Restaurants breed like rabbits along Ossington, the city’s newest and unlikeliest restaurant row. Why it seems like only yesterday that Ossington, below College, was a hub of Vietnamese crime. Reporting on a shootout in a pho house I recall a plain clothesman giving me a crime tour of Oz, stopping only for a Vietnamese coffee in a caffe where the cop pointed out which of the customers were carrying a piece. Even now you may well stumble over yellow police tape as you as  you make  your way to such hip joints as Café Libretto, Foxley, Delux, Union. Just cross your fingers and hum luck be a lady tonight.

The entrepreneurs behind the LeVack Block resto lounge, Adam Baguely and designer Amber Honor Elson have now opened Paramour right next door. Paramour is a typical neighbourhood place,  a thirty  seater  shoebox decorated with thrift shop gentility, add a friendly bar and avid service under the command of former Splendido staffer Adly Gawad. The menu is short and to the point. Ditto wine list. We weren’t knocked out by the originality of the fare, my eyes glaze over at sight of one more goat cheese and beet salad – a dish which should be retired from all menus on the grounds of extreme triteness. Once sweet beets knew their place – pickled in a jar – but now they’re winter stars enabling our insatiable sweet teeth which isn’t good news to my companion who is now revealed as an endangered eater. She has allergies/food intolerances. Anything too sweet causes hives. She usually packs  a refractomater to test the veg. A refractometer measures the brix in veg. Brix equals sugar equals flavour. Like  great Sauternes, the sweeter the beet the more intensely flavoured.

Now a delicate Hokkaido scallop sliced thricely and placed around a little mound of julienned roots including mustardy celeriac does very nicely as the Crudo starter ($13). Roasted corn and Jalapeno hush puppies $10 dipped in chipotle mayonnaise are puffy refreshers. Particularly good garnish, a skinned deseeded jalapeno which tastes like the freshest green bean.

The second courses are more problematic. Isn’t $30 a hefty price tag for a lamb shank? The plate poises the shank, which has some way to go to achieve the desired velvetiness, on parmesan polenta and sautéed swiss chard and crispy sage leaves. OMG, my companion cries, I’m allergic to sage!  Nausea follows the first bite. The waiter assures her that the offending sage can be removed. No harm done. Word from the kitchen, Laura Malina, formerly of JK Gardiner,  is reassuring. The sage hasn’t been used in preparation. Any other allergies I ask. Tarragon. Severe respiratory problems after Bearnaise sauce. Lettuce!  The most innocent organic lettuce leaf has the potential of a weapon of mass destruction. Who knew that veg are the greatest danger on edgy Oz tonight.

I turn with relief to my New York Strip Loin au Jus  $27. Beef’s always been a friend. But what a plate! Now steak is sacred food. Steak demands protocol. It is the star of a meal and should be so treated. A pat of butter on the top, perhaps a watercress leaf or two, maybe a small grilled tomato gratin. You cut the meat yourself to the size you want. You want sides? Order em separately. But here the steak is just a lump of meat, not rare enough, and incompetently hacked into chunks. It is almost overwhelmed by Ermite (blue) cheese bread pudding, a mass of sautéed rapini under which is hidden a yellowish potato. It looks like a dog’s dinner. Even so I bet a gourmet dog would turn it down. I bet the Queen’s corgis would take a look and kick it back. “Elizabeth, we’ve told you before, we’re IAMS dogs.”

We end with a couple of just ok desserts: a super rich chocolate terrine and an apple and cardomom pastry. We barely finish them when the bill and our coats appear tableside. Timing is obviously a problem at weekends in a small restaurant. We were told to come early or late. Unwisely we picked early. Although the restaurant was cheerlessly empty until 7.30 we were given a busy table right by the kitchen door. I hate to think it was because we were two women dining. After the restaurant started filling up, we were hurried out at 8. Bad manners.

* Paramour 94 Ossington 416- 953 2356 No Wheelchair access. Dinner: food and tax for two: $111

Has New York anything to teach Toronto? See previous post

This week Susur gave an interview to the Toronto Sun  and candidly talked about his soft landing in NYC where he didn’t make much of a splash. Like let’s see Alain Ducasse or for that matter Gordon Ramsey.

Were New Yorkers ready for Susur’s Asian fusion?  “You know what, looking back … no, I don’t think they were ready,” he says.  “It’s a question of culture. On Asian cuisine they are not that advanced.” He also says, that Toronto is much more daring than New York when it comes to food.

