Reader E.A. writes….

Can you enjoy food if you can’t hear it? Yes, it’s the noise issue again- thirty years on. That’s how long noise has been an issue with diners. and it’s hotting up again as bloggers are hitting their own high decibel levels on the subject.

I empathize. Last month I took a visitor from London to Origin and we might as well have gone to a rock concert.   We couldn’t even share compliments on the food.  I tried slipping the waiter a twenty to reduce the ear-blasting  85 decibel music. He charmingly refused the tip but said he would turn down the sound. If he did we couldn’t hear it.

I don’t get it. Restaurants, particularly high end places, are hurting in the recession, adding Mac’n’Cheese to their menus in hopes of attracting a broader swath of diners – and turning up the volume. But isn’t this an Underpants Gnome move, adopted (from South Park) by financial analysts to describe a goal without a strategy.

Noise is given astonishing credit as a restaurant-maker. Gotta be noisy for the “Twixters” – cash flush under- thirties who still live at home. They mustn’t be intimidated.   Top Kaplan of Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group told the WSJ in March that “familiar rock music relaxes people. They get nervous in a higher end restaurant but they know they can relate to familiar tunes.”

Is a quiet restaurant a sign that the terrorists are winning?

So wonders  George Prochnik , author of In Pursuit of Silence, after being told by a noisemeister that 9/11 was the moment  “when the trend toward raucous, informal, let-it-all hang out urban hoedown aesthetics took off. They don’t want to have these insular kinds of experiences of coffin-like, very tailored dressy restaurants. People want to be in the flow of life.”

Loud Music sells drinks!

In 2008, French researchers found that when music was played at 72 decibels, men had a drink every 14.51 minutes. At 88 decibels, they had a drink every ll.47 minutes.

But will this save restos?  Among those responding to a recent Bon Appetit article, Michael Spitzer voiced a protest I’ve heard so many times….Loud noise may please the young “ but it really is CHASING AWAY many of the 30-50 year old crowd who has the $$$$ to spend.”

Fact is, the 55-plus demographic is the biggest  discretionary spender in North America – so why are restaurants throwing it under the bus? The old restaurant model was conservative, designed to give diners good food and service. This is how  platinum card holders got addicted to foie gras. To go to say, Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athenee in Paris  was like going to high mass, several hours spent in cathedral calm communing with non pareil cooking.  But those opulent padded cells were created before the Ascent of Money.

Today’s restaurateur is likely to be an entrepreneur with an eye firmly on the bottom line. Everyone has to eat and the winning restaurateur is the one who can attract the most customers. That’s why we’re seeing so many clubs, resto-lounges, chains like SirCorp, Oliver & Bonacini, Liberty, Mark McEwan, the Terroni brand to make and maximize profit.

Aren’t there better ways than noise to bring in new customers?. Chef Tim Raue has won two Michelin stars  for Ma Restaurant in Berlin with his gluten-free, lactose-free menus. Heston Blumenthal is experimenting with a seafood plate served with a conch shell that houses an IPod. Diners insert the earpieces and, as they eat, they hear the sound of waves crashing and retreating, and the keening of seagulls.

I emailed owner-chef Claudio Aprile and asked him why Origin was so noisy. No reply. Too bad. I’d really like to know how chefs feel when their excellent cooking — which is why a gourmet eats out –   is  subordinated to lifestyle apps.

I can’t supply  a list of retrovore restaurants where we dinosaurs can chat without twisting a tonsil.  But I can make suggestions:  scan the restaurant’s website for the noisy barebones look.   Go early or late to dine, skip the peak hours 7-8.30 pm. When you reserve ask the maitre d’ if the place has music and how loud it is.  Don’t be intimidated – call the manager to ask the sound be turned down. Make loud music seem  as antisocial as smoking.

Reclaim restaurants for serious eaters! Only then, Bon Appetit!

comment below….

Too Darn Hot

My brain’s gone missing. The accu-therm in my apartment is reading 95F night and day.  Due to building repair, air conditioners have been removed. We expected, vainly for our landlady to deliver icy Pilsener. The Health Department suggests the library, a shelter, – how about a gelid movie?   I think of sinking into a seat to watch the human/vampire/werewolf triangle in  Eclipse, the third installment of the Twilight Saga, but wait a mo, what’s this creepy feeling I have around my neck? OMG could it be a hitchiking Dracula, the bedbug who’s conducting a stealth invasion of Toronto and loves the comfy cinema seat….  Aaarrgh….

