it with fresh orange, a Riesling-orange hollandaise and chopped chives from the garden. Our hosts brought forth a second wine for good measure and reasons of scientific comparison – a gloriously golden barrel-fermented Chardonnay. It was hard to say which wine better suited the asparagus but I think the Riesling was the ultimate winner. There’s something to be said for classic combinations.

A preview of scrumptious cookies and pastries from Anna Olson's new show, Bake that starts production in September.

For a main course I ordered tender pork with a sweet, sticky glaze of maple and beer – roast potatoes and vegetables were exemplary. Then Olson brought out another unique treat, a sort of soprbet made by freezing the pure wort from the brewery before any hops had been added. It was, as you might expect, marvelously malty and sweet – quite the most original and delicious ice I’ve had in ages – and full of the taste of barley. We finished with platters of cookies and pastries that were actually a preview of recipes from the upcoming tv show starring Anna Olson (Chef Olson’s wife). It’s called simply Bake and will be well worth following if the scrumptious apricot pastries and empire cookies are anything to go by. “It’s an inverse puff pastry,” explained Michael Olson. “Instead of starting with dough and adding butter, we start with a sheet of butter and add dough. It makes for a more even result.” Absolutely lovely!

 
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Urgent information

16 Jun

The piglets of Eigensinn Farm, making hay while the sun shines...

Tuesday, if you recall, was a spectacularly beautiful day – cloudless skies of periwinkle blue, a slight breeze, pleasant temperatures, Ontario looking bright green and bushy-tailed, Vancouver still full of hope and innocence – the ideal time to set off into the countryside, heading north to Michael Stadtländer’s Eigensinn Farm. It was a private invitation, an opportunity to see a preview of the great artist’s new project, the Pine Spiel. Inspired by the waldschule, his childhood school in the forests outside Lübeck, and by the pine circles of the native peoples of Ontario, it promises to be an extraordinary creation – a walk through the pine forests on his own 100-acre farm with pathways and “rooms” fashioned in the woods, places for spiritual reflection and delectable food… So we drove north to see it, my wife, my son, his wife and me.

It has been a couple of years since I last saw Eigensinn Farm and the trees have grown up around the driveway so that I drove right past and had to double back. But there were Michael and Nobuyo and their three apprentices busy in the gardens and about the open fire-pit outside the kitchen door.

“The Pine Spiel,” mused Michael… “Actually, I’ve postponed it until 2013 – Eigensinn’s 20th anniversary.”

“Oh…”

“Still, we can see it…”

So we walked – down to the pond, now stocked with brown and speckled trout but used more often as a swimming hole on sweltering summer nights than as a source of provender. Up the lane to the teepee field where a French landscape artist is going to create living sculptures using lines of plants along the contours of the land. Into the pine forests…

Mosquitoes were thick around us but they were Eigensinn mosquitoes and knew not to bite. We saw the work that Michael and his apprentices have already accomplished – pathways delineated by brushwood, clearings here and there, still abstract concepts, it’s true. No way this could be completed by August. And we came upon the scultpures left over from the last major walkabout – the sculptures of the Heaven on Earth project – the chef with his tray, the earth-mother oven, the god of wine, the farmer made of rusting machinery, the underground house, the play house… Michael showed us where he will plant an allee of 300 shoulder-high pine trees to lead from one patch of pine forest to the next – he’s dedicating it to David Suzuki. Then he showed us the Outside Dining Room, a new area planted to conifers where people can commission an al fresco dinner for a dozen friends. It will be ready by mid-August and is the sort of magical place that will be remembered for ever by those lucky enough to dine there.

Memories of Heaven on earth - a chef even taller than M Stadtlander...

And then we were back in the farmyard, admiring the litter of piglets (a red wattle and black English cross), the new chickens, the indolent marmalade cat lying in the herb beds, the sunlight on the blackcurrant bushes. One of the apprentices brought out a plate of lightly smoked New Brunswick sturgeon sliced onto rye bread with a dab of crème fraîche and pungent purple chive flowers. Another brought slices of Eigensinn ham and a plate of cucumber, sliced thickly and briefly pickled in the Japanese way in miso and beer.