According to  friends in NY (and according to some  Chinese diplomats and reporters) there is NO good  Chinese food in New York which clings to anachronistic dim sum joints. Reason: After the handover, Hong Kongers chose to come to Canada (a commonwealth country) rather than the US. We got the new blood and the new cooks.

“New York is always difficult,” says Lee – nailing Manhattan’s self-absorption, –  “Your idea has to be suitable for New York. No matter how creative you are, if they don’t understand, they won’t come. Tradition is really important here.”

Does he still think that New York is the hottest place on the planet for food? “No, China is to me. The food is so awesome. I had the best duck in Beijing recently. There is so much to learn from China,” he says.

Bang on Susur. Once, when the New Yorker was funny, iconoclastic, apolitical and irreverent, and Fifth Avenue was elegant and irresistible, New York was ditto. Also open to everyone. But that changed in the seventies (when I left)  as the city began its long decline. Today the governorship once occupied by FDR and Nelson Rockefeller is held by an illiterate (Gov. Paterson is blind and can’t read braille) and the city is broke. Increasingly New York has become defensive.

Suddenly it blows its horn as a great food city. Really? Not so long ago, I took a long walk around midtown looking for one of those small neighbourhood restos where i could eat simply and cheaply,and all I could find were chains like Chiplotle Grill. I finally settled for a dreck sushi place on W. 56th. The old French bistros on the West side and for that matter on Lexington in the sixties, are parodies of themselves, not a patch on local French bistros here.  New York assimilates  and Americanizes foreign food. Neither Nobu or Vong push beyond an acceptable Asian-American format.

And Toronto simply overwhelms New York in the matter of available food.  Reason: we take multiculturalism seriously so we have food from all over the world.  And a strong fresh and local movement that shows up in most shops.  Did you know that according to John Rowley, America’s oyster expert, Toronto is the best place to eat oysters — we get more varieties of oysters here (the US has health/trade issues) and they’re better presented!

So what’s New York got to teach us?

Oh I forgot the rule of the late John Hirsch, director of the Stratford Festival who said any problem and “Send for the Governor General.”

Replace GG with New York and you got the local restaurants’ cultural cringe.

So it was last week at Terroir 2010, a culinary tourism event hustled up by the U of T, New York media types headlined a panel designed to help restaurants with their profile/marketing.

Wow. How about BEGGING to be condescended to?  What Toronto doesn’t get is that New York has a vested interest in putting down everyone else. If Toronto starts looking good, squash it.

Why not get media from Chicago, a city far closer to us in every way, and a vibrant food city as opposed to one dictated by fashion.

Wait a minute, Chicagoans might talk sense. that’s not what meetings are for!

Looks OKAY

But you can’t eat it. It is for industrial use only. It was developed in collaboration with experts from the European starch industry to respond to the demand for pure amylopectin starch. Conventional potatoes produce a mixture of amylopectin and amylose starch. For many technical applications, such as in the paper, textile and adhesives industries, pure amylopectin is advantageous, but separating the two starch components is uneconomical. The industry will benefit from high-quality Amflora starch that optimizes industrial processes: it gives paper a higher gloss, and concrete and adhesives can be processed for a longer period of time. This reduces the consumption of energy, additives and raw materials such as water.

But the battle isn’t over. In 2008, the Swiss granted rights to any animal classified within a “social species”. The law requires fisherman to complete a course on how to catch fish humanely, prospective dog owners must pay for and complete training courses, flushing live goldfish is not permitted and horses must go in twos.

Ok, we all know that food reshapes us individually. But a report in the current issue of Nature tells how researchers poring over the human genome  are hypothesizing that human evolution itself is being significantly influenced by Some scientists are arguing that even more than famine dusease climatethese geno- cultural forces are the dominant mode of human evolution. Imagine, the burger is shaping the world!

Cut to the kids. The plaint is that they are now serial snackers, turning down the solid food which is “so good for you.” Now we know. They have the snacker gene. And they got it from the bossy adults. Sure adults have gone along with three squares a day for convention’s sake, but more and more they reveal themselves as snackers – in a preference for a couple of  appetizers over a second course, in the growing and cementing preference for the shared/small plate. The only thing holding back full snacker rebellion is the price of the meal. Many diners still want to see their dollarsworth in the amount of food on the plate – rather than in its quality and delight.

The proof of  theory is in the eating. Where else but Lee? This will be the first time I’ve reviewed Lee which opened in 2004 and thus before my time. Lee is the pulsing heart of the ever expanding Susur Lee empire. It’s the lab for all the experiments that have migrated to Madeline’s next door, to Shang in New York, Zentan in Washington, to Chinois Susur’s new place in Singapore.  Lee is haute snack.

