Hospitality or War?

What should jump out at me from the online Guardian recently but “Betrayal of hospitality, throughout history, has been given as just cause for murder or war.”

This raises an interesting point about restaurants. Do diners feel murderous if the steak is overcooked or are they more likely to be kill  when dissed by a waiter? Is hospitality separate from or integral to the cooking? Is loud music a betrayal of hospitality? I know diners who reach for the steak knife when assaulted by boomboom indie tracks.

Hospitality’s on my mind as I make my way to Trattoria Giancarlo, a Little Italy anchor at Clinton and College for more than two decades.  Obviously the owners, the Barato family, have forged enduring bonds with diners. Tonight on the happily chattering patio, I spot a familiar face.  Bob Bermann. For more than twenty years, Bermann and Barbara Gordon mastered the high wire act of fine dining.  Then Boba on Avenue Road crashed in the recession.

Bob’s not cooking tonight, nor is he a customer. He’s s the maitre d’. Friends ask him wouldn’t he rather be cooking again? Not at the moment, says Bermann who had a brief stint running the Senator diner. Now he’s only too happy to be pinch hitting at Tony Barato’s  request.  Bob’s a kitchen egghead – he’s analyzing the scene. Boba didn’t fail because of the cooking but because it didn’t reach the new young demographic. Yet here’s Giancarlo riding high on the comfortably middleaged. Could it be that the Baratos’ hospitality is the key?

You’d never pick Bob as a gladhander. But wait a minute. I refer again to the Guardian provocateur, It’s not formal etiquette that fulfils hospitality but “what will make you most comfortable and happy at that moment.” Bob is fanfareless, he lets us pick our table before he unhurriedly moves on  to open a bottle of wine for another table. Call it laid back : we call it comforting.

The menu is straightforward and expensive. Greg’s our waiter, jolly and direct. I  again touch base with the Guardian.  “Critics knock the slack waiter for undermining the chef’s work yet only the most rudimentary lip service is paid to the astonishing importance of what they do in the front line of delivering hospitality.” Tap water, but of course and Greg then says what are we to drink? No wine list. Er, something around $50,, Greg doesn’t blink, just says that prices start at $70.  This is the way they do things here.

Refreshing in this age of the over-entitled customer who thinks of a restaurant as a convenience, dishes tweaked on demand. Some restaurants,  alas,  go along. Not the Baratos.   This is their their home. Tony is the guiding force, Eugenia is the executive chef, Jason, the chef. We’re their guests, we’ve dropped the control freak at the door.

In hostly fashion Greg  takes me to the wine racks in the honeycoloured private dining room and chooses for us a bottle of Rosso Montelcino ‘08 from Talenti.  $70. But what is money when the wine rolls robustly round the tongue with a nice dry finish.

Softened up we dive into the menu. We want to share? Greg presents the chosen antipasti on the same plate.  Looks wonderful. Three grilled figs stuffed with herbed cheese, lapped with Modena Balsamic vinegar and honey $14,  sweet packages of flavour,  with a colourful lobster salad $16 . If only there was more lobster and less croutons.

How big is the fish of the day, we ask, having blanched at a passing steak the size of Texas. Greg soothes us. The Dorado is  a middleweight boxer of a fish,  but once  Greg has expertly filleted it on the plate, it becomes delectable meaty mouthfuls. Once veal was bled white at slaughtertime, but these days the caring butcher lets the  calf be its  pink self. I’m eating two little rosy noisettes of veal tenderloin $35 which have the tentative flavour of extreme youth. I love the black Venere rice but i think the meat yearns for a compatible potato.

We  sample an excellent Portugese goat cheese then  absolutely refuse to have anything to do with a molten chocolate cake subdued by caramel – until we taste it. Game over.

We leave, the hospitality riddle solved. No telling where food ends and service starts. Seamless and rare experience.  Bravo!

*** for Hospitality. Trattoria Gian Carlo 41 Clinton St.416-533-9619. Not wheelchair accessible.  Dinner for two: food plus tax $140

I’ve Got the Horse Right Here….

