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June 27, 2011

Pic Nic Wine Bar – a Queen Street East charmer

pic nic wine bar

Pic Nic Wine Bar has 25 wines by the glass to choose from.

So last year I put together a list of the five best places to picnic in and around Toronto. I listed the standards — High Park, the island — and a couple of spots outside the city — Belfountain and Kelso Park — and to round it out I had some fun and threw in Pic Nic, the Riverside/Leslieville wine bar that deserves to be recognized as one of the standout places in town.

A couple of months later, I walked in again and the little article was clipped to the restaurant’s front door on 747 Queen Street East, and owner Ian Risdon, when I met him, expressed his gratitude with real thoughtfulness and grace — which doesn’t always happen when you publish articles that praise a place.

Last Monday, I got to know Ian and his girlfriend Seika Gray, who helps run the restaurant, a lot better as I shared dinner with them, along with Sarika Sehgal, a mutual friend who happens to be a talented writer and photographer (you know her as the former CBC and Toronto 1 anchor), CBC arts reporter Jelena Adzic and photographer extraordinaire/significant other Julia Pelish.

On previous visits, I stuck to Pic Nic’s outstanding charcuterie platter, the main draw. One of the places I missed when I moved from Vancouver was Salt, the acclaimed wine bar and charcuterie restaurant that’s helped clean up Blood Alley in Gastown. Discovering Pic Nic filled that void. Like Salt, Pic Nic offers a diverse cheese selection and meat choices that range from chorizo and prosciutto to amazing pates that Seika makes. For $22, you get a large serving that can easily be split between two people.

READ ABOUT THE DRAKE’S NEW DINING ROADSHOW

ian risdon and seika gray of pic nic

Ian Risdon and Seika Gray of Pic Nic keep guests smiling.

Unlike Salt and other charcuterie restaurants, Pic Nic puts plenty of other choices on its menu besides meats and cheeses. On Monday, Ian got us tasting several of them. The crusted prawns ($10), chicken quesadillas ($9, I think) and wonderfully flavourful scallops ($11, best I’ve had in town hands-down) are all delicious. Ian buys the seafood from Daily Seafood in Riverside. He told me the restaurant, which just celebrated its third birthday, is curing more and more of its meats in-house and Seika is also trying to make her own cheese. Chef Christine Vyhnal formerly worked at the Four Seasons Whistler, recently named the only five-diamond CAA hotel in the country.

We rounded it out with two kinds of divine truffles: peppercorn and hazelnut. Plus enough bottles of wine to leave the bicycle rider among us wobbling back to the Danforth.

It was a great evening that has left my objectivity completely compromised as far as Pic Nic goes. So if you don’t believe me (or Sarika or Jelena) when it’s reported that Ian and Seika are terrific people whose wonderful restaurant you will be happy to patron, take it from Paris.

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June 25, 2011

Drake’s Dining Roadshow takes you to school

Malcolm Travis and Cumbrae steak from the Drake

Server (and sax player) Malcolm Travis parades Cumbrae steaks around the newly opened Dining Roadshow.

General manager Bill Simpson and the Drake Hotel staff never stop looking for new ways to introduce their sense of retro fun to the city. Case in point, the overhauled dining room, a space that always seemed a little imposing anyhow — was it part of the lounge or not? — is now called the Drake Dining Roadshow and its décor has been completely revamped.

On Wednesday, Simpson, executive chef Anthony Rose and his team introduced the new concept, which will feature a rotating menu, to invited guests and media. The Drake is billing it as a pop-up restaurant, although that’s not quite accurate. Its physical location will remain in the dining room but the restaurant’s theme and cuisine will change every two or three months. Pop-up restaurants got their name because they moved about, often using social media to tell people where and when the next dinner would take place. In the Drake’s scheme, it’s the cuisine and theme that alters.

The first few months, until September 4, the dining room will be themed around “Summer School,” with menus that arrive in red duotangs (never thought you’d see one of those again, eh), juice boxes with spiked lemonade (very Bart Simpson), and bookshelves with sports trophies and black-and-white class photos. After “Summer School” is out, the Roadshow will take a couple of days to transform again into 1940’s California Chinatown, just in time for TIFF.

“The Drake is very much a never-ending story,” Simpson told me a few months back when I interviewed him. “We call it an ecosystem because we carry out so many aspects of hospitality, and the cultural aspects whether it’s art or music or reading or dining, keep evolving.”

DRAKE HOTEL TRIVIA NIGHT A HIT

As with most things the Drake does, the Dining Roadshow is thick with kitsch. Salt dispensers are shaped like Rubik’s cubes, one cocktail (the $16 Nurse’s Office) is squeezed into your glass through a frightening metallic syringe and a “glee club” (the eight members of Retrocity) appear midway through dinner to sing a cappella tunes from the ’80s.

Such style usually works at the Drake (1150 Queen Street West) in part because the quality of the food and experience is satisfying, so you buy into an aesthetic that somewhere else might make you groan at the campyness. To keep your patrons going along with your vision takes a fine balance, and my impression of the “Summer School” restaurant is that it’s a little hit and miss.