Lee is  a deep crimson gambling den of a café with enchanting shadowy parrots parading along the walls. Inside, it’s all about business, a canteen configuration designed for customers to the max. I’ve never managed to sit against the wall where the light’s better and always end up in the well of the restaurant. Another beef while I’m at it, the reservation limitations. I don’t like being told I can only eat at 6.30 or 8. 30 and each time I sulk, and almost say forget it. But I don’t.Fact is Lee has  wonderful food – and even more significantly,it’s maintained the gold standard for six long years.

The menu is bare bones. Soup, Veg & Salad, Fish, Meat. The dishes are all designed to be shared and to be eaten in any order. We unpack the little porcelain tray which holds the napkin and cutlery, and before we know it, our first selection is infront of us. Service here is no slouch. We share four salty shrimps $21, crack the shells  in our mouths after dipping them in a cooling cucumber sauce.  Then a plate of four healthily pink lamb shops arrive, garnished with fried bananas, green curry lentils,  chili mint, carrot cardamom and coconut chutney $24. Could have done with double the amount of the garnishes. The coup de grace is the duck confit roll, a sumptuous medley of flavours, spiced nuts, hydrated pineapple topped with a blob of goat cheese $19. I usually find  preserved duck a stolid dish but these little nuggets of caramelized duck meat are irresisistible, bathed in a deep brown nug-fragrant sauce.

I realize I’ve now eaten more than I usually do – yet I’m not full. My guess is that small helpings, the snacks perk you up rather than satiating the senses. My hunch is that we’ve always been snackers struggling to shake off the bourgeois convention of the three squares a day which like the three act play was designed to wring order from chaos to suit the demands of the industrial world.  First a sparkling appetizer, second, a testing exploration of themes, finally, denoument (a good pastry chef). Both were shrunk versions of epic originals (Careme’s huge banquets, Shakespeare’s evening-long plays) and designed to illustrate the accepted arc of life, passages rounded with a little sleep.

But now our lives are like fever charts, the jogging needle of unpredictability which asks for constant stimulation and nutrition. My head vibrates. Snack Me says my brain.

Will this do? A pretty lacy little bowl made from rice noodles which holds sautéed jerk chicken tossed in Scotch bonnet, the blowtorch chili, sauce with ginger and mango puree $17. We have two mouthfuls apiece. Perfect.

***Lee 603 King W. 416-504 7867 no wheelchair access. Dinner for two plus tax – four dishes $104. Lee is now open for lunch.

China’s Sanlian Life Weekly magazine is publishing online Gina Mallet’s “The birth of a superchef and the art of fusion”, about Susur Lee.  http://www.lifeweek.com.cn/

. But a report in the current issue of Nature tells how researchers poring over the human genome  are hypothesizing that human evolution itself is being significantly influenced by Some scientists are arguing that even more than famine dusease climatethese geno- cultural forces are the dominant mode of human evolution. Imagine, the burger is shaping the world!

Cut to the kids. The plaint is that they are now serial snackers, turning down the solid food which is “so good for you.” Now we know. They have the snacker gene. And they got it from the bossy adults. Sure adults have gone along with three squares a day for convention’s sake, but more and more they reveal themselves as snackers – in a preference for a couple of  appetizers over a second course, in the growing and cementing preference for the shared/small plate. The only thing holding back full snacker rebellion is the price of the meal. Many diners still want to see their dollarsworth in the amount of food on the plate – rather than in its quality and delight.

The proof of  theory is in the eating. Where else but Lee? This will be the first time I’ve reviewed Lee which opened in 2004 and thus before my time. Lee is the pulsing heart of the ever expanding Susur Lee empire. It’s the lab for all the experiments that have migrated to Madeline’s next door, to Shang in New York, Zentan in Washington, to Chinois Susur’s new place in Singapore.  Lee is haute snack.

Lee is  a deep crimson gambling den of a café with enchanting shadowy parrots parading along the walls. Inside, it’s all about business, a canteen configuration designed for customers to the max. I’ve never managed to sit against the wall where the light’s better and always end up in the well of the restaurant. Another beef while I’m at it, the reservation limitations. I don’t like being told I can only eat at 6.30 or 8. 30 and each time I sulk, and almost say forget it. But I don’t.Fact is Lee has  wonderful food – and even more significantly,it’s maintained the gold standard for six long years.