Ten years ago La Palette opened in Kensington Market and quietly, without fuss began selling horse steak.Why? The owner Shamez Amlani explained “Well this is a French restaurant and the French eat horse.” A logical answer. The Quebecois eat horse too and so do millions of gourmets round the world. But Toronto was part of the Anglosphere where love of horses has been assumed to preclude to enjoying a pet for dinner.

It’s not entirely true however. As a kid I ate horse with pleasure. My mother’s extreme nearsightedness having failed to register the tiny sign on the London butchers’ window we ate delicious horse steaks for months before my father outed her. And during the ‘70s oil crisis, Americans had no trouble eating Horse Franks.

La Palette was a kind of  horse speakeasy – Psst you wanna eat horse? Customers had to ask for it and it came with the equivalent discretion of a plain brown wrapper.

The big change came when Marc Thuet served horse at The Fifth in the early 00s. After that horse started trotting gaily through Metro menus, notably on charcuterie plates.

As for La Palette, it’s done so well that it’s now expanded to a second location on Queen St W. where the Taro Grill used to be. First impression: bistros may be dying in France, but they’re alive and well here in Toronto. The décor is drenched in Francophiliac nostalgia, provencal tablecloths, a blackboard with specials. Only the open kitchen headed by Brook Kavanagh – brought over from the original La Palette- is an avant garde touch. As for the menu, well, what worked at the old place, works here too: bistro familiars plus the marquee specialty – Quack ‘N’ Track, a 4 ounce Horse tenderloin with a leg of duck confit $34.

This evening I’m out to knock the popular assumption that youth is heading for Buffalo to eat the new rave, the Double Down sandwich. My subjects are two seasoned gourmands Daniel, 20, and Julian, 16. They seem to have eaten everything. Horse is so last weekend – but good! Carnivorous Julian can’t wait to eat more. First however he must sample the wild boar terrine with whiskied raisins, frisee, sauerkraut and rye toast $12. He nods approval. And then he must have a charcuterie plate with wild boar tartare. The coup de grace is Quack and Track. The duck is tender while the horse tenderloin is a little block of crusted meat of unimpeachable rareness.

Daniel is more judicious. He asks why didn’t the waiter tell us what exactly was on the charcuterie plate. Good Point. His picks are subtler. Fried camembert with fresh figs, mache and balsamic-fig puree. The crackling bronze tube looks tempting, crunches nicely, oozes splendidly and yet – no taste.

He doesn’t do much better with the papardelle with duck confit in a duck buerre noisette with shitake mushrooms, peas and wild leek.$22. Sounds irresistible but Daniel has trouble tracking the mushrooms, indeed any energizing flavour.. Hmm. He looks over at Julian “You chose best.”

Meanwhile adults have gone conservative with such established bistro fare as a house salad$7 and the coarse duck liver pate en croute $8. Neither do justice to their traditions. The salad is given a curious dressing of sour cherry, almond and buttermilk while the pate’s pastry is heavy. However, wild red spring salmon, house smoked, pan seared, with a garnish of red caviare, is tender, on the right side of undercooking. That’s  enough I think. What’s with these jarring accompaniments – fugitive wild leek puree, vinegary gribiche sauce, gherkins, capers, parsley and a heavily creamy new potato salad. The kitchen is sitting on its own success.

The hit of the evening is the bison rib-eye $35. A chunk of game with an identifiable taste. The bison is pan seared rare and comes with an appropriately earthy dressing of kidney and bone marrow persillade. No doubt about it, eat meat at La Pallette.

Julian lets his critic’s chops slip with the choice of crème brulee $9 for dessert. Crème brulee is a nobrainer, unless it’s a total bust,there’s nothing to write  about. Mango sorbet’s thick consistency squeezes out mango’s fresh flavour $9,and the lemon tart is doughy $9. I choose Clafoutis, sour cherries embedded in custard but there aren’t enough cherries in the very solid filing.

