Langdon Hall itself

Two weeks from today – on Saturday, June 8^th, to be precise – I will be motoring down to  Langdon Hall for the amazing VISA Infinite weekend, one of the highlights of my year. Not only is it an opportunity to spend a night and the best parts of two days in my favourite Canadian hotel, it also involves two spectacular meals from Grand Chef Jonathan Gushue – of which more later. We did this last year, some of you may remember and it was spectacular fun. You can find my report on this site by searching for Langdon Hall Weekend.

This year Chef Gushue has vowed to raise the bar even higher. Saturday’s dinner will begin in a clearing in the estate’s woodlands where there will be music and lively conversation. Then we’ll proceed to the croquet lawn for the second course (honestly, anyone who hankers after the Downton Abbey lifestyle needs to be part of this) and then into the dining room for the next four courses. Dessert, I gather, will be outside by torchlight in the warm summer night. Langdon hall’s sommelier, Kathleen Moore, will speak about the wines she has chosen for each delectable course. I’ll be introducing the food but I promise not to talk too long.

Brunch by the reflecting pool

Sunday morning sees a truly spectacular brunch down around the pool. There were something like 50 dishes last year, a jazz band and some very glamorous cocktails. It was one of those days you wish would never end.

The whole weekend is an endless succession of treats, all set in what Condé Nast Traveler magazine has deemed to be one of the top 15 hotels in the world. If you haven’t booked your room yet just dial 1 800 268 1898 and do so. The price is $1,250 per couple – which includes everything.

A bubble of olive puree ready to burst on the tongue

I’m delighted to see chef Rob Bragagnolo back in Toronto and ensconced at the latest iteration of Marben, owner Simon Benstead’s hot spot on Wellington West. I hadn’t tasted Bragagnolo’s food since he was at Lobby in 2006, one of two or three chefs in the city then offering a menu that showcased molecular cuisine. He had spent the previous five years working for English chef Marc Fosh at the one-Michelin-star Read’s hotel in Mallorca and had picked up the molecular vibe so prevalent in Spain at the time. Coming home to Toronto was a great idea but Lobby’s customers weren’t the avant-garde audience he needed. Before too long, he and his sous chef, Sergio Fiorino, had moved on to Fumetti on Brant Street but again it didn’t work out. Bragagnolo went back to Mallorca.

Now he’s back and Benstead threw a party to celebrate, inviting the media to dinner. It was a splendid meal – 17 fascinating, well-judged courses that showcased Bragagnolo’s mastery of many techniques, ancient and modern. The scale and sophistication of the meal took me back to the way Toronto used to dine pre-2009, when every chef worth his salt loved to put together a flamboyant and thought-provoking tasting menu. Wouldn’t it be great if Marben started a trend back towards that sort of entertaining artistry and away from the heavy-handed, self-righteous and dull domesticity of so much of Hogtown’s current hipster cooking?

Carrot

Here are some highlights from Bragagnolo’s feast. He started us with a Szechuan button to numb the tongue and lips – like licking a 6-volt battery – and stimulate the palate, pairing it with a spoonful of citrus granité to further chill the cold heat of the tingling.

Then came a brown bubble in a spoon that looked and wobbled like a raw egg yolk but burst into olive purée in your mouth. A fine beetroot brunoise was the sweet, rooty counterpoint.

There was a Noma-style flower pot filled with layers of carrot purée, pistachio dukkah, preserved lemon cream, cumin and sesame seeds served with a fresh baby carrot to use as a scoop… So much was memorable! A thick sunchoke cream with sunchoke crisps strewn over it – so simple and delicious. Mini air chiabatta like crisp puffs or crunchy bread balloons, wrapped in gorgeous Serrano ham (chef acknowledged El Bulli circa 2003 for the idea).

How about razor clam chopped and returned to its shell with chorizo dimes and a parsley and clam gel? It shared the plate with a Raspberry point oyster topped with hazelnut crumble and trout roe, eliciting a wow.

The delectable Canadian paella before the concentrated bisque inundation

My favourite dish of the evening was the first of three main courses, a “Canadian paella” of crab, lobster and mussels with crispy wild rice, tiny moments of red pepper, almond and snap pea with a dab of saffron-paprika aioli. Bragagnolo finsihed the dish by pouring on an exaggeratedly intense, dark lobster-crab bisque of thrilling and uncompromising flavour. It killed the accompanying wine – a merry little rosé – but blew me away.

