My
faux reindeer antlers just wouldn’t stand up
straight. I fussed with the bright red Styrofoam
hat on my head, but the band curled so it looked
like I had lobster claws clutching my ears.
No matter,
everyone else at Toronto’s Historic Distillery
District’s Christmas
Market looked equally foolish, as thousands
of revelers wandered the shops, bars and
restaurants of the Mill Street plaza decorated to
resemble an Old World European village circa 1400,
an annual tradition here in Toronto, with
arts and crafts booths line the courtyards,
selling stockings, decorations, candies, and
toys. It also includes a beer and
mulled wine garden, plus booths offering vodka and
rum, and a stiff shot is welcome, as it’s really
cold. December temperatures in Toronto dip to an
average of 25° F, but due to winds and snow
off neighboring Lake Ontario, the wind chill
can cut to the bone. Still, a winter visit
to this largest city in Canada can be wonderful,
especially when one plans on plenty of food
adventures and meals in warm venues and
restaurants.
The streets are decorated with
snowmen, some 20 statues each year sculpted to
more than seven feet tall by local artists. More
appealing was making my own snowmen out of cake batter and frosting
inside, at Le Dolci
Canadiana Baking Class, held in a swank
studio across from Trinity Bellwoods Park in
Dundas West Village. Owner Lisa Sanguedolci leads
two-hour-long sessions on creating cupcakes
decorated any way you like, from the Canada maple
leaf, to Prada handbag, to my choice, an
unfortunately demented-looking pony.
At the Historic
St. Lawrence Market (above) on
Front Street East in Old Town, you need never step
foot outside once you pass the life size cardboard
cut-out of a Canadian Mountie at the main entry.
More than 120 food merchants and artisans have
occupied these two grand buildings since 1803, and
if you tour with local historian and Toronto guide
Bruce Bell,
you’ll get details about such things as, “what the
heck is a peameal bacon sandwich?”
Stop at the three-decades-old
Carousel Bakery, and you’ll find that while the
thick slab of salty meat stuffed unceremoniously
in a squishy bun isn’t pretty, it’s exceptionally
tasty. In olden times, the cured ham loin called
"peameal bacon" (below)
was crusted in dried, ground yellow peas for
preservation; now it's rolled in ground yellow
cornmeal, fried crispy on the edges, slathered in
freakishly hot horseradish mustard.
The market also beckons
with longstanding favorites like Alice Boychn,
famous for pies, tarts and jams since 1926; Brown
Brothers Meats, in business since 1895; and
Colwell Farms, supplying fresh produce since 1929.
There is kangaroo tail (“we gotta eat,” the vendor
shrugged), caviar, sushi, and a store selling
nothing but rice from all around the world.
If I wasn’t in Toronto to get
snow on my boots, I could at least stare at the
stuff from the touristy-but-still-must-visit
360-degree-around
The
Restaurant (below) at the
CN Tower on Front Street West, where the dining
room slowly revolves for a panoramic view of the
city more than 1,151 feet
below. Need directions to the place? Just look up
– a new LED lighting system courses up and down
the structure, in a microprocessor-controlled
system that can produce 16.7 million colors and is
viewable from much of the city.
Under
executive chef Peter George, the Restaurant menu
is anything but tired touristy fare, however,
striving to showcase Canadian ingredients in prix
fixe ($60 to $72) or à la carte options
that include Niagara prosciutto, smoked olives and
tomato crostini,
a warm smoked King Cole duck and French bean
salad, or Spattlecock Cornish game hen with black
olives and orange, warm root vegetable salad and
cider vinegar jus.
The décor is old school
classic, to be sure, with white tablecloths in a
sea of dark woods and earth-tone fabrics, but chef
George gets adventurous with ingredients, such as
smoked Portobello and grilled Halloumi cheese over
stone ground grits, roasted pumpkin and charred
piquillo pepper. In between courses, grab a peek
at the wine cellar in the center of the room,
featuring more than 550 labels from around the
world, with 9,000 bottles in inventory. Just fair
warning: don’t leave your purse on the immobile
window shelf next to your table – I didn’t see
mine again until dessert, when we’d completed the
entire 360° turn.