**La Palette 492 Queen St W, Toronto, ON, Canada

416 603 4900. No wheelchair access. Dinner for two plus tax: $105

Rising Star

It’s Elaine Kaufman’s way with an insult  that’s  made her eponymous restaurant  on  Manhattan’s  upper east side a celebrity magnet for decades. Her motto might be “ Treat ‘em Mean, Keep ‘em Keen”  as a famous Edwardian  beauty described  her  own technique. Now – is Toronto ready for an outsize personality  like  Elaine?

Well, keep  watching,  Jen Agg co-owner with chef Grant van Gameren of the Black Hoof, or should  I say the Hoof Group  since the Hoof Café was spun off recently. Agg’s not only managing the restaurants but as the Black Hoof’s bartender, she sets the restaurants’ breezy, uninhibited style. I follow her tweets “We’ll find Round 2 of Hoof Patio! Might have to drink a cocktail or two on line tonight “ and her media coverage. Recently she disrupted  a love-in at the Women and Food conference at the U of T taking a winemaker to task for the labour standards for agriculture workers in this province. Yes, I have great hopes for her.

Already she and van Gameren  have  branded the restoscape. It was Agg who, after her College St. bar Cobalt closed, placed  an ad on Craig’s List for a charcuterie  chef and thus found  van Gameren (the former sous at Lucien). Together, they made a  drab strip of Dundas W. near Bellwoods Park into a starred  destination. There’s plenty of good charcuterie  in town, I’m now crazy about Derek Bendig’s Cardamom and orange cured pork loin at Pangaea, but it was  van Gameren’s  embrace of Nose to Tail, aka offal,  plus charcuterie, the two paired with cocktails, that made the Hoof unique.  The strong stippled  flavours of the drinks complemented the salty fattiness  and tapped  two markets, the nostalgie de la boue of locavores and fashion-seeking  fauxbos.

Both Hoof and the Café   are open Thursday through Monday to attract neighbours and tourists. Neither  restaurant  takes reservations  or credit cards (“treat ‘em mean…”) Both stay open til  2 am, a lure to fellow restaurant  workers like Jamie Kennedy looking for a congenial  late night spot and  providing  valuable  insider  cachet.

Originally  the café, a pretty country diner with a 12-seat bar and a handful of tables,  was intended to handle  Hoof’s overflow. But now it’s morphed into a sold-out  brunch (another  Agg notion)  destination. But I skip brunch –I don’t think a poached egg needs a review. Instead  I’m checking in for  Geoff Hopgood’s shared- plates  dinner menu – all under twenty  bucks. We get seats by the window and settle down with the cocktail carte which  is all Agg. The LCBO gets its knuckles rapped for carrying lowgrade vermouth:  for her New More Perfect Hoof Manhattan $16, Agg sent to Italy for the real thing, Carpano Antica , to go along with her own bitters and 10 year old Rye.

Jenny, the Agg-trained bartender, mixes the bracing pick-me-ups. I feel I must take Agg’s advice and pick Mom’s fave– Fawlty Basil, fizz and gin, basil,lime, orangeblossom  water in a jam jar! Addictively refreshing. Goes great with thick slices of tuna sashimi and fava beans. My companion gives a thumbs up to Chili Guava  Margarita $12, guajillo tequila, guava puree, agave syrup, lime  only asking “Where’s the chili?” before digging into  the crisp hot Poppers, deepfried  jalapenos  stuffed with smoked hot links sausage and cheese curds, dipped into pickled  whipped cream. For the little disc of terrine of foie gras with vanilla, rhubarb compote, I cannot resist  a Sazerac, cognac, homemade bitters, the glass “generously  washed with absinthe.”  Treacherously smooth. The horse tartare is a disappointment: Not spicy enough  despite  finely minced onion and peppers lined up like coke, Our final dish was a melting  rolled pork belly bathed  in trotter jus and maple syrup.

The desserts, thanks to Mike Angeloni, former pastry chef at Splendido, fulfil their destiny, we couldn’t stop eating  the little bowls, one with with bronzed meringue folds, a torrent of dried cranberries and crunch spilling into the lemon curd or the malteser, chocolate, caramel, ice cream waterfall in the other.