“This is uppity food,” joked wine writer Konrad Ejbich who was sitting at our table. He is absolutely right and it’s high time for it. Bragagnolo plans a chef’s tasting menu as a regular feature at the new Marben. Hooray.

Marben is at 488 Wellington Street West. 416 979 1990. www.marbenrestaurant.com.

ikura

There has been lots of interesting Japanese food in my life recently, including some good sushi at Jabistro, but nothing better than an ethereal soft-shelled crab on Monday night at ND Sushi & Grill. I’ve written about ND before for Zoomer magazine but I hadn’t been back for months. It’s something of a joke in our house that the only night of the week when my wife ever wants to go out to a restaurant is Monday, when so many places are chiuso. Luckily ND was open and though we weren’t able to ask for the $50 omakase experience (amazing value but you have to give a day’s notice) we found plenty of treats on the menu.

I’m a big fan of ND. When they first opened last year, owners Andy and Jasmine Chon did everything, Andy in the kitchen and Jasmine in charge of the front-of-house. They now have a server so Jasmine can help in the kitchen. The room is plainly decorated but has its own spare elegance and an ambience of calm and dignity that is perfectly in tune with Andy Chon’s food. Impeccably fresh and precise, his dishes are always startlingly beautiful to look at. If you go, you should pay attention to the specials blackboard on the bar and order everything on it. On Monday that was three kinds of sashimi – hiramasa, hamachi and a shoyu-marinated salmon roe that looked like a tiny mountain made of rubies, fringed by red and green seaweed fronds and a ribbon of cucumber and topped with a jaunty dab of mashed daikon.

The marvellous crab

I could go on about the barbecued eel or the sublime braised black cod, but the crab is supposed to be our theme. I’ve had fried soft-shelled crab that comes across like chewy fish-and-chip-shop batter and others that have just been sponges for oil. ND’s was plump and juicy, delicately flavoured and coated in the lightest, crispest, most greaseless tempura batter you could wish for. The crab sat over a sharp ponzu sauce, made opaque with mashed daikon and chopped green onion so that it looked like a rock pool.

My wife doesn’t like soft-shelled crab but I insisted she tasted it. She immediately ordered one for herself. So crisp, so light in texture… The best soft-shelled crab I can remember.

ND Sushi & Grill is at 3 Baldwin Street (the McCaul Street end). 416 551 6362.

Chef Michael Howell, one of the judges, presents the 2013 Grand Champion cow’s milk cheese of Canada

If you’re a cheese judge, judging, say, 225 different cheeses over a two-day competition, you have to spit. You taste, you chew, you masticate and then you spit… It’s not a pretty sight. But the choice is consuming 6½ lbs of cheese. Or so Michael Howell told a gathering of us the other day as we sat in a private salon in the TIFF Bell Lightbox building, tasting cheese. Chef Howell (of the excellent Tempestuous Culinary in Wolfville, Nova Scotia) was one of 8 judges at this year’s Canadian Cheese Grand Prix, the biannual competition to find the best cow’s-milk cheese in Canada. There are 19 categories in the contest ranging from Fresh Cheese to Cheddar Aged more than 3 years and including some fairly arcane ones such as Best Fresh Cheese With Grilling Properties and Best Flavoured Cheese With Added Non-Particulate Flavouring. From these 19 champions one Grand Champion is chosen. Two years ago it was Louis d’Or, a superb Jura-style cheese made by Fromagerie du Presbytère in Quebec – and indeed, Louis d’Or was back in the medals this year, winning the Swiss-type Cheese category. Its stablemate, Bleu d’Élizabeth also won both the Blue Cheese and Organic Cheese categories. They were two of the best cheeses we tasted at our luncheon – almost as good as the one-year-old Grizzly Gouda from Alberta’s Sylvan Star Cheese Ltd which won the Gouda category or the amazing Gunn’s Hill Five Brothers from Gunn’s Hill Artisan Cheese, a terrific fromage like a cross between an aged Gouda and an Appenzeller. And it was up there with the Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar from Cows Creamery on Prince Edward Island that took the Aged Cheddar (more than 1 year up to 3 years) prize…

Yes, we tasted many heavenly cheeses that day and I shall seek them out in the months to come at Cheese Boutique in the West End and at My Market Cheeses in Kensington Market. And which of them was declared the overall Grand Champion? None of the above! No siree. This year’s Grand Champion was a fresh cheese. A ricotta. Okay a really really good ricotta from Quality Cheese Inc. in Vaughan, Ont. A rich ricotta made from whole milk and possessed of a firm, creamy texture. But a ricotta none the less.