I was going to bring some of the new Carmenere rosé from Cono Sur – my favourite foreign rosé this summer, so full of juicy flavour – but thought it politic to stick to local wine, choosing Trius Sauvignon Blanc and Cave Spring Gamay. To honour my daughter-in-law, Kayo, Nobuyo brought out various rare sakes including something I had never tasted, an awamori at 43% abv – more like an eau de vie than a sake and dazzlingly yummy. We drank it from beautiful little glasses that Nobuyo explained were made in Okinawa from vegetable ash and recycled Pepsi bottles from the local U.S. navy base. Magic! To turn the crass detritus of our shallow culture into splendid art is cause for celebration – and a toast in awamori.

A sake glass from Okinawa made from recycled pepsi bottles from the U.S. navy base - beauty from trash

Dinner took place indoors with friends, apprentices and family all sharing the farmhouse table. Nobuyo cooked rice and slippery mizuku seaweed, the first asparagus from the garden served with delicate fillets of pickerel, and a dish of crumbled wet tofu and dandelion greens. The main event was two legs of the least fortunate of Eigensinn’s piglets grilled outside on the barbecue until the juicy flesh was succulent and the crackling crispy and tissue-thin. With it came mashed potatoes stirred in with a handful of raw lovage leaves. Dessert was a rottegruze of stewed strawberries, rhubarb, raspberries and black currants in apple cider, topped with a chunk of sweet woodruff ice cream. We were eating the farm and it was heavenly.

Conversation? We discussed Haisai, Stadtländer’s whimsically beautiful restaurant on Singhampton’s main street. He will be cooking there for all of July and then passing the kitchen over to two guest chefs from Germany. They sound pretty cool and I think I’ll have to go and check it out. He is also looking for a manager/maître d’ to run the place for the foreseeable future – a brilliant gig for a front-of-house person with both savvy and soul.

We also discussed the appalling mega-quarry threatening the entire area between Eigensinn and Toronto. Even if you are entirely indifferent to the country and province in which you live, to the health of the water that you and your children drink, you ought to find out about this Satanic initiative. Below is an article by Donna Tranquada that explains the issue, originally published in Homemakers magazine.

The sun shone brightly over our small farm in Dufferin County yesterday as I worked in my garden, weeded the vegetable patch and watched tractors plow the dark earth in nearby fields.  It was one of those perfect spring days in the country. Our little “homestead” is perched on the top of a hill about 90 minutes northwest of Toronto. We’re surrounded by rolling pastures, gabled farmhouses and grey-weathered barns that have survived a century of seasons. It’s one of the most stunning regions of Ontario and is known as “The Hills of Headwaters.” But looming over the landscape is the threat of a mega quarry that will destroy vital farmland, jeopardize fresh water and devastate our environment.

As you drive westward from our farm, the land rises to a vast and fertile plateau in Melancthon township, north of Shelburne. It’s the highest point of land in southern Ontario and contains the best grade of soil in the province: Honeywood silt loam. Farmers love it. Not only is it fertile and rock-free, it sits upon a massive limestone aquifer, which offers a perfect drainage system for growing potatoes and other crops. Fifty per cent of the potatoes consumed in the Greater Toronto Area are grown on this plateau.

The region is also the source of water for four watersheds, including the Grand and Nottawasaga rivers. It’s estimated one-million people downstream rely on the fresh water. Local wells, ponds and streams count on the headwaters for replenishment.

Agriculture or Aggregate

Enter the Highland Companies. Over the past few years, Highland, which is backed by a $22-billion Boston hedge fund, has purchased about 7,000 acres of the 15,000-acre plateau. At first, Highland said its focus was growing potatoes and, after assembling so much land, it’s now the largest potato producer in Ontario.

But, in March, Highland confirmed suspicions that it was far more interested in the limestone beneath the fields. Highland filed a 3,000-page application to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to tear up the fields and excavate the largest open pit quarry in Canada for the lucrative aggregate market. The proposed size is staggering. The mega quarry would span 2,300 acres. It would be deeper than Niagara Falls and plunge 200 feet below the water table.

Forever is a long time

 In order to keep the quarry from filling up with water and draining the watersheds, Highland says it will have to pump 600-million-litres of water a day, 24 hours a day. Forever. That’s the same amount of water used by 2.7 million Ontarians each day.