The menu is bare bones. Soup, Veg & Salad, Fish, Meat. The dishes are all designed to be shared and to be eaten in any order. We unpack the little porcelain tray which holds the napkin and cutlery, and before we know it, our first selection is infront of us. Service here is no slouch. We share four salty shrimps $21, crack the shells  in our mouths after dipping them in a cooling cucumber sauce.  Then a plate of four healthily pink lamb shops arrive, garnished with fried bananas, green curry lentils,  chili mint, carrot cardamom and coconut chutney $24. Could have done with double the amount of the garnishes. The coup de grace is the duck confit roll, a sumptuous medley of flavours, spiced nuts, hydrated pineapple topped with a blob of goat cheese $19. I usually find  preserved duck a stolid dish but these little nuggets of caramelized duck meat are irresisistible, bathed in a deep brown nug-fragrant sauce.

I realize I’ve now eaten more than I usually do – yet I’m not full. My guess is that small helpings, the snacks perk you up rather than satiating the senses. My hunch is that we’ve always been snackers struggling to shake off the bourgeois convention of the three squares a day which like the three act play was designed to wring order from chaos to suit the demands of the industrial world.  First a sparkling appetizer, second, a testing exploration of themes, finally, denoument (a good pastry chef). Both were shrunk versions of epic originals (Careme’s huge banquets, Shakespeare’s evening-long plays) and designed to illustrate the accepted arc of life, passages rounded with a little sleep.

But now our lives are like fever charts, the jogging needle of unpredictability which asks for constant stimulation and nutrition. My head vibrates. Snack Me says my brain.

Will this do? A pretty lacy little bowl made from rice noodles which holds sautéed jerk chicken tossed in Scotch bonnet, the blowtorch chili, sauce with ginger and mango puree $17. We have two mouthfuls apiece. Perfect.

***Lee 603 King W. 416-504 7867 no wheelchair access. Dinner for two plus tax – four dishes $104. Lee is now open for lunch.

Now the gloves are off: at Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo in Paris, customers  first order wine and then wait to see what the  chef comes up with to “display truly the wine to its grandest advantage. ”

Renton ordered a 2005 premier cru Nuits Saint Georges and a dry Vouvray from 2008. The red burgundy was full, nutty and velvet, and to show it off the waiter arrived with a small bowl of mushroom ravioli in strong chicken jus, a tangle of almost caramelised fungi on top. The Vouvray, a famously flowery wine, got a dish of lightly poached oysters langoustine in a gentle sauce of coconut milk and lemon grass.

The concept works so well that the restaurant got a Michelin star almost as soon as it opened a couple of years ago.  The proprietor is laughing all the way to the bank.

Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo, 13 Bd de La Tour-Maubourg, 7th arrondissement; 0144 117200. There is also a Courchevel branch

The government line is that supply management whereby farmers have egg quotas is fair, it matches what farmers produce with what consumers need and want. Big Brother Farming in other words. The system benefits large streamlined operations.

But increasingly, foodies want fresh eggs, organic eggs, free range eggs commonly available from small farms and they’re finding them in farmers’ markets.  That’s illegal. “A farmer can keep up to 99 laying hens without quota, which is worth thousands of dollars, and they can sell their eggs from the farm gate without grading them, a government process that evaluates quality. But they are forbidden from selling them. ”

“This has created a grey market for eggs. If you know the password, you can buy a verboten dozen at an Ontario health food store. Often those popular eggs at the farmers’ markets are kept out of sight – for a reason.  One farmer says it’s like Prohibition with people just ignoring regulations.

But the governmenet is invested in the system. Now the egg police are after the little guys. “In 2008, a farmer was fined $3,000 (Canadian) for selling eggs to Ottawa-area restaurants. And in a notorious case in Eastern Ontario in 2006, the egg marketing board, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and police officers raided one farm and pressed charges including unlawful possession of laying hens because the farmer allegedly owned more than the permitted 99.”

Doesn’t this sound awfully familiar. Canadian dairy is similarly regulated by the government which favours farmers over consumers. As I pointed out in my book Last Chance to Eat, Canadian dairy is woefully anemic because of the supply management practice. Butterfat which is what makes dairy tasty is kept to the minimum so the farmers can make more profit. Canadian butter has 80% butterfat, the minimum amount required to call the product butter. Proper rich cream is impossible to find. I called several Ontario dairy farmers and asked if they could make 45% cream for consumers and got the reply — only if a majority of people wanted it. In other words, niche marketing is out. An Ottawa civil servant informed me that Canadians prefer low fat dairy, it’s healthier. Ironically she was French Canadian and she acknowledged she loved French croissants but only in France.