** 1/2 Hoof Café 923 Dundas St. W. (at Bellwoods Ave.), 416-792-7511 No Wheelchair access. Dinner for two plus tax  $80

Sackcloth and Ashes  Department: Two weeks ago, I incorrectly identified Peter Tsebelis as an owner of Brassaii. I had the time frame wrong. He no longer owns Brassaii.  Therefore the linking of Brassaii’s shortcomings with those of Buca – an ineffably superior restaurant – to Tsebelis was both irrelevant and unfair.  A return visit to Buca is in the offing.

Back to Creation: the Jamie Kennedy Story

Ok this ain’t California, we don’t have a 12 month growing cycle but a little window. But what a lot Jamie Kennedy, our fresh’n’local Alice Waters, has done with it. In the past 25 years since he opened his first restaurant Palmerston, Kennedy has driven the communal food agenda ceaselessly,  promoting sustainable food both in farmers’ markets and through his restaurants, the most notable being the JK Wine Bar, a shared plate leader.

Last year, Kennedy suffered a financial reversal.  He had to sell the wine bar and neighbouring Hank’s, and to cut back at the Gardiner Museum. Word was he might retreat to his farm and vineyard in Prince Edward County and open a restaurant there. But he hasn’t. He’s still in Toronto, hands-on, still cooking.

Tonight he’s cooking at Gilead Bistro in Corktown, off King E. It is housed in the lowslung industrial building which is the HQ of his catering service. The Kennedy brand is the local preserves lining the shelves. He’s serving too, a tall grave figure balancing carefully the plate of extraordinarily good herb soup and lentils $9. The message is clear. What’s important is the food, not him.

My companions are Bill Toye and Richard Teleky who, when they were at Oxford University Press, published Jamie Kennedy Cookbook in 1985. Richard remembers editing the book while he ate his meals surrounded by workmen putting the finishing touches on Palmerston.

Anticipation is keen. We open our small handwritten menus. Of course we must have the Red Fife sourdough $3. This is what Kennedy stands for. Red Fife is an heritage Canadian wheat now in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, a global effort to resuscitate foods which for one reason or another are dying out. The bread’s holey and nutty. Red Fife is definitely worth retrieving from history. The butter is artisanal and creamy. Specials include slices of hot smoked sturgeon $14 which I find more interesting in print than in the mouth. But the Brandade of Black Cod $12 is an irresistible take on the traditional salt cod puree, perfectly seasoned and crisp round the edges.

We’re now drinking a pleasant pinot noir, a Jamie Kennedy label $60 from his own vineyard. This kind of comfy artisanal dinner with local wine was once enjoyed only in Europe. It was one of the spurs for the Slow Food movement where the right to eat splendidly was asserted in long, leisurely dinners – rich with raw milk cheese and cured meat, the kind of food which the health and safety police are keen to outlaw. Above all, the dinners were to be a riposte to fast food which threatens to consign them to the Ark of Taste – and in dire need of rescue.

Thank Goodness Jamie Kennedy doesn’t belong to the elitest political wing of Slow Food “Down with Big Mac Heads” but to the “let’s have a swell time” branch. Otherwise he’d have no time to concentrate on cooking this delectable Gratin of Agria Potatoes $7.50.  What is an Agria Potato you may ask. Yellow, waxy which means it doesn’t crumble when cooked, and on the sweet side. This is the way I like my biodiversity – tasty. Education has never been so agreeable.

A Galantine of Muskoka Chicken, roasted, stuffed, redolent of mushrooms and onions $19. A word here about the difference between proclaiming fresh’n’local and actually cooking it.  Like Lynn Crawford at Ruby Watchco, Kennedy doesn’t expect an ingredient to stand on its own but uses all the cooking tools, the allusions to classic recipes, to expand and enrich the food’s potential. Thus delicate slices of pork schnitzel $20 come with a vinegary mignonette sauce tweaked with anchovy – an allusion to the classic wienershnitzel Holstein. Richard meanwhile is in a nostalgic swoon over the tenderest braised beef (off the bone) shortrib with parsnip puree $ 24.Little fiddleheads are hidden in steamed greens $7. We’ve certainly come at the right time.