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June 11, 2011

Cool Hand Luc makes ice cream a hot item on King West

Luc Essiambre of Cool Hand Luc in Toronto

Luc Essiambre brings great ice cream to King West with Cool Hand Luc, which opened on June 3.

Luc Essiambre is the latest entrepreneur to give King Street West a little scoop of happiness. Last week, he started serving up ice cream at Cool Hand Luc, a lower-level shop a block and a half east of Bathurst that adds some wholesomeness to this clubby neighbourhood.

He said he doesn’t drink alcohol, which meant that “at night the only people walking the streets were me and the homeless.” He opened Cool Hand Luc in the same building where he lives at 545 King West to give the area something different as well as a place everyone can enjoy.

And who doesn’t enjoy ice cream?

The grand opening on June 3 featured free tastings from his selection of premium ice cream, frozen yogourt and sorbet. Luc gets his ice cream from Bobcaygeon-based Kawartha Dairy, working with the distributor to deliver the flavours he wants. The ice creams are all-natural, gluten-free and come from fair trade ingredients, he said. The vegan-friendly sorbets come from a distributor in Montreal.

“I worked in the ice cream business for six years, so I know what flavours sell,” he said after handing over a cone topped with a scoop of Wolf Paws (vanilla ice cream with chocolate butter fudge and brownie pieces … yeah, it was yum — and it’ll sell).

Luc said he eventually will transition to making his own ice cream, but for now wanted to make sure he could get the best ice cream he could, which is why he went with Kawartha Dairy, a family-owned company that’s been around for 74 years.

At Cool Hand Luc, a single scoop with a cone is $3.50, a double scoop $6.14 and a triple scoop $7.44. A kiddie scoop comes in at about $2.50. The store’s open daily from 11 a.m. til late, which is probably around 9 p.m. or so. In winter, Luc will offer soups, as well as keep some bins of ice cream around.

These are just some of the roughly two-dozen choices at Cool Hand Luc (as listed by Kawartha Dairy on its website):

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June 10, 2011

WVRST is best on King Street

Aldo Lanzillotta at WVRST

Cheerful Aldo Lanzillotta has given Toronto a reason to smile with WVRST. (Julia Pelish photo)

You’re going to love this place.

On May 26, Aldo Lanzillotta opened the doors on WVRST, serving Toronto something new and refreshingly unpretentious. It’s about sausages and beer, and is done in the sort of inclusive atmosphere that defines the best of our city.

Long communal tables that encourage touching fill the 4,000-square-foot space at 609 King Street West, just east of Bathurst. A striking bright red wall is adorned with the restaurant’s name on one side of the room and on the other is a sleek bar that pours out 16 draft beers (Weihenstephan hefeweizen and Urthel IPA among them) and 15 bottles that include Dieu du Ciel’s Corne du Diable ($7) and Derniere Volonte ($7). Strings of tiny light bulbs hang from black wires overhead, a DJ spins a mix of funky tunes, and Aldo and his cheerful staff walk around making sure empties are cleared and the tables remain uncluttered. On the far end of the room is the starring attraction: Trays of plump sausages behind a case, presented the way you might expect to see them at a butcher’s shop.

These aren’t anything like you’d find at Loblaws, Whole Foods or even the St. Lawrence Market, though. Lanzillotta has created a line of wildly interesting and delicious combinations. The Duck sausage includes foie gras and maple flavours, the Bison has blueberry and maple, the Wild Boar features mushrooms and tea. There’s also Guinea Fowl, Pheasant, Rabbit, Venison and Kangaroo sausages. All of the game meats are $9. Vegetarian Bratwurst and Kielbasa are $7 each, and so are the three poultry choices (two types of Chicken and a superb Turkey/Chicken with chilies and cilantro). Six varieties of traditional sausages are just $6. (Check the menu for the full list.)

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May 20, 2011

The Drake spins out more fun – Lemonade Stand, Summer School and Trivia

Lemonade Stand at the DrakeThe Drake Hotel is a favourite spot for a lot of us in Toronto — not least of all because it never stands still. For the May long weekend they’ve debuted their Lemonade Stand on the always-fun Sky Yard patio. You can order up a Lavender Lemonade ($11), which includes Sobieski vodka, lavender syrup and lemonade, as part of the “Summer School” program that encourages the sort of behaviour that might have landed you in summer school back in the day. With the weather warming up, sort of, things will be packed up on the second deck as usual. Catch you there over the weekend.

Lavender Lemonade from the Drake

Lavender Lemonade from the Drake

And here’s my story that ran in the Toronto Star a couple of weeks back about the Drake Trivia Night on Wednesdays.

DRAKE TRIVIA – WHERE NERDS AND HIPSTERS MEET

What stumps Toronto’s trivia guy is a question that most pertains to him: How big will his competition grow?