Outside is safer. A short walk west along Yorkville and I am grateful to find  a comfortable chair at One (116 Yorkville Ave 416-961-9600)  the epitome of  cool posh – deep, and deeply shaded.  No music.  I can if I like take a book and settle in for the day as long as I keep ordering Bellinis,  peach juice, lemon juice and champagne $15. Excellent iced coffee. Eats are good too.  A lobster salad $30 is the nearest thing to a beach. The chicken cobb salad $19 is appropriately rustic.

One wraps around the Hazelton Hotel  affording great people watching. But why’s that freezer  truck parked right in front ? For the umpteenth time I wonder why the tourist destinations of Cumberland and Yorkville can’t have some traffic constraints, trucks only allowed before l0 am, something like that . Why not adopt the Italian tradition of the evening passagiata – the main drag is closed to traffic at 5pm, the locals parade up and down in their finest, stopping to  eat a caffe granita at a sidewalk cafe. Yorkville would be transformed.

Next dawn deep orange sun drags itself sulkily into the sky. The accu-therm squeaks like the droid R2D2.  Another day on the street. Health advisories suggest tying a bottle of iced water round the neck. Gosh, people would think I was a St. Bernard come to rescue them. Better I think to follow the advice of Indian friends. Eat hot spicy food and thus produce cooling sweat.Not exactly bonhomous but if everyone’s doing it…

At Ciao Wine Bar (133 Yorkville Ave 416-925-2143), another Yorkville patio caressed by a whisper of a breeze,   I eat very very slowly  incendiary  penne arrabiata, pennywhistles of pasta $14 soaked in tomato, garlic, chili sauce  which causes my forehead to breakout in bubbles.  I avoid drinking which would just send the fire throughout my body.  The loud music however isn’t cooling.   Could it be lower? “Of course, we see  you’re reading.” The music dips a nanonotch. It isn’t until I’m joined by a Yorkville regular that the problem is solved. He says to the waiter “Turn the music down or I’ll call the manager.” It works!

Another day in sauna city. This time I head for solid air conditioning at  Quanto Basta,(1112 Yonge St, Toronto, 416-962-3141)  the new Italian wine bar/youthquake which has succeeded  Lakes on Yonge between McPherson and Roxborough.  Quanto Basta is  packed every evening with scenesters baying to the moon. Downtime is Saturday drunch, the space between lunch and dinner. We sit in the cool window and sample international Italian.    A watermelon soup with lime and mint leaves $7, rich wild mushroom ravioli with musty cream and  truffle  sauce $18 and a leafy grilled parmigiano  chicken salad $15, just the food to relax with after a swim.

I find the ideal cool dinner at Avant Gout, (1108 Yonge St,

416-916-3681 )a couple of doors away from Quanto Basto. I call this retrovore food, the good meals I enjoyed  before  worrying about fresh’n’local.  There are times when nothing but Kamal Hami’s perfectly cooked slivers of provimi veal will do with Zinfandel sauce  $19 which makes the fries as rich as foie gras,  or a lemony/saffron  tagine of salmon $20.25.  We have an epiphany as well.  We eat at 9 just as customers start to leave. Noise dies down. Finally we can discuss  Canada’s Bewusstein ( identity search ) and Lindsay Lohan’s disasters without shouting.  In future, I’ll eat on Spanish time.

The restaurants saved my sanity, they are above stars.  So is the Four Seasons Hotel which when my accu-therm stalled at 99 F invited me for a swim in their outdoor pool. A lifesaver.

Did I find the only full restaurant on the G20’s big Saturday night?  Skirting the front lines, ducking the Black Bloc tendency, the closed subway, the shutdown patios, I dive into the back seat of a cab and we charge along empty streets to Ossington, then West along Dundas to the heart of Little Portugal.  There opposite a Sleep Country outlet and on the corner of Coolmine street is Enoteca Sociale,  not much to look at but ever so nice  to know.