At a recent public meeting hosted by Highland, I expressed doubts about a pumping system running in perpetuity. The hired water-management consultant replied “We have the technology.”  Well, the Japanese thought they had the technology to protect their nuclear reactors from earthquakes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was equally confident about its levees around New Orleans. Pumps fail, and when that happens, the results will be catastrophic for those downstream.

Not Welcome in the Neighbourhood

The mega quarry would also be a troublesome neighbour for the Niagara Escarpment, which runs through the Hills of Headwaters and is recognized by UNESCO as a World Biosphere Reserve. The Florida Everglades and Galapagos Islands share the same designation. The Niagara Escarpment Commission says it is “one of the world’s unique natural wonders.” The Escarpment also supports “300 bird species, 53 mammals, 36 reptiles and amphibians, 90 fish and 100 varieties of special interest flora including 37 types of wild orchids.”  Yet, the largest quarry in the country would stretch alongside this environmentally-sensitive area. No government would ever allow a quarry of any size near the Florida Everglades or in the Galapagos Islands.

Deep Down on the Farm

 Once Highland extracts the limestone it intends to farm the bottom of the pit. That’s right, the bottom. The company claims it will spread topsoil in this deep, massive scar and, if the pumps don’t fail, it will grow crops. But according to current provincial legislation, Highland is under no obligation to rehabilitate the quarry pit because it would be below the water table.

Help Stop the Mega Quarry

 There’s so much more. Up to 300 heavy diesel trucks an hour would rumble to and from the pit each day, polluting our air and clogging our roads. And, incredibly, the largest proposed quarry in Canada is not subject to an Environmental Assessment in Ontario. This is unacceptable.

The Hills of Headwaters is normally quiet and bucolic. But it’s now noisy with opposition to the proposed mega quarry. What can you do to stop it?  Write letters of objection to the province of Ontario. Please demand an Environmental Assessment. The deadline is July 11, 2011. Click here to learn more.  You can also e-mail Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty here.

And for further information about the mega quarry, visit www.ndact.com and www.citizensalliance.ca, and join us on Facebook at Stop the Quarry for news updates and events.

 
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Posted in Canada, Life in General, Restaurants

 

Chabrot Bistrot d’Amis

01 Jun

L'exterieur

When Canadian friends are going to London the question they never ask is “What is the best restaurant in London?” What they do want to know is “Where is a good little place to eat that doesn’t cost the earth?” So I have been looking for such a gem, while also thinking of next July when I’ll be hosting some Canadians over here for the Olympics, courtesy of Gold Medal Plates. Tonight we went to check out Chabrot, a 65-seat bistro in a tiny alleyway running between Knightsbridge and the park, just a pierre’s jetée from Harrods.

Open about three-and-a-half months, it’s the fulfilled ambition of four friends – society florist Pascal Lavorel, wine guru Philippe Messy, Yann Chevris, who set up a number of big-name spots such as Nahm, Nobu London and Atelier Joel Robuchon, and chef Thierry Laborde, who worked at Le Gavroche and with Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV. The name this influential quartet chose refers to a ritual from the Dordogne whereby gourmands pour a little wine into the bottom of their soup bowls to allow every last drop of potage to be consumed. Suitably obsessive… The credentials of the partners caught my eye, to be sure, but so did the menu, gleaming with treats from the south-west of France – sardines marinated in white wine; grilled black pudding with cooked apple; whole roasted foie gras for two (or three); cabbage stuffed with veal, chestnut, foie gras and ceps… So off we went.

The premises are hard to find. Cabbies know Knightsbridge Green and there is a cluster of little restaurants in the knuckle of the laneway that turns back southwards to Knightsbridge. Chabrot lies to the north, up a narrow passage where cars cannot go. It’s a slender little property on two storeys run by a team of young and anxious French people who try very hard to be friendly. We were guided up the steep flight of stairs to a wedge of a salon with painted brick walls, a wooden floor, tiny tables clad in red-and-white striped linen of industrial tea-towel weight, hard wooden chairs and large framed sepia photographs of French bistro scenes. “This will be noisy when the other tables fill up,” we surmised – and so it proved. Good reviews have ensured the place is packed, even on a Tuesday night. A lone waitress coped womanfully with our storey, keeping her temper, bringing excellent crusty brown bread and sweet, firm butter, giving us time to read the menu carefully. The dishes here are unabashedly simple – almost too simple, some might say, though others would disagree. It’s a tough call.