One of the newest entries to
Toronto’s luxury scene isThe
Ritz-Carlton, opened Feb. 2011 in the
financial and performing arts districts across
from Roy Thompson Hall in the shadow of the CN
Tower.The
headliner here is Toca (below) restaurant, though I
would have been happy enough to never leave my
room on the Ritz-Carlton Club Level, with the
near-round-the-clock complimentary hors d’oeuvres
and cocktails, and my
suite’s opulent tricks like a TV screen that, at
the press of a remote, appeared ghost-like beaming
from behind the bathroom mirror.
Toca is a bit confusing – it
blends techno-music lounge dining in the front
(really, Let’s
Get Physical to a synthesizer beat) and a
formal experience in the back, complete with
“ma’am" and "sir” or “how ya' doing,” depending on
where you sit. A year ago, the menu was more
Canadian and traditionally laid-out with
appetizers, entrees and such, but now it’s more
Mediterranean tapas, with a handful of larger
plates.
Early on, the experience didn’t
match the elegance of the interior accented by a
walk-through pastry corridor and glass cheese
cave, nor did the prices, such as the $20 lobster
fish and chips appetizer I enjoyed, a $68 Alberta
bison rib-eye, and a $12 apple tart. The wine
recommendation was “whatever we have open,” my
server said, tucking the leather check sleeve down
the back of his pants, and stacking plates at the
table as he cleared dishes.
Now, the concept is more
balanced in its more casual mood, and some of the
best dishes include shareable plates of goat's
cheese agnolotti
decorated with parmesan shavings, or a Port Hardy
B.C octopus salad, the tender-chewy meat
inventively brightened with apples, black olives
and celery.
For a more local-feeling meal, Sassafraz (left)
deliversnicely,
sequestered amid an area of Victorian row houses
in Yorkville. Inside, the setting is pure
sleekness and style, from expanses of white walls
and ceilings framing taupe tables and banquettes,
to soaring accents of brick, glass and
stories-tall living plants. Service is
professional but comfortable, with staff clearly
proud to say that the duck comes from Ontario’s
Kountry Road Farms, and that wild salmon and
house-cured and smoked.
This is French-inspired
Canadian cuisine, tempting with brassica curry
roasted cauliflower, caramelized Brussels sprouts,
crisp speck and spiced almonds ($13), and an
earthy-fabulous platter of winter vegetables
including borlotti
beans, fennel and confit celery salad with
truffle vinaigrette, roast celeriac and parsnip,
baby turnips, sunchoke puree and fresh shaved
truffle ($21) – just add the excellent fresh-baked
bread and a few glasses of wine, and it’s an
evening, lunch or weekend brunch well-spent.
Over at La
Société(below) in the
Colonnade at Bloor St. West, owner Charles
Khabouth adds a bit of theater to a French dining
experience. Imagine a Hollywood version of a
Parisian bistro, resplendent with burgundy leather
booths, black walls accented with dark woods and
gold ceilings inset in stained glass, an ornate
carved bar, and servers in classic black and white
vests and ties. It’s great fun, especially
since the food is so reliably good, from the most
simple escargots and forest mushrooms in lusty
garlic cream ($18), to a superb, mild, but meaty
roasted rabbit Ballantine over sautéed
Swiss chard and heirloom carrots moistened in a
delightful late harvest Riesling jus ($29).
