Blogs

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. And you could be, too, if you score a cookbook under the tree for someone who might prepare one of its recipes for you.

Herewith, a selection of literary-culinary combos from some of Toronto’s great restaurant chefs, for the kitchen dwellers on your list:

Great Food at Home, Mark McEwan

This first bookish foray by this renown Toronto chef and Food Network host digs deeply into McEwan’s experiences heading up North 44, Bymark and One. The comfort-food-heavy hardcover features such trademark recipes as the Bymark Burger and a wintertime venison stew with mashed potatoes.

3 Chefs: The Kitchen Men, Michael Bonacini, Massimo Capra and Jason Parsons
This trio of chefs from Cityline come together with this lively book celebrating three distinct cooking styles. Italian, French and British recipes—all of them practical enough to actually imagine pulling off in your own kitchen—come to vivid life in this hardcover celebration of the variety of life available to us through food.

French Food My Way, Marc Thuet

This French-trained Toronto-landed chef, with the larger-than-life persona and the winning concept behind “Conviction Kitchen,” offers a seasonal approach to 100 sophisticated recipes in this big book. Would-be apprentices need to keep their wits about them, though, with some challenging dishes, to say nothing of access to a slew of pretty far-flung ingredients (you can’t make the calf’s brains or the pigeon, after all, if you don’t have the meat)....more

There is truth in advertising after all.

An Arizona burger restaurant comes clean about the dirty reality of its fat-laden menu items with an in-your-face approach that forces diners to confront the realities of their eating habits.

Stop by the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, AZ, and be prepared for a unique experience in an environment that deliberately looks to fast-track patrons to that edifice for which they are eventually destined—the hospital—should they choose to indulge overly their tastes for the likes of its offerings.

Customers don medical gowns and admittance bracelets upon entering, whereupon they are served by “nurses” and treated, for all the world, like patients whose hearts have given in to the strain of it all.

Punch up the website for Heart Attack and watch an enormous man—the restaurant’s 570-lb. spokesman—eating a burger and sipping a shake in the company of an attending nurse....more

How did you celebrate National Sandwich Day this year? Did you go hoagie or Rueben? And what of your plans for National Roast Suckling Pig Day, coming up fast on its crusts? Will you host a luau, perhaps? Befriend a farmer in the hopes of plucking from his barnyard your plump pink main course? Better start sourcing pineapple glaze recipes.

There’s a whack of so-called “national food days” scattered across the calendar, some decidedly more bizarre than others. How each of these edibles—which span a truly vast range, from the chocolate éclair (celebrate it on June 22!) to mouldy cheese (on October 9, but the memory lingers)—came to enjoy such distinction, no one knows....more

Sparks were flying at the Carlu Saturday night as notoriously blue-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay whipped the city’s finest culinary forces into a frenzy in his role as moderator of Chef’s Challenge: The Ultimate Battle for a Cure.

The fundraising effort, which raised a full $1.1 million for Mount Sinai’s breast and ovarian cancer research, featured five cooking teams, each led by a professional chef. The hotshot quintet—David Rocco, Mark McEwan, Jamie Kennedy, Massimo Capra and Lynn Crawford—squared off against each other in a three-course cooking contest sprung from Ramsay’s own recipes. Their teams were composed of 50 regular folk who’d earned their spots in the kitchen by raising at least $2,500 for the cause....more

enRoute, Air Canada’s high-flying in-flight magazine, has announced its annual list of the country’s best new restaurants—and two of TO’s finest have been invited to soar with the eagles.

The winning establishments had to have been opened between summer 2009 and summer 2010. Beyond that, the sky was the limit. The victorious Toronto pair is part of a convocation of top-notch eateries that includes, all told, three restaurants from BC, one from Alberta, two from Quebec and four from Ontario.

Toronto’s Local Kitchen & Wine Bar—fourth on the list—was singled out for its “earnest energy and post-pretentious attitude.” Down to the name, the judges said, this cozy...more

For some folks, a visit to the neighbourhood eatery is every bit the life-and-death encounter a game of cat and mouse at Union Station is. But thanks to a new electronic initiative, things are getting on track for Torontonians whose food allergies threaten to derail them.

AllerDine.com is a vast, useful database that identifies those restaurants that endorse allergy-safe cooking practices and menus. The list encompasses establishments across North America, arranged according to city. Toronto is among its recent additions....more

Ghosts and ghouls and Sarah Palin be damned. The standout costume of the 2010 Halloween season is the scariest of them all: one that depicts the terrifying reality that is processed food.

Dress up as a KFC Double Down or an oversized Pizza Pop, say, and then drop by a Chipotle Mexican Grill where your efforts will be rewarded with something decidedly better for you than that which your spirited getup represents....more

Toronto’s restaurant industry has served up city politicians with a steaming order of dissatisfaction, along with a side of frustration.

Such is the special of the day for Toronto restaurateurs, who have expressed their displeasure with local politicos’ apparent lack of interest in, and commitment to, the local foodservice trade, an industry that draws some $5.8 billion into the city’s economy annually.

They’ve done so via a new survey conducted by the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association in anticipation of the coming municipal election. It was an ambitious endeavour, undertaken with some 140 participants representing the city’s 854 foodservice businesses. The results are telling....more

It’s all too often a thankless task, the business of serving others. But as long suffering as the waitstaff segment of our population is, it’s also the one with the best stories.

It’s why filmmaker Michael Sparaga is training the lens on them in his new film, Servitude. Scheduled for wide release next fall, this comic account of waiters in rebellion is a semiautobiographical love letter to the profession. Sparaga wrote the first draft 10 years ago while still slinging T-bones at the Keg. 

The story follows five steakhouse servers who learn they’re going to be fired, and assert their revenge by assuming control of the place for a night. 

Sparaga, a writer and producer on the indie superhero flick Sidekick, says he’s surprised there aren’t more movies about serving. “I mean, more people have been servers than ever played professional baseball—and look how many movies there are about that.”

Given a choice, who wouldn’t opt for the best of something? I mean, who’s going to say, “Naw, I’ll take the third-best slice of rum cake,” or “the second-from-last-best seat for the game?” Not a soul.

And so, in the spirit of these no-contest superlatives, Dine.to has published its list of Toronto’s best restaurants, 2010 edition.

The highlights of this inventory of the city’s very finest restaurant, pub and hospitality space experiences are many, and so tricky to point to. Suffice it to say that the list—produced by Toronto’s premier on-line restaurant destination—covers all bases. All told, there are three dozen best-of categories in this comprehensive collection of restaurant-sprung incomparables....more