plain but very good - the broad bean salad

A salad of broad beans and ewe cheese is a case in point. The wee dish offered some absolutely impeccable, timed-to-perfection and shelled broad beans with a hint of mint. They were crowned with a dollop of sweet, bland sheep’s milk cheese with the texture of cottage cheese and the same amount of flavour. A sprinkling of piment d’espalette powder, south-west France’s gentle answer to paprika, added a soupcon of seasoning. A dose of very good olive oil offered much more. It was a brilliant little dish, such as one makes for a picnic montage in a Merchant-Ivory film when love is running hot and smooth. Puritan gourmets say “oui, superbe,” but others who might have hoped for a bit more dash and imagination grumble.

Ditto a dish billed as warm duck liver paté. If you have made paté you know there’s a moment when everything is cooked and warm in the pan and ready to be mashed and pressed and cooled into a paté. One can’t help but taste it. Well this dish has arrested the process at that point, presenting a ramekin of warm chopped and sautéed duck liver with capers, herbs and oily juices. Beside it is a giant gougère, the size of three Yorkshire puddings with some Comté cheese baked into the crust. It’s hollow of course, as a gougère should be, but where most gougères are dainty and ethereral little bites this one is the size of a child’s head. So we break bits off and use the undulating hollows of choux pastry as receptacles for a little of the embryonic pate. It tastes wonderful but the premise is a little like eating raw cake mix. What might this dish have been if the paté had been made? As Bubble used to answer in Absolutely Fabulous, Who can say?

Marinated sardines in white wine vinegar are a yummy crowd-pleaser, the fillets firm and juicy, just tangy enough. They come topped with chopped cherry tomato, chopped white grapes for sweetness, shredded basil and tiny dice of oil-fried croutons, crunchy and juicy with good olive oil. Again, it’s lovely but far from special.

my petit chou

Mains loom out of the menu and I find I can’t resist the stuffed cabbage leaves – savoy leaves as it turns out – my favourite cabbage. Inside is a dense meatloaf of finely ground veal studded with soft nuggets of chestnut and cep, enriched with foie gras. On top are some crunchy little croutons and a few burst cranberries which bring the whole thing to life, for the flavours of the cabbage roll are gentle and wistful, like an auntie’s kiss on the forehead. The tart cranberries have decided to make trouble but there are too few of them to bring the too-too-solid flesh to life.

Grilled octopus skewers, partially breadcrumbed, are as tender as the night. That espalette paprika makes a repeat appearance but has nothing to say it didn’t say already. A warm salad of halved fingerling potatoes in olive oil and lemon juice is divine. “But is it art?” Again the question arises.

Paillard de veau is a piece of veal beaten and tortured until it’s as thin as vellum then grilled and sprinkled with rosemary and sage. Any Italian would scoff, having tasted the tender Milanese equivalent. A small mound of well-dressed salad leaves on the side of the plate murmur comments without getting involved.

ma baba avec son verre d'Armagnac

Oui, we had desserts. A bowl of gariguette strawberries with crème chantilly – very nice but too polite and the cream was too sweet to be wicked. Praline ice cream – excellent, but ice cream usually is. I had a baba (okay mostly so I could look the waitress in the eye and say “a baba!”) but this was served in an unusual way. The baba lay in a bowl beside a pillow of crème chantilly looking enchanting, but as I admired it the server whispered that I must now choose one of three vintage Bas Armagnacs (at decidedly vintage prices) to complete the experience. There was also a cheaper hors d’age Armagnac she confessed, but she made a most discouraging face when she mentioned that one. I chose the 1979 and awesome it was, though I couldn’t make out the producer’s name on the label. The waitress poured it into a snifter and murmured that I should now soak the spongey, very fresh, slightly syrup-impregnated baba with the precious eau de vie. Quelle dilemma, mes amis! To pour or not to pour? Whether tis better to annoint the baba or save the armagnac til later – that is the question. I decided to soak my cake and eat it while cunningly saving half the generous snifter for a post-baba libation! Lights flash, bells ring! That is the right thing to do.