To get a taste of more
authentic Toronto history, I headed to lunch one
afternoon at the Old Mill
Inn & Spa (below), west
of downtown above Humber Bay. This boutique hotel
features just 57 rooms and suites, so the 300-seat
fine dining restaurant has dwarfed the property as
a destination in itself since its
inception more than 95 years ago. The room
alone is worth a visit, to take in the storybook
stone walls and rich tapestries, the lush oriental
carpets, white tablecloths, and royal dark woods
warmed by votive candles, flickering fireplaces
and velvety light from leaded courtyard windows
overlooking the Humber valley parklands. By
comparison, the menu is somewhat simple, in cozy,
if eclectic dishes such as “The Platter to Share”
bringing grilled calamari, Portobello flatbread,
sliders duos with homemade ketchup, and Brie De
Meaux ($29). Local free range chicken is roasted
to a crackly skin, then lusciously paired with red
wine braised beef cheeks, parsnip foam and a dash
of apple mustard butter ($26), while crisp Arctic
char rests atop sweet but satisfying quinoa of
rose-ivory color grains, a touch of Prosecco, capers, and raisin-red
onion agrodolce
($34).
Another
taste of Toronto heritage lives on indelibly at
the Historic Distillery District, where I finally
shed my flabby reindeer antlers for the more
grown-up mood of Pure Spirits (below). The
dining room of this noisy, busy bar occupies a
long, dark, narrow alley of an eatery trimmed in
stone walls, secluded booths and communal wood
tables. Nearly one hundred years ago, so the story
goes, when temperance societies and prohibition
ruled America, whiskey barrels began their
clandestine journeys here before setting across
the oceans. Today, the spirits still take center stage at the
28-seat long bar, but food is worthy, too, in pub
eats like fresh fish, oysters and beef, prepared
with a twist.
The mac ‘n’ cheese, for
example, is worth its $21 price tag thanks to a
generous portion of smoked salmon and assorted
seafood mixed in with the mascarpone enriched
noodles. PEI mussels ($15) get a flavorful boost
from Chinese black bean sauce dotted
with onion, fried garlic and ginger, and some
dishes showcase Ontario touches including a
ceviche of Lake Huron pickerel dressed in
smoked chile-orange dressing ($14), or seared ahi
tuna ($29) splashed with local "Crazy Horse"
sake atop yellowbean soy, buckwheat noodles,
asparagus and crisp taro.
One evening at the end of my
visit, a Toronto local suggested I check out the
ice skating rink at Harbourfront Centre. The
waterfront venue hosts DJ music through the
winter, for skaters to get their grooves on.
Did I mention it’s cold in
Toronto, and on the edge of the water, nearly
whip-freezing? Instead, I headed back to my room
at the Ritz, dreaming of hot toddies, the
only ice being the cubes in my Champagne bucket.
Now eight years old, Abboccato
long ago developed a large and consistent Theater
District following (it's opposite City Center),
and, with a $35 pre-fixe dinner of antipasti,
pasta or main course, and dessert, it is certainly
one of the best buys in that neighborhood for
those heading off to "Newsies" or "Jersey
Boys." It also services the area as a place
for breakfast and a quick $25 three-course
lunch.
At the time Abboccato opened, I
thought it a good enough addition to the West Side
Midtown, but I wasn't excited enough to
return. In the years that have followed the
menu has changed, but Chef Jim Botsacos, who is
also chef at nearby Molyvos, on behalf of the
Livanos Restaurant Group, has refined and updated
the menu and cooking here.
The décor is still a bit
odd: the front dining room (right) has
tufted fabrics against the walls next to rough
brickwork that might be found in a farm country
trattoria. Tablecloths have vanished in
place of place mats. With just 75 seats, it has an
appealing intimacy, especially after the mad rush
of exiting theatergoers ends at 7:45.
Our table of four shared
a good number of dishes from a menu with just
enough options in every category, including little
plates called cicchetti,
like the juicy arancini
rice ball fritters with a lavishing of mushrooms
and truffles. Crisply fried seafood was well
prepared, and a $15 assortment of Italian meats
and light gnocco
fritters was extremely generous, the meats
well sliced, the flavors distinct from one
another. We did not try the grilled octopus
that night but if it's anything like the paragon
rendering at the Greek restaurant Molyvos, by all
means don't miss it. That goes, too, for the
grilled fish of the day, which may be had on the
bone or de-boned, glistening with olive oil and
lemon.