Locavores have gone on and on about eating local food — but they are silent about eggs and dairy. Does this mean they don’t care about taste but support any enterprise if it’s local?

Sounds delicious.

But not if you’re a lefty. Leave it to Carlo  Petrini, founder of the Slow Food Movement and arch enemy of McDonalds…”Globalising a taste does not promote it but rather standardises and homogenises it,” he said in an open letter in an Italian newspaper.

Makes no sense to me.  Making people aware of different tastes raises their palate-consciousness. I don’t see French champagne suffering from the world wide popularity of other countries’  fizz. They just make you realize how much better the real thing is.

Superwrap

Hurrying along Yorkville, I feel like Alice in wonderland tracking the white rabbit to see which hole he’s going to vanish into. Only a sharp eye can spot a new place in the subterranean restaurant strip that zig zags along the street, and so it is that I almost fall into Koko!  Suddenly there it is, an exquisite glass box located at the bottom of a flight of steps.

The room is waves of palest green, tables polished like mirrors and made from an ancient Peterborough barn, an atmosphere as calm as the eye of a storm, a little bar, a communal table. It’s lunchtime and Koko! has only just opened so I sit almost alone as I meditate the menu -  I keep spotting familiar items with a surprising twist – this is the mother of all fusions, Korean-Japanese snacker style. Playwright, entrepreneur Sang Kim, a founder of Blowfish and owner of KI Modern Japanese has teamed up with chef Shin Aoyama, who started out at Tojo in Vancouver, to put together a crisp and flirty menu that is oceans away from the trad sushi and singeing barbecue and crisp bim bap of Bloor West. Like a little danger? Try the torched butter fish with garlic stem and tamari lemon roll $13 and forget all about its potential exlax effect as you sink  your teeth into the smooth lush meat. I play it safe but deliciously so with lean yellow fin tuna and spicy orange kimchee mayo. Goes down nicely with a glass of Henri Bourgeois Sancerre $11.50. (Koko! has a small modestly priced list)  A great audition but the real show is to come because Koko! isn’t the place if you want to be alone. It begs to share. Immediately I plan to return with others – for   Bossam, Korean wraps.

Sunday evening is more like it – a good buzz. A tempting platter passes us by – Temaki for two, assorted sashimi, shrimp tempura, a gothic tangle of soft shell crab…..$50. But we’re opting for meat. First, we eat torched Tunisian sea bream sashimi $14 which fans out like flattened pansies on the plate, their edges dipped in bitter yuzu ponzu. A spoonful of sweetly brackish Hokkaido scallop topped with salmon roe in a little balsamic jus. Then a smoking clay pot arrives on a board: inside there are fragrant tea-smoked scallops, shrimps and sea bream on a bed of hot sea salt and tea leaves with just enough of a piquant sauce for dipping $26.

Isn’t this a little piss elegant for so earthy a food as Korean, we wonder. Then the Bossam arrives. We’ve ordered for two – $50 – reckoning there will be plenty for three. Only just! On the spacious platter lies slow roasted pork belly, spicy chicken, and Korean pork bbq. Alongside is a a big bowl of Boston lettuce leaves the size of a small elephant’s ears, boiled white cabbage leaves, sliced Spanish onions, and then the little bowls, chili mayo, sweet chili paste, salted baby shrimp. Don’t hold back. Just pile em all into a leaf and bite. Not so fast says Sang Kim. He recommends lots of sides ($2.50 each)  as well. So into the sandwich goes steamed rice, little wheels of sweetly marinated lotus roots, cubes of daikon radish and mild seaweed. This is now an uncontrollably large sandwich, the kind that leaves dribbles running down the chin,  and we cry for more lettuce leaves. We put our elbows on the elegant table to prop up our wilting arms. We vote our favourites. The gold medal to the soft and yielding bbq, no, to the rich crisp pork belly. We give a bronze to the chicken which is just a little dry.  Best wrapping material? Everyone’s different but the translucency of the cabbage is especially congenial,  and we all note how the lotus root isn’t just a pretty face but a perky chip of a veg.

At some point we finish our modest Alsation Pinot Blanc $40 and as we eat green tea panna cotta as dark as spinach, with a dollop of cream and berry puree, Sang pours us a glass of tawny port – more fusion -  from a bar that sports the now de rigueur alcoholic exotica, warm vanilla and spice martinis and the like, housemade soju- the vodka like Korean spirit.

** and 1/2 Koko! Share Bar 81 Yorkville 416-850 6135.Dinner for two, food plus tax $120 No wheelchair access