There is wine at Chabrot – a lovely list indeed, strong in french regional bottles from cool, well-chosen producers but at London prices, which are higher than we are used to in Canada. The final verdict? We had a good time but next time I will fall back on a more comfortable favourite across the road – Racine.

Closed on Sundays, Chabrot is open for lunch and dinner. 9 Knightsbridge Green, London SW1X 7QL, 207 225 2238, www.chabrot.co.uk.

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, England, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel

 

Aria

22 May

 

Overhead at Aria

The area around the Air Canada Centre continues to flourish as an entertainment destination – what was once parking lots and wasteland now morphed into glamorous restaurants like Aria and E11even and the prince of all sports bars, Real Sports, inside the building itself. Last night we went to Aria, the beautiful restaurant at the foot of the new Telus tower. The team behind the tower are among the many loyal long-time fans of Noce, the 18-year-old, rather quaint Italian restaurant on Queen West, which led to their invitation to Noce’s owners, Elena Morelli and Guido Saldini, to create the new restaurant in their building. It opened two months ago and it’s a beauty, designed by architect Stephen Pile.

The space is on the corner so two sides of the room are floor-to-ceiling windows. “They’re 36 feet high,” explained the dapper Saldini, “so we get a great deal of light in here. And just hanging the fine-mesh steel curtain that covers the southern wall of windows was an incredible undertaking.” A third wall is a vertical, glassed-in wine cellar that houses the large inventory of wines, all of them excellent, all but a few beyond my wallet. The bar is backlit with pinkish red lights against which horizontal bottles of Gaja wine seem to swim like a school of black fish. Filling the air in this handsome lightbox is an extraordinary sculpture by Dennis Lin of ribbons of walnut wood (noce being Italian for walnut (geddit?)) swooping and writhing above and around glittering Moooi spheres of metal filigree studded with tiny lights like the balls of a giant plane tree bewitched by a fairy godmother. It all stops just on the honest side of Vegas kitsch – the antithesis of bland, and all the more welcome for that in our too-beige town.

I should say at once that this is an expensive dinner. The owners had no wish to be seen as the neighbourhood cheapy. It’s also very good – the best meal I’ve had so far this year. Chef Eron Novalaski, who came here from Noce, does posh northern Italian very well with some very fine textures to be found. Details are particularly well attended to. Grissini in the bread basket are crisp and peppery instead of generic; the butter and the dark green olive oil are of the finest. Water glasses are hand-blown Murano glass highlighted in crimson and the water that goes in is house-filtered and carbonated. The sense of quality is established before the first dish has been tasted.

Scallop crudo to start things off

I like the arrangement of the menu. There’s an opening section for nibbles such as salted anchovies served with bread and house-made butter or a nice little affettati of house-cured charcuterie, all of it first class especially ribbons of nicely seasoned lardo and silky Piottosino prosciutto from Italy. Wild mushroom soup is a true velouté, smooth and thick as paint with a deep mushroom flavour and a finish of golden oil flecked with minced black truffle.

Then comes an area devoted to crudi. When we failed to order any of those dishes the kitchen turned one into an amuse bouche – gorgeous slivers of sweetly gummy raw Hokkaido scallop topped with crispy chickpeas and bathed in a rosemary vinaigrette.

The dish that earned my first “wow” rating of 2011 was Aria’s version of vitello tonato, one of my favourite things to eat in the world. The veal was impeccable – pan-seared tenderloin sliced very thinly; the sauce a purée of tuna, capers, anchovy (you can taste all three) bound with egg yolk. It’s the quality of the eggs that give the sauce its unexpectedly yellow colour. Tiny potato chips the size of dimes add subtle crunch while a garnish of miniature fronds and microgreens bring fleeting bittersweet chlorophyl flavours. Deftly done.

Marvellous vitello tonnato

Specials abound, expertly related by the friendly, smart server. Fresh soft-shelled crab from B.C. is a much bigger creature than we are accustomed to in high-street sushi bars. Here, the juicy body and limbs are lightly and crisply battered then set over mashed avocado and quartered cherry tomatoes – not the most imaginative of accompaniments but pleasant enough.