It was so good to see cannelloni on
the menu, once a cliché of mediocre
Italian-American restaurants here restored to a
delicious melding of pasta crêpes stuffed
with braised pork, olives, tomato, and ricotta salata.
Tagliatelle
came with a bolognese sauce that respected the
tradition of long-simmering, and the rarely seen casunziei (left) a
Venetian ravioli stuffed with beets and
Gorgonzola, was a revelation, sweet, luscious,
woodsy. Ravioli del plin stuffed with ricotta,
with tomato sauce and basil pesto, were not,
however, like the delicate little nubbins of
pasta you find in their home in Piedmont.
My favorite of the entrees was
another oldie here made into a goodie--veal
saltimbocca layered with prosciutto, sage, tomato,
arugula and a rich Marsala sauce. Roasted
chicken took on interest from roasted peppers and
Gaeta olives, and a pan-seared veal chop,
thick as any in town, came with caramelized
Brussels sprouts, oven-roasted tomatoes and pancetta
bacon.
Of the desserts, the best were
old-fashioned cannoli, made fresh, crisp, with a
truly rich. not too sweet ricotta cream, candied
fennel, and Amarena cherries. Tiramisù was
a cup of too much mascarpone and not enough cocoa
flavor.
Abboccato's winelist is
serviceable, with enough familiar names to
please a guest who drinks little else, along with
some admirable small estates at reasonable prices
under $50.
If Abboccato breaks no new
ground in NYC Italian restaurants--and redeeming
dishes like cannelloni while adding unique ones
like cazunziei
shows that it could and should--it does what so
many others do with a good deal more panache and a
whole lot more flavor.
Abboccato is open daily for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Antipasti run $7-$18,
pastas (full portions) $22-$24, main courses $26-$37.
❖❖❖
FIRST SIGHTING OF
JESUS IN A TORTILLA FOR 2013
Rene Cantu of San Antonio, Tx, says the
burn marks on his tortilla resemble Jesus Christ. "I've been having a lot of
bad stuff happen to me," said Cantu. "Ever
since this happened it's been good luck to
me. Every time I take it to the store I get a
Lotto and I win! A little Savior watching over
me." Cantu preserved the tortilla by pouring
white glue over it and keeps it wrapped in a blanket
in a box.
LIFESTYLES
OF THE RICH AND SILLY
"When I
pass a flowering zucchini plant in a garden, my heart
skips a beat."
--Gwyneth Paltrow in My Father's Daughter:
Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family &
Togetherness.
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
My
latest book, which just won the prize for best
book from International Gourmand, written with
Jim Heimann and Steven Heller,Menu Design in America,1850-1985 (Taschen
Books), has just appeared, with nearly 1,000
beautiful, historic, hilarious, sometimes
shocking menus dating back to before the Civil
War and going through the Gilded Age, the Jazz
Age, the Depression, the nightclub era of the
1930s and 1940s, the Space Age era, and the age
when menus were a form of advertising in
innovative explosions of color and modern
design.The book is
a chronicle of changing tastes and mores and
says as much about America as about its food and
drink.
“Luxuriating
vicariously
in the pleasures of this book. . . you can’t
help but become hungry. . .for the food of
course, but also for something more: the bygone
days of our country’s splendidly rich and
complex past.Epicureans
of both good food and artful design will do well
to make it their coffee table’s main
course.”—Chip Kidd, Wall Street
Journal.
“[The
menus] reflect the amazing craftsmanship that
many restaurants applied to their bills of fare,
and suggest that today’s restaurateurs could
learn a lot from their predecessors.”—Rebecca
Marx, The Village Voice.
My new book--Now in Paperback,
too--How Italian Food Conquered the
World (Palgrave Macmillan) has just won top prize 2011 from
the Gourmand
World Cookbook Awards. It is
a rollicking history of the food culture of
Italy and its ravenous embrace in the 21st
century by the entire world. From ancient Rome
to la dolce
vita of post-war Italy, from Italian
immigrant cooks to celebrity chefs, from
pizzerias to high-class ristoranti,
this chronicle of a culinary diaspora is as
much about the world's changing tastes,
prejudices, and dietary fads as about
our obsessions with culinary fashion and
style.--John Mariani
"Eating Italian will
never be the same after reading
John Mariani's entertaining and
savory gastronomical history of
the cuisine of Italy and how it
won over appetites worldwide. . .