Enoteca Sociale is the latest gourmet incursion into previously arugula-free territory.  The owners are Chef Rocco Agostino, Max Rimaldi, and Daniel Clarke  who do amazing takeout business with designer pizzas at Pizza Libretto on Ossington.  Enoteca Sociale has the same mojo – Italy seen through Toronto’s fond, rosy glasses, a clean and tidy slow food kind of country. You’d never know that Italy is one of the most aggressively industrializing countries when it comes to food. But what’s wrong with nostalgia?  We’re eating “Nonna’s” cooking, the kind of food it is implied that Italian  grandmothers  made for their happy families while grandpa was out ploughing the fields with a single ox. Nonna’s kitchen has terracotta tile floors, plain wooden tables and chairs, and rather fancier lighting than grandma would have been able to afford. But the food — well it is of the huggable teddy bear variety.

Bobbles of deep fried sweetbreads nesting in arugula $11 are matched with white anchovies and Ontario Mozzarella $9. We clean the palate with a glass of Tuscan red $13 and move on to a few al dente  envelopes of homemade duck liver ravioli in a sage brown butter sauce $13. Modest portion size is to be applauded. Panfried Arctic char and fennel salad  is good $14 but the evening’s  blow out is a rich, dark, juicy oxtail stew with gravy that enobles the humble  mashed potatoes $15.  A side of asparagus with slivers of parmigianno $7 is the health entry, sending antioxidants coursing through our systems.  We bow to the supremacy of the hay-raised cow by eating a generous slice of Rassembleu, a Quebec bleu.$7.  And finally Zeppole! Sicilian donuts stuffed with hazelnut cream $8.  Americano coffee is $2.50 an excellent cup.

We enjoy it all, and we enjoy it all the more because the service – from the hostess to the waiters – is terrific. It’s  efficient and warmhearted. We had called to explain we were going to be late for our reservation. No problem. Still no problem when we were later still although almost all the restaurant’s 56 seats were full. We had a lovely table too overlooking the soon-to-be patio under shade trees.

More comments. First, Enoteca does take reservations but for only half the seats – the rest are for  walk-ins. A great idea, nourishing a neighbourhood cosiness. The doctrine is fresh’n’local, and thus the menu changes daily.  This  means that if you find a favourite dish, you may not find it again when you return. I’m not convinced that diners entirely go along with this: dining out is not usually predicated on adventure but on the simple pleasure of remembered satisfaction. I might NEED that great stew.  I might admire the restaurant’s principles  but in practice, eating is a feelgood business.

Then there’s the  tasting menu  of the day. Five courses for $45, a steal. Most of the food is different from the a la carte menu – we yearned to have a taste of the advertised lamb chops. This I guess is smart marketing.

One last thing. As the evening wore on, the noise level rose. Like so many new restaurants, Enoteca Sociale is scoured clean of any noise-baffling material. The music, the chatter bounces off the shiny floor and the brick walls and eventually stalls conversation. I was very amused to read how Jean-Daniel Lafond, the husband of Governor General Michaelle Jean,  described the importance of the shared meal.  “A table is not simply a place to tantalize the taste buds… it is a place to meet and share conversation, a place where ideas meld as easily as the flavours.”  I wonder how often Lafond has eaten out lately. I agree conversation is as significant a chakra as great food, but ONLY if we can actually hear each other

***Enoteca Sociale  1288 Dundas W.416-534-1200 www.sociale.ca

Mon – Sat. 5:00 pm – 12:00 am.  Wheelchair accessible.  Dinner for Two: food plus tax $95

Once summertime was downtime for the local restaurant reviewer – just take me to the nearest patio or for a jaunt out of town to say, Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake. This ain’t going to happen this year. By my reckoning,  new restaurants are  opening something like once a week. And not just small local places or resto lounges, but big hitters  like  Scarpetta at the new Thompson Hotel, Susur Lee’s as yet unnamed replacement for Madeline’s on King West, and Ici Aussi, J.P. Challet’s bistro on Harbord and Manning.