Each Wednesday since August, Terrance Balazo has set up his laptop in a booth at the Drake Hotel reserved for DJs and prepared to unleash 30 or so questions on a suspecting audience. Within the past eight weeks, Trivia Night at the Drake has been sold out three times, with close to 200 people filling the hotel’s lounge restaurant to capacity. A March edition in the middle of Canadian Music Fest brought in the largest audience yet, according to the host. Participants pay $2 each and most play in teams of two to four, answering questions that range from the obscure (what country’s flag is entirely green?) to Balazo’s version of Name That Tune, which will test your sanity as well as your recall, and queries tied to hilarious visual clips (watching William Shatner speaking in Esperanto in a scene from “Incubus” was better comedy than Charlie Sheen provided in Toronto recently).

“I’m surprised how full it is every week,” says Balazo, who is also an actor and the artistic director of Cow Over Moon Children’s Theatre. “I don’t think the kind of night it is is what people go to the Drake for traditionally.”

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May 7, 2011

Paris travel tips from Canadians living abroad

The Marais area in Paris

The Marais is one of the areas Canadians living in Paris recommend you visit.

PARIS — Many Canadians are living the dream of spending extended time in the City of Light — some have even made it their permanent home. They offered me an insider’s view of Paris — from how to get the best meals at the best prices to what it’s really like to live here — and you’ll read about their thoughts on this site and in the Toronto Star’s Travel section in the next couple of months. For now, here are some of the best travel tips I received from those expats while spending time with some of them during this visit that I am wrapping up.

Food: The travel tip you’re most likely to take advantage of is this one from Dave Holmes: “When you go to a bistro, order the special of the day. You’re probably not going to go wrong. That’s what they’ve bought fresh that day and you can count on it being good.” Otherwise, he says, you might get something the restaurant has in the freezer that they just re-heat. Dave and his wife, Sarah, moved from Vancouver a couple of years ago and, being foodies, have enjoyed Parisian cuisine. They count a meal at Le Chateaubriand — recently named the top restaurant in France and the ninth best in the world by Restaurant Magazine — as their most memorable in Paris.

Gems you may not have heard of: Yvonne Martin, an interior designer from Toronto, introduced me to O’Neil, believed to be the first microbrewery in Paris. “Sometimes I just need a beer,” she says, and O’Neil serves four kinds — blonde, blanche, brune and amber. You’re sure to find one you like. The blanche was terrific. We didn’t try the food; Yvonne says it is only so-so. O’Neil is on the Left Bank, near the Latin Quarter. Other recommendations include the scene on Canal Saint Martin, walking Buttes-Chaumont Parc and living it up in the Marais. (More on those spots in the future.)

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April 18, 2011

Noma tops World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards again — plus read my picks

Bellevue Brasserie in St. Petersburg, Russia

Caviar and champagne at Bellevue Brasserie in St. Petersburg, Russia. The restaurant was one of my picks for the World's 50 Best.

[As published in the Toronto Star on April 18, 2011.]

Skim through the list of the world’s best restaurants and you won’t find one from Canada. No Langdon Hall, Rouge, West, North 44 or any favourites in Montreal or Vancouver Island. That’s not only discouraging for the chefs and restaurant owners here, it’s a shock to the man who’s been championing Canada’s culinary scene.

Steve Dolinsky, an acclaimed food reporter from Chicago, is the chairperson for the Mid-United States/Canada region of Restaurant Magazine’s World’s 50 Best judging academy. This year, Dolinsky made sure there were more Canadian-based judges than ever, which he thought would lead to more of this country’s restaurants making the grade. But the two establishments that scored positions on Restaurant Magazine’s World’s Best list last year — Rouge (60) in Calgary and Cambridge’s venerable Langdon Hall (77) — dropped out of the rankings for 2010. No Canadian restaurant has made the top 50 since 2003, when Michael Stadtländer’s Eiginsenn Farm from Singhampton placed 28th, a year after coming in the top 10.

“There’s no Canadian restaurant in the top 100 and that stuns me,” says Dolinsky, who was in London, England, where this year’s rankings were revealed at Guildhall on Monday. “With more judges from Canada than ever and with those judges being from all over the country, the only thing that I can think of is the votes were spread out. One restaurant may have gotten a vote here, another may have gotten two there, so things may not have been as concentrated as they were before. I’m really surprised there wasn’t more consensus.”

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April 18, 2011

Origin a ‘solid’ Toronto restaurant — and it could be a brand

Claudio Aprile at Origin

Claudio Aprile says Origin's menu is designed for short attention spans.

When I asked Claudio Aprile if the eclectic, tapas-style dishes served at Origin marks the way dining will be in the future, he said no. Origin is about now.

“It’s designed for short attention spans. That’s what our society is about,” said the chef who also operates Colborne Lane, long considered among the best restaurants in Toronto.

I’d been meaning to get to Origin, which is at King and Church, since it opened last year and finally made it there twice in a four-day period this month thanks to media events. The food came at us fast, in one satisfying wave after another. Taste is a personal thing and Aprile’s cuisine — which is innovative, sophisticated and often brave — agrees with me. So I wanted to find what others thought of the experience at Origin: of the taste, the price, the portion sizes.

The most repeated word was “solid.”

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