The one disappointment of the evening was a pasta – chitarrine al pomodoro e basilico. Basil was no more than a distant backnote in the thick, ketchuppy tomato sauce while the chitarrine seemed heavy and stodgy. But a whole grilled branzino was flawless, the snow-white flesh moist, fluffy and flavourful beneath the crisped skin. It came with a side dish of boiled potatoes simply dressed with parsley. Nothing else was needed.

Roasted and deboned quail, a dish that requires nice timing if it isn’t going to dry out. Another box ticked – the slightly crisp skin was a tad too salty but the quail itself was juicy and sapid, its sometimes elusive flavour chirping loud and clear. The meat was set over creamy polenta enriched with bone marrow and thick chunks of wild mushroom moistened with a dark foie jus. I ordered a glass of 2008 Insoglio del Cinghiale from Tenuta Il Biserno to go with it. Yes, it’s a bit too big and dark and brooding for quail (it would have been better with the tomahawk steak, there being no wild boar on the menu) but it’s rare to find this Tuscan beauty offered by the glass and I couldn’t resist.

Steve Song is Aria’s pastry chef. I have followed his work for years, first falling for his enormous talents when he was creating amazing dessert using Lindt chocolate at Oro, a decade ago. There was chocolate on his two offerings last night – one a rich dark chocolate opera cake with gold leaf decorating the glossy icing and Bailey’s crème anglais lapping at its base; the other a “duomo” of hazelnut dacquoise, dusted with chocolate and sitting on finely sliced poached pear and a solid base of hazelnut meringue. Pure self-indulgence.

Any minute now, Aria will spill out into the open piazza with tables and umbrellas to add even more to the downtown summer scene. Funny that so much of the city’s glamour seems to be percolating down to this part of the city. Funny how many of the new restaurants of the last two years have an Italian schema! Hands up who remembers the ’80s.

Aria is inside the Telus building at 25 York Street, just south of the railway tracks and hard by the ACC. 416 363 2742.

 
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Liberty Belle Bistro

11 May

Old-school onion soup. Every table has a different salt and pepper shaker.

My wife knows from renovation. She could write a book about it. And she tells me that the reno conducted by chef-owner Aidan Pascoe and his father that has given the world Liberty Belle is first class. It’s a cute little bistro on the edge of Liberty Village – 24 seats plus six stools at the handsome wooden bar, and an outside patio for warm evenings – with a décor full of gathered details. Carved wood may have come from a church pew; the swing doors into the kitchen are stained glass; a poster of can-can girls cheers up the narrow vestibule and becomes the company’s graphic. Specials are written up on a blackboard, which is just as well because we can’t hear the hard-working server thanks to a table of three young women behind us – the noisiest people I have ever heard in a restaurant, braying and screeching and shouting each other down. Thank God they are already having dessert as we sit down.

Pascoe’s menu is consciously retro French bistro, offered without any obvious irony. Enough time has passed since the mass extinction of French bistros in the 1990s that onion soup, moules frites and steak tartare are no longer clichés though they are still familiar enough that any chef attempting them must show why, either with some new twist or by doing them very well. The onion soup is exemplary – masses of finely sliced, browned onions cooked down until they almost dissolve in their own sweet broth all hidden beneath a thick floe of crusty bread and bubbling browned cheese. It’s cave-aged Quebec gruyère, rich and delectable, and the portion would be enough for a normal person’s dinner.

Steak tartare was less successful, the meat ground instead of chopped and mixed up with a rather overwhelming amount of gherkin and capers. It didn’t feel as if there were any egg yolk to bind things together so the texture was crumbly – a tartare lite – without any sense of sticky rawness. Brioche toast points were fine and the lone pickled green chili on the plate made me long for more.

Carolina stone bass - pretty as a picture

A plate of forthright hush puppies was another huge portion, the dense balls of cornmeal flecked with the merest suggestion of bacon and scallion. Their surface was pleasingly crisp and there was a decently creamy horseradish sauce for dipping but the side salad stole the show, a lightly dressed mound of very fresh rocket and radicchio.

A special of house-made fettucine returned to the richness and large flavours of the onion soup, the pasta smothered in a thick, sapid crumble of spicy merguez sausage, king oyster mushrooms sliced into sturdy ribbons and kalamata olives adding even more pungency and salt.