Great time for diners but a perilous time for restaurants. Why?  Because the bar for restaurants is rising all the time.   And so are the number of restaurants. We have a glut of restaurants right now and competition is fierce for the dining dollar during this recession.  After all, diners’ savvy has risen exponentially in the past few years. The ether, not to mention the web, is buzzing with food info. A few years ago, I don’t believe many diners would have known a 25-year old Balsamic vinegar from caramel colouring, or been   knowledgeable enough to distinguish a $182 Lambda from Crete from  Rachel Ray’s EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil). Moreover while the words fresh’n’local still cause the organic congregation to feel tingles up their legs, the trend is now jumbled together with the return of the meat-eater, the rise of Italian rustic restaurants.  The emphasis is now more than ever on the chef.  Accomplishment isn’t enough. The chef must have a voice — a unique take on food with the skills and imagination to transform ingredients beyond their basic goodness.

Only a cockeyed optimist would enter such a daunting arena where even powerful voices  like Susur Lees are having to clear their throats   – Madeline’s had great reviews but never got a dinership locked in.   So I’m keeping my fingers cross as I go downtown to Beast, just opened by Scott and Rachelle Vivian at 96 Tecumseth, (King and Bathurst), recently the home of Amuse-Bouche, and thirty years ago where Susur Lee opened Lotus.

Vivian is a  card- carrying slowfooder, a veteran of Jamie Kennedy’s kitchens, and recently the Vivians were partners in The Wine Bar. Their ambitions are subtly modest: a neighbourhood place with destination possibilities.

The evening is warm,the patio inviting, the service friendly without being overbearing. The restaurant space is unpretentious.  The wine is reasonable, the typed menu disarmingly simple.  The menu is pocked with surprise, greens I’ve never tasted before, an intriguing juxtaposition of ingredients and flavours.

We naturally look to the Soft Shell Crab $19 with foie gras, greens and jalapeno pepper, but they’re clean out of this popular choice. Still, everything’s right with smoked sablefish (black cod)$12 which is adorned with little airy crunchy mouthfuls of pork crackling  and  with the excellent veal sweetbreads $12 , deep fried and laid on grits, adorned with micro mustardy mizuna.  Striploin of Elk $29 makes a big dent in  my prejudice against farmed game. It’s properly rare and  comes with spicy Mole sauce, lambs quarters (sometimes called goosefoot)  and spatzle. Just great.

Now I make a typical reviewer’s mistake. I really wanted the beef ribeye $28 with sumac butter but decided I should try something less familiar – Pigs head pasta $16.  Looks stylish, an egg yolk topping spaghetti with pea shoots and clumps of  tender pigs head meat.  But for me, it doesn’t work at all.  Usually I don’t make much of authenticity, thinking that fusion is Toronto’s trademark.  But now a rant bubbles up.  In Italy, pasta is simple, dictated by what’s available . But throughout  North America pasta, like pizza and risotto, is Disneyfied. You can no longer taste the basic ingredient because it’s smothered by dwarfs, Bambi, Dumbo, Snow White aka everything but the kitchen stove.  The spaghetti would have been irresistible to me with a simple herb sauce and a little cheese.  The real thing.

After that, Rochelle Vivian’s black walnut financier (sponge cake) with a little brown butter tuile and honey-rosemary cream $8 is balm.  Beast rises in estimation.  Does it pass the voice test?  Borderline. Well don’t be kidded by the name. Beast is a misnomer for such an ingratiating place.    What’s missing is a beastly spark of inspiration.  Still, if I lived locally, I’d be happy to have it next door.

** 1/2Beast 96 Tecumseth 647  352 6000. Open Wed-Sat. Not wheelchair accessible. Dinner for two , food plus tax: $108

Time was when the first encounter with a restaurant was with an authority figure, a maitre d’  who would snap his fingers to   summon a minion to guide you, the honoured guest, to a table.   Today,  a restaurant gatekeeper is more likely to be a young woman.  I’m not convinced they represent progress. I call them the Dolly Birds, gatekeepers who are long on looks but short on experience, sometimes even alertness.

The Dolly Birds are the ineradicable first impression of a resto and not for the good – as I found out this week when I went back to re-review two estimable restaurants on the Harbord Strip, The Harbord Room and Splendido.

I called The Harbord Room to reserve and got a  message back that the restaurant was full but the patio took walk-ins.  I arrive early to make sure of a table. Oh, dear says the charming  DB. A cocktail party is occupying the patio  til 8.30.  But we can have a table inside but we must be gone by 8.30. Fine, we say, presumably we can then move to the patio.