Chef Howell was obliged to explain to us how this could be. Each category of cheese has its own criteria and is marked accordingly. The ricotta received very high marks in its own category, higher than any other cheeses in theirs. Ergo… It would be like choosing a champion from each style of restaurant in Toronto. Perhaps Pizzeria Libretto would win the Pizza category with 90 out of 100. And then what if Hashimoto or Sushi Kaji only scored 89 in the Japanese category, and Scaramouche only 89 in the Grown-up Restaurant category and Buca only 88 in the Cool Italian lists, and so on? Pizzeria Libretto would, peforce, be named as the best restaurant in Toronto.

But who am I to say that a deep, luscious, complex, resonant, seductive blue cheese shouldn’t lose out to a mooncalf who can’t even lisp his own name? It’s a funny old world.

Chef Jason Bangerter of the Tiff Lightbox made our fab little dessert using the Grand Champion ricotta. It was divine

I salute the Quality Cheese Ricotta! And indeed it was heavenly in a little pudding Jason Bangerter rustled up as a finale for the tasting – a kind of panna ricotta topped with strawberry and lavender crumble and edible petals, paired with good old Cave Spring Indian Summer Late Harvest Riesling. I offer my commiserations to the oh-so-worthy runners-up. And my thanks to Dairy Farmers of Canada who are behind the whole thing and organized the tasting for the scribes.

“Toronto police are looking for an alleged thief with a taste for the finer, and more expensive, things in life. According to police, a man went into a downtown Toronto LCBO store earlier this month and pulled a rare 50-year-old Glenfiddich Single Malt scotch out of a glass case in the vintage [sic] section. The 700-millilitre bottle worth $26,000 is extremely rare, with only 15 bottles available in Ontario, and 50 worldwide. Police said the man also selected a bottle of wine, which he took the counter and paid for, but left the store without settling up for the scotch. A still image captured by a security camera shows the suspect leaving the store, wine bottle gripped in his left hand, with a trench coat oddly draped across the right side of his body. Police describe the man as white, 35 to 45 years old, 5’10″, clean-shaven with black-framed glasses. He was last seen leaving the store wearing a Burberry plaid shirt, brown hat, brown trench coat, and black jeans.”

Let’s start with the whisky. The Glenfiddich 50-year-old is a fine thing, to be sure. Not a whisky to risk prison for at this time of year, perhaps, in the cruellest month, when old roots stir and the dried tubers stiffen and swell like young zombies. Clearly the thief intends to hang on to the treasure until the nights grow long again and those Dundee cake, dried fruit, candied peel, cool smoky, head-swimming aromas have a more relevant appeal.

And what about the outfit? Does anyone wear a Burberry plaid shirt? Duh..!? An obvious disguise. Clearly he intended to distract the cameras with such a chemise. Even smothered with a brown trench coat (Hugo Boss?) it would be the chav giveaway in the UK and recognisable here by anyone who shops at Harry Rosen. But it’s the black jeans that reveal this perp as a super-criminal. Such an obvious faux pas becomes a challenge, a sartorial glove in the face. Too obvious! He is taunting us! I dare say this überthief wears only Kiton by day, Isaia by night, and seeks to mock the constabulary the way Sir Percy Blakeney mocked Chauvelin by disguising himself as a cackling tricoteuse beside Madame la Guillotine when he was all-the-while renowned as the most elegant dandy in London.

Of course, this deplorable crime is to be condemned! Dem’me, yes. And yet… Were I the judge when this terrible villain is finally brought to dock, I might ask (sternly) what other rare treats he has faginned away under the floorboards of his condominium – and how lustrously they showed, once the stain of being stolen contraband had faded away. And whether they might be tasted in evidence.

Goose Island ales from Chicago are now available at the LCBO

A couple of beers arrived on my doorstep this week (in a beautiful wooden crate that is now the perfect home for some of our beat-up power tools – but that is another story). The beers are really good – two of the Vintage Ales collection from Chicago’s Goose Island craft brewery (estd 1988), both of them available this spring at the LCBO. Created specifically as versatile food-beers, Sofie and Matilda (Goose Island likes to call its beers by name) are Belgian-style ales with real balance and sophistication rather than the over-hopped bitterness that is currently in fashion down in the States.