Carolina stone bass was a gorgeous piece of fish, moist and tasty. Pascoe paired it with pan-fried fingerlings tossed with red pepper and soft white onion and some pretty purple kale leaves. His sauce of grapefruit beurre blanc wasn’t the best idea, however, the mild bitterness of the grapefuit ganging up with the mild bitterness of the kale to nudge the dish off kilter.

Desserts are much lauded at Liberty Belle, the work of Sarah Fortunato. Plates of her petits fours sit temptingly on the bar beneath glass cloches. We ordered a lovely opera cake made with almonds and a vanilla and lavender mousse, topped with white chocolate and blackberries – lots going on but why not – it was the cakey equivalent of those can-can girls. Vanilla panna cotta was just a heartbeat too loose in texture and too sweet, not as good as the compote of forced pink rhubarb that dressed it.

Opera cake with attendant macaron and a comma of coulis

The tiny wine list (only eight bottles) will have to grow. We drank Prospect Winery’s Ogopogo’s Lair 2009 Pinot Grigio, a lovely B.C. offering and usefully versatile, but I think people are going to want more choice. And the bill was disarmingly reasonable, cutely presented inside a musical box. I rather thought it was going to play Sousa’s march, Liberty Bell, that Monty Python used as their opening music but instead it was the theme from Love Story.

Liberty Belle Bistro is at 133 Jefferson Avenue (a few doors south of King Street West). 647 352-3553. www.libertybellebistro.com.

 
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Posted in Life in General, Restaurants, Toronto

 

Return of Makoto

07 May

Makoto Ono presenting an omakase dish at Edohei, his father's restaurant in Winnipeg

I just got off the phone with an old friend – chef Makoto Ono, who won the first-ever Canadian Culinary Championship back in 2006. We held it in Whistler, B.C., beautifully looked after by the Hilton hotel, and Makoto came through against some very tough competition, including Mark McEwan, representing Toronto, Robert Clark, representing Vancouver, and Michael Blackie, representing Ottawa-Gatineau. With enormous charm and humility, Makoto, representing Winnipeg and the restaurant where he worked (a small bistro-cum-food store called Gluttons) and brilliantly assisted by his pastry chef Chantalle Noschese, aced the three-day competition.

The rest is history. Chantalle became pastry chef at Canoe in Toronto before going back to Winnipeg (the call of the prairies). Makoto was head-hunted to China where he opened a huge and dazzling restaurant in Beijing, called Makoto, which was our principal rendezvous during the 2008 Olympics. When the games were finished he left for Hong Kong, opening a tiny, precious spot called Liberty Private Works, where he cooked an omakase meal for a handful of very select gourmets every night. He also partnered in a big sports bar for the same backers and basically became the talk of the town.

Makoto comes from restaurant roots. His father, Sadao, opened Winnipeg’s renowned Japanese restaurant, Edohei, and Makoto grew up there. He returned early this year to take over the reins while his father battled cancer (the prognosis is positive). Meanwhile Liberty Private Works needed someone to take over and chose Vicky Cheng, a young man who used to work at Canoe, Auberge du Pommier and for Daniel Boulud in New York. If you’re in Hong Kong any time soon, I would recommend a visit.

As for Makoto… His victory in the Winnipeg 2006 Gold Medal Plates was historic for many reasons, not least because it was the first and last time we staged a GMP event in that city. Until this year. We’re going back in the fall, which fills me with happiness. That gives us nine cities across the country, from St. John’s to Vancouver, all prepared to play the GMP game, raising money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. And with the 2012 London games on the horizon, anything we can do becomes very important. Makoto is going to be a part of the event, serving as an honorary judge on the jury of experts who will determine the gold, silver and bronze medallists, and also preparing delectable canapés for the couple-of-hundred VIPs at the preliminary reception.

What the future holds for Makoto is a mystery. His girlfriend is a pastry chef from Vancouver, currently working in Hong Kong where she stars at an all-dessert restaurant (a three-course dessert prix-fixe, like Chickalicious in New York). The idea of doing somewhere together has been broached, he tells me, but who knows where? Vancouver? Why not Toronto, sez I? Meanwhile, we should all go to Winnipeg and ask Makoto to cook for us, omakase style, in his father’s restaurant. I can guarantee it will astonish and seduce the most jaded buds.

Edohei is at 355 Ellice Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba. 204 943-0427. www.edohei.mb.ca.

 
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