. This book is such a tasteful
narrative that it will literally
make you hungry for Italian food
and arouse your appetite for
gastronomical history."--Don
Oldenburg, USA Today.
"Italian
restaurants--some good, some glitzy--far
outnumber their French rivals. Many of
these establishments are zestfully described
in How Italian Food Conquered the World, an
entertaining and fact-filled chronicle by
food-and-wine correspondent John F.
Mariani."--Aram Bakshian Jr., Wall Street
Journal.
"Mariani
admirably dishes out the story of
Italy’s remarkable global ascent
to virtual culinary
hegemony....Like a chef gladly
divulging a cherished family
recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the
secret sauce about how Italy’s
cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David
Lincoln Ross,
thedailybeast.com
"Equal parts
history, sociology, gastronomy, and just
plain fun, How Italian Food Conquered the
World tells the captivating and delicious
story of the (let's face it) everybody's
favorite cuisine with clarity, verve and
more than one surprise."--Colman Andrews,
editorial director of The Daily
Meal.com.
"A fantastic and fascinating
read, covering everything from the influence
of Venice's spice trade to the impact of
Italian immigrants in America and the
evolution of alta cucina. This book will
serve as a terrific resource to anyone
interested in the real story of Italian
food."--Mary Ann Esposito, host of PBS-TV's
Ciao
Italia.
"John Mariani has written the
definitive history of how Italians won their
way into our hearts, minds, and
stomachs. It's a story of pleasure over
pomp and taste over technique."--Danny Meyer,
owner of NYC restaurants Union Square Cafe,
Gotham Bar & Grill, The Modern, and
Maialino.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites:
I consider this the best and
savviest blog of its kind on the web. Potter is a
columnist for USA
Weekend, Diversion, Laptop and Luxury Spa Finder,
a contributing editor for Ski and a frequent contributor
to National
Geographic Traveler, ForbesTraveler.com
and Elle Decor.
"I’ve designed this site is for people who take
their travel seriously," says Potter. "For
travelers who want to learn about special places
but don’t necessarily want to pay through the nose for
the privilege of staying there. Because at the end
of the day, it’s not so much about five-star
places as five-star experiences."
Eating Las Vegas
is the new on-line site for Virtual Gourmet
contributor John A. Curtas., who since 1995
has been commenting on the Las Vegas food
scene and reviewing restaurants for Nevada
Public Radio. He is also the
restaurant critic for KLAS TV, Channel 8 in
Las Vegas, and his past reviews can be
accessed at KNPR.org.
Click on the logo below to go directly to
his site.
Tennis Resorts Online:
A Critical Guide to the
World's Best Tennis Resorts and Tennis Camps, published
by ROGER COX, who has spent more than two decades
writing about tennis travel, including a 17-year stretch
for Tennis magazine.
He has also written for Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, New York Magazine, Travel &
Leisure, Esquire, Money, USTA Magazine, Men's Journal,
and The Robb
Report. He has authored two books-The World's Best Tennis
Vacations (Stephen Greene Press/Viking
Penguin, 1990) and The
Best Places to Stay in the Rockies (Houghton Mifflin,
1992 & 1994), and the Melbourne (Australia) chapter
to the Wall Street
Journal Business Guide to Cities of the Pacific Rim (Fodor's
Travel Guides, 1991).
nickonwine:
An engaging, interactive
wine column by Nick Passmore, Artisanal Editor, Four
Seasons Magazine; Wine Columnist, BusinessWeek.com;
nick@nickonwine.com; www.nickonwine.com.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John
Mariani.
Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani, Robert Mariani,
John A. Curtas, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein,
Suzanne Wright,and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,
Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.