Sofie first. It’s a pale golden ale, partly fermented with wild yeasts which give a grassy fruitiness to the brew and then aged in wine barrels with lots of fresh orange peel. In terms of flavour intensity it reminds me most of an aromatic white wine such as a New-World, warm-climate Viognier with a deliciously flavourful middle palate of citrus and vanilla. Goose Island has taken trouble to suggest some precise food matches – oysters or sushi, grilled whitefish, shrimp or lobster, brie or fresh chèvre. I still prefer something sharper or more bitter for the oysters but the other ideas are sound. Then again, there’s more than enough going on in the beer if you taste it all on its own.

Matilda is darker and spicier and less obviously flavoured than Sofie. Different hops are used (Super Styrian, Styrian Golding and Saaz as opposed to Sofie’s Amarillo) but again they provide an unusually subtle seasoning – just enough to balance the rich maltiness and counteract the grain’s natural sweetness. This time the recommended cheese is camembert and if you think the difference between a camembert beer and a brie beer might not be so very great, you are getting the point. The major recommended food match is lobster or crab served with drawn butter rather than off the grill – again, a matter of nuance. Personally, I find the dipping of the pristine, aromatic, steamed or poached flesh of a crab or lobster into clarified butter to be a nauseating treatment – even the stench of the pot of hot liquid butter in a restaurant can make me gag – but I won’t hold that against Matilda. As mentioned before, it’s a very good beer, though Sofie is more to my taste.

If you have time this month, you can also drop into Nota Bene on Queen Street West where chef David Lee has devised some dishes of his own to go with these beers. He is a past master at creating menus to flatter specific wines so I’m sure the trip will be well worth your while.

X hits the spot – a bacon lover’s dream

In a previous review of the place, I had found fault with the crab cake’s consistency so it may or may not have been a coincidence that he sent one out as an appetizer. It was pretty much flawless last night, moist but not at all gummy and packed with big chunks of crab meat under a well-judged creamy slaw. He also decided we needed to taste the house signature bacon starter – two enormous, thickly sliced rashers of bacon, cross-charred from the grill and smothered in a maple syrup sauce with finely chopped chives and thyme. The combination of sweetness and the flavour of the grill worked beautifully together – such a simple but effective slap shot to the pleasure net.

Wendy had the lobster cobb salad as a main course – a huge bowl of yummy ingredients featuring more bacon, egg, diced avocado, romaine and radicchio, cherry tomatoes and a generous amount of lightly poached lobster – and it should be generous at $34 a pop. They toss it with a tangy blue cheese dressing and while lobster and blue cheese isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think of collaborative gustatory epiphanies it actually works very well. Sommelier Jonathan MacCalder picked a good Chablis as accompaniment and everything was happy on that side of the table.

miso-glazed black cod with chanterelles and creamed corn

On my side, too. The fish of the day was miso-glazed black cod, a dish that matched the retro mood of most of the menu. Chef Pelley executed it most delicately, just slipping the fish into wood smoke for four minutes to give it a whisper of the forest before roasting it off very quickly in a hot oven. It was impeccable – moist and flaky with the miso glaze very subtly achieved, just a light gilding on the surface of the fish. Again the accompaniments were simple but delicious – a great many golden chanterelles from the west coast and a purée of creamed corn that was as smooth as bechamel. We finished by sharing a sticky toffee pudding – definitely one of the best I’ve ever had – right up there with the version I once rhapsodized about at Ravine winery in Niagara. That one was made by Ravine’s pastry cook, Amy Pelley, who is Graham Pelley’s wife and he managed to persuade her to part with the recipe, much to E11even’s benefit. Crowned with vanilla ice cream, the steamed pudding was light and fluffy but imbued with a sense of butter. And then that delightful game! If the Leafs and the Habs do meet in the first round of the playoffs, we could be in for more treats.

The Inspirato Dal Maestro in all its glory

Fellow restaurant geeks and industry cv nerds, this paragraph is for you. Everyone else, skip to para 2. Ame > Toronto Temperance Society > The Ritz Carlton > Lucid > The Museum Tavern > and now the L-eat group of properties featuring Paese and L-Eat Express… ace bartender and mixologist Moses McIntee gets around. Which is good because it has dragged me out of the house, following him hither and yon over the years. At Lucid, he was heavily into molecular mixology – lots of flasks and frozen gases. At The Museum Tavern it was more about barrel-aged cocktails (O M G – that aged Negroni!). Then, a couple of weeks ago, he left to join the group of businesses operated by Tony Loschiavo, an influential and excellent group including Paese (almost 25 years old, up on Bathurst), the new Paese on King Street West, L-eat Catering and L-eat Express. Tony himself handles all the wine stuff for his establishments – he is a brilliant sommelier, avid collector, dedicated vertical-vintage fan of such immortal luminaries as Quintarelli, Tignanello, etc, and also one of the very good guys in this tricksy hospitality business. Moses is his new Bar Director – and therein lies the meat of this posting.