She agrees.

We’re seated near the windows which have been folded out over the street with the sun washing the terra cotta walls. The Harbord Room, about thirty seats,  has a chic cachet, it attracts thirty-something fashionistas with tossed blonde hair and signature sports shirts. . We feel so au courant, MIA is singing, shame we can’t see the banned video say my scenester companions.Instead we nibble Madawaska raw sheep’s cheese with olives and Niagara prosciutto $10 and quaff a modest red Rhone and marvel at the transparent toasts.

Corey  Vitiello’s cooking is still inspired but the menu is now leaning toward shorter takes. We dive into a tasty spin on Susur Lee’s  Singapore Slaw – a tower of  watercress, ginger, daikon, soy beans, caramelized shallot with crisp shards of  potato in soy vinaigrette, little  discs of rare and marinated white tuna $11. An airy soft shell crab $18 adorns a Pad Thai, delicious because it isn’t sweet.

8.30 approaches. Are we to be turfed out?  Or move to the patio? In which case hold the the grilled provimi rack of veal $31 spread with foie gras and sweet bread butter and a red wine glaze. “What is this about the patio?” asks our waiter – It’s not yet free.  We relax, lapping up the rich jus that moistens rather  dry meat. One of us orders risotto $18. An overcrowded slurry swims on the plate, cooked rice including wild leeks and fresh sheep cheese.

It’s now after nine. Still no patio. We wonder what it says about the restaurant that  the patio is closed to the public on a popular Friday night. We cure our disappointment with the cooked-to-order doughnut spills out lime curd, coconut tapioca and tropical fruits. $7. Good but no cigar.

**The Harbord Room 89 Harbord Street 416 962 8989.  Dinner for two plus tax: $95

Oh no, it’s happened again. I leave a message at Splendido, reserving for tonight.  But when I arrive the lissome DB gives me the onceover, scans the list and  shakes her head.  She doesn’t apologize for what I think, no I know  is the restaurant’s error – but says  they’ve had a cancellation so I can have a table. When my companion arrives, he is hazed by her!

Carlo Cattallo, the ebullient co-owner is off tonight but the energetic manager Matthew insures  prompt service which often seems like autopilot.  Why do the first courses arrive  before we’ve finished our cocktails and before we’ve ordered wine (fainting at the inflated prices asked for Niagara wines by the glass)?  The place is busy, sure, when we look around we see parties of longhaired academics unbuttoning, but why the rush?  Couldn’t someone have asked my companion just once if he was enjoying HIS meal?

Last year the chef, Victor Barry was on an upward trajectory. Too bad  crisp soft shell crab is overwhelmed by coriander salad. The rabbit with the pappardelle is so bland it must have been raised on marshmallows.  Whew! The main courses are fine -  the roast sucking pig $34  is sensationally good and for once blood sausage is soft and fluffy, succotash a gritty accompaniment.   The lobster is succulently poached $37,  even if the accompanying risotto-not  is soupy.  A comprehensive cheese tray offers $7 mouthfuls of the likes of raw goat cheese Cendre and raw milk Gouda. A dab of lemon, shards of meringue, a topping of rhubarb sorbet is a great ending $11.  But the food tonight is scuppered by the service.

Bring Back the Maitre’ d’s

** Splendido 88 Harbord Street (416) 929-7788 Dinner, food for two plus tax: $151

Medium Raw, A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. By Anthony Bourdain

Harper Collins Canada  281 pages

In 2000, Anthony Bourdain became the kitchen’s Dennis Hopper,  a counter culture hellraiser who ripped open the seamy underside of fine dining. In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain spilled his guts on a career of drugs, sex and booze behind the swinging doors that divided customer from cook.   At a time when most food writing was adulatory ,  Bourdain  raged against the system and himself.   A cook is a craftsman and like all craftsmen, writers, painters, composers , a cook  is dependent on a middleman to get to the public, a filter as fickle as the public itself.   It isn’t necessarily the best who succeed but often those who know how to game, who have the right  temperament,  as much as talent. As Bourdain struggled,  he wrote a couple of novels. Still no traction.  Then he found a story that only he could tell.  Anger is a wonderful spur to exciting writing -  Kitchen Confidential is one of those books which sinks its teeth in you and never lets go.