We end with $9 impeccable desserts: buttermilk panna cotta with sweet/bitter rhubarb compote, a blueberry financier (almond cake) with honey ice cream and fruit preserves, and the preserves also come with the Pavlova, a little meringue ring.

I have not always been a fan of Kennedy’s cooking, but now I’m eating my past critical words like crazy. Is it just me or has Kennedy, freed from corporate responsibilities, rediscovered his cooking soul. Whatever – A smashing dinner.

***1/2Gilead Bistro 4 Gilead Pl 647.288.0680 No wheelchair access. Dinner: food plus tax for two $118

My take on Toronto’s restaurants is in April 2010 Food Arts…

Ancre Hill is a new vineyard in Wales and has just won  a silver award at the Decanter World Wine Awards and a bronze at the International Spirit and Wine Competition.

Another leading wine show, the International Wine Challenge, also commended the 2008 vintage, which was the first to be produced by the new vineyard.

Say Welsh wine a gen ago, and the wine world would have laughed. Say here’s this shorefront in Arkansas that I’m anxious to sell. But like everything else, wine has become democratized. Truth is anyone can make wine if they have the resources. Same goes for cheese. Of course the quality is unpredictable.

For centuries the French owned wine — I still like best the layered subtlety of French claret — and managed to intimidate all contenders.    But the elite has tumbled — it was i think Australian plonk that broke the dam. The British who apparently drink more wine than anyone else, loved overoaked Chardonnay as a cheap tipple, then glommed to NZ’s Sauvignon blanc so much sassier than France’s Sancerre. Now they’re preferring the juiciness of California to the dry sophistication of French blends.

The Welsh wine maker is a millionaire, of course. Making wine isn’t cheap. Richard Morris, a chartered accountant, sold his share of a logistics company in 1999 for thirty six million pounds. He started making wine four years ago, planting Seyval Blanc, Pinot Noir , Chardonnay – the soil is limestone comparable to the terroir that produces Chablis –  in the field outside his house.  The first vintage was 14,500 bottles, twelve pounds each.

He told The Independent: “It’s our first vintage. You don’t expect that to happen – to get three medals from the three most important wine competitions in the world.”

Next step — Champagne!

Both leftie Daily Kos and Mark Steyn in the National Review online agree that the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsement of female genital mutilation is obscene…Steyn: …”Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.”

It’s the IDEA, stupid AAP, that’s disgusting and immoral.

Isn’t this something the Michelle Obama should be fighting? Or has the administration’s refusal to criticize Moslem societies extend to endorsing FMG?

So much for the Ontario Liberals’ promise that the incoming HST tax would lower prices…

From the Toronto Star.  The LCBO raised its markups by 7.5 per cent to claw back any consumer savings from the business-friendly harmonized sales tax, the government scrambled to defend the move.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, who insists most companies will pass along any reduced costs from the HST to Ontarians, said it would be reckless to lower prices on beer, wine and spirits — even though tax changes would have made them cheaper.

Bah humbug! Throw the rascals out.

We in Toronto are about to undergo our annual angst about the fact that even as local strawberries appear in the markets, they are still overwhelmed by the cheaper ones from California.

Of course the local ones are better. Problem is there are not enough of them.

Same problem is occuring in the English hub of asparagus-growing, Evesham in Worcestershire. The supermarket Tesco is stocking asparagus from Peru — at the height of the local season.

Furious locals are threatening a boycott.

Local resident Terrance Anderson is quoted as saying,  ”I won’t be shopping in Tesco again after this. It’s an insult to our heritage.

”My grandfather grew asparagus and he would be up-in-arms about this. I know plenty of people who feel the same way as me.”

But a Tesco spokesman says ” “We sell more British asparagus than any other supermarket and were the first supermarket to get British asparagus on the shelves this year.

“We work very closely with local suppliers, including asparagus producers in the Evesham area. Temperatures this year are well below seasonal averages which has caused the British asparagus crop to produce significantly lower volumes. We have bought as much British asparagus as we can but to keep up with demand we’ve had to buy foreign asparagus too.”