As a sort of announcement of his latest position, Moses has made public (“shared” as we say in the merry, bustling world of social media) a flipbook of new, original, seasonal cocktails that he has created for Paese on King Street West. If you click here, http://snack.to/ft3l48fm, the book, with all its fascinating recipes and plangent background anecdotes, will miraculously appear! Meanwhile, let me offer some pictures of the Inspirato Dal Maestro cocktail (gin, Campari, orange juice, prosecco granita) manifesting itself before your very eyes. The finished version stands proudly at the top; the necessary steps below. I’ll leave you to imagine the swirling flavours you would experience if you made your way to Paese and ordered the cocktail from Moses himself… Consider it a commandment.

Step one

Step 2

Down in Niagara and in need of lunch, I ended up at the restaurant at Peninsula Ridge winery on the Beamsville Bench. You can’t miss the house, a handsome, turreted, red-brick Victorian home set high on a hill with the winery buildings and carriage house behind it. The place was built in 1885 by prominent local doctor William D. Kitchen and meticulously restored by the winery’s proprietor, Norm Beal, when he bought the property in 2000. He opened up the rooms both upstairs and down but left the gorgeous original woodwork (including a fine cherrywood staircase).

I first visited in 2001, very soon after the restaurant opened. Ned Bell was the chef – a celebrity appointment following his critical successes at Accolade and Senses – and the meal he cooked for me was exceptionally good. Alas, Ned had moved on before my review had even appeared. Several chefs followed, including Niagara’s talented Ross Midgely for a couple of years. The current incumbent arrived in 2012 – a Quebec City native called Pierre Bourget who had been sous chef at the wonderful Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island before coming back east.

The restaurant was very much as I remembered it – even the same warbling, upbeat jazz playing slightly too loudly (though my chair was right underneath the speaker). Two local couples and a matched pair of businessmen shared the dining room with me. The friendly young woman who served us was surprised when I sat with my back to the window and the stunning  vista down the rolling benchlands to the lake and distant Toronto on the blue horizon. Old habits die hard. I still instinctively choose a chair that lets me see the restaurant not the view.

Manila clams with saffron broth and chorizo

Chef Bourget’s menu read well – there was plenty to tempt. The wine list sticks to Peninsula Ridge’s own wines with 18 offered by the glass, including the limpid, aromatic, mineraly Wismer vineyard Sauvignon Blanc. I began with a hearty dish of tender, juicy Manila clams steamed in a rich saffron broth with little chunks of peppery chorizo. Espalette pepper added sweet capsicum flavours while a concassé of fresh tomato lightened the overall weight. Chef had sprinkled pea sprouts and chopped chives over the top and finished the dish with a slice of toasted multigrain baguette as a crouton spread with pungent Kalamata olive tapenade – a nice bitter counterpoint to the spicy sweetness of the broth.

A notably tender fillet of arctic char, sweetened with a marinade of maple syrup and grainy mustard, was served on a cedar plank. Flanking the fish on one side was a mound of fingerling potatoes, lightly smoked then roasted off in duck fat until they were soft inside, crispy on the surface – quite the yummiest potatoes I’ve had in ages. On the other side was a cornucopia of vegetables – three spears of crunchy white asparagus, a muddle of soft red pepper strips like a sweet peperonata, a noble stalk of green kale. A garnish of purple basil leaves made their own aromatic contribution.

Both dishes were served piping hot, which is always attractive, and though there was nothing unconventional about the ideas, execution was pretty much flawless. Ditto dessert. There were five to choose from and I ended up with sticky toffee fig pudding – a dense cakey puck that really did taste of figs glazed with a toffee sauce. Crumbled sponge toffee and a scattering of berries shared the plate, along with a serving of walnut praline ice cream.

All in all, most satisfactory. The Restaurant at Peninsula Ridge is open for lunch and dinner Wednesday to Saturday and for Sunday brunch. 5600 King St. W., Beamsville, 905-563-0995.

Mathematics – especially geometry – cannot lie. This chocolate bar lasts forever.