Ten years on and Bourdain  is assaying the current scene in a collection of essays,  Medium Raw, a Bloody Valentine to the world of Food and the people Who Cook.

He’s Baaaack. He hasn’t softened,  he still sees the world through dystopian eyes, profanity-laced prose squeezed out with Maileresque finesse –   – who else could just drop feculent into a sentence without sounding like a horse’s ass?

Of course he is subtly different now because he’s an insider and easy with fame,  a bigger star than most celeb chefs and arguably the most influential food writer of the 00s. He turned diners off white tablecloths and biddable waiters  and on to scruffy-chic kitchen -insider joints where they’re treated like dogs. The ultimate democratization of eating.  Example:  David Chang’s Momofuku Ko which gets some of Bourdain’s kindest words.   Customers lust to get into  Momofuku Ko,  with its twelve seats awarded by lottery  – You have to log onto the website at precisely the right second and hope you’ve beaten out every other logger  for a seat six days hence.  The lucky stiffs  get short order service from charmless help but the food,  Bourdain assures us,  is sublime. “The loathsome sounding black pepper ganache, black-pepper crumbs, macerated blueberries with creme fraiche and olive oil ice cream is….a shockingly unexpected joy.” Sounds like food for “the tastes of the slightly stoned, slightly drunk chef after work” which is how Bourdain described Ko not so long ago in the New York Times.

Enough of Bourdain’s big heart and his great review of Chang which pretty well fits his own put down  of food journalists’  prose as “punchy, entertaining.” I prefer the old unregenerate attack dog,  tossing hot coals at the tormentors,  TV chefs, sham, hypocrisy, pretentiousness . Watching Minimalist  Mark Bittman preparing paella on TV,  Bourdain  snarls “I want to shove my head through the glass of my TV screen and take a giant bite out of his skull, scoop  the soft, slurry-like material inside into my paw, and then throw it right back  into his smug, fireplug face” Love it.

He uses  a slower, Torquemada technique for Alice Waters,  tattooing the mother of Slow Food with lethal little pricks.. Not just for her shameless duplicity   in preaching the gospel of local and then ordering veg for her restaurant Chez Panisse from a producer 12 hours drive away, but,  among other peccadillos,  for her  “whiff of the jackboots” tendency. “ While It was excessive of me to compare Alice to ‘Pol Pot in a muumuu” it is useful to remember that he was once a practicing Buddhist and later, attended the Sorbonne. And that even in his twisted and genocidal “back to earth” movement, he might once have meant well too.”  Love it.

Sometimes Bourdain goes OTT. And why not? That’s what’s expected.  I don’t hold a brief for Alan Richman, the GQ restaurant critic. Sure, I  have wondered how,  year after year,the James Beard award for magazine  restaurant  critic has gone to Richman and his Broadway Danny Rose style,  shutting out  such worthy  contenders as Toronto Life’s  own James Chatto. But a whole chapter on Richman as douchebag?

Seems that Bourdain nominated  Richman  douchebag of the year  at the South Beach Food and Wine food festival. Gross! Richman didn’t throw a punch. Instead he riposted with a searing review of Les Halles, once Bourdain’s stamping ground in New York. Dirty dishwater , considering a,  that Les Halles was a 16-year-old steak/frites joint and b, that the review sailed over Bourdain taking collateral damage among his co-workers. Most of all, Richman didn’t tell his readers what he told the Village Voice last week, that he wrote the review in revenge for the douchebag insult.

As fans know,  loyalty is  a Bourdain  core value.  I don’t know him, but  he kindly gave me a shout out for my book  Last Chance to Eat and he didn’t stop there. After a twit of a Brit called Paul Levy, whose claim to fame is that he coined “foodie” , took me down in the NYT,  Bourdain galloped to my defense on e-gullet.com. Made me feel even better than the subsequent news that  Levy was so off the reservation that he once trashed the incomparable Elizabeth David.

I’d better stop here before I wreck Bourdain’s rep as mad and bad and dangerous to know  and get called something worse than douchebag.

Gina Mallet is the Post’s restaurant critic and author of Last Chance To Eat, The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World.