Author: Dan Dickinson

Birthday decadence, part II

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Well…so, that dinner last night was pretty amazing. Yeah, it cost a lot, but we’ve never had a dining experience like that before. Besides, Nellie only turns 31 once.

CBGB, Nellie and I arrived at Splendido first, with T-Bone joining us shortly after. From the second we arrived we knew the service would be expert in every possible sense of the word. Once we settled in and the ladies had set their purses on the padded bag stools (no, I’m not making that up) we ordered drinks: the ladies chose from the champagne trolley (no, I’m not making that up either) while GB and I each had a cocktail called a Cape Bretoner (Glen Breton whisky, maple syrup, ginger and blood orange), which I quite liked. From there the fun began. The service buzzed in and out constantly, clearing plates and placing new dishes, never bothering us except to describe the dishes and accompanying wines, pulling out chairs for the ladies and folding napkins before you’d even made it five steps from the table. Even the physical placement of the dishes was something I hadn’t seen before: perfect coordination by the three servers with one issuing hand signals to the others to ensure the timing was right. The meal took four hours, but the food was incredible, the service impeccable and the company — of course — perfect.

As it turns out, friends of ours happened to be having dinner there that night; today, thinking about it, I realize we hadn’t seen them since this time last year when they had us over for dinner. Perhaps we only congregate around food. To that end, I made plans to meet up with him for lunch soon.

Anyway, back to Splendido: they were nice enough to write down the entire menu for me (they don’t normally write out the vegetarian tasting menu since it’s prepared, according to our server, a la minute) so I can recount it for you here*:

  • 3 canapes (which they didn’t write down, so I’m kind of going on memory here): cauliflower soup, a crispy wafer with rapini and a cheese & onion tartlet
  • comfit beet carpaccio, fennel, arugula, parmagiano salad
  • shallow friend bean curd and dried soy bean, chili oil, sesame oil, coriander
  • Cookstown vegetables in a truffle broth, herbs, ovile oil
  • potato wrapped courgette carrot galette, cumin scented Hawaiian papaya, coriander yogurt
  • house made linguini in a woodland mushroom sauce
  • cheese plate: Stilton, Selles-sur-Cher goat cheese, Cru de Clocher Quebec cheddar
  • Grand Marnier Soufflé, chocolate infused whip cream, chocolate sauce
  • peanut butter & chocolate truffle

* The standard (read: meaty) tasting menu is on their website. There was an amuse bouche in there as well, which wasn’t written down…it was julienned vegetables in a nori paper wrap, but I don’t like nori paper, so I just ate the vegetables. They were tasty.

After four hours we finally wrapped up the meal and decided to go for a drink. Our server hailed us cabs; when I say hailed, I mean was standing in the middle of Spadina waving them over; needless to say his tip was well-deserved. We stopped in at Panorama, where the great view doesn’t quite make up for the cover charge (wtf?!) and overpriced drinks, before saying goodbye at the subway. We walked home, another birthday done, and by all accounts a good one. If Nellie ever wrote in her blog these days you could hear it from her. 😛

.:.

Halifax has probably set the new record for the world’s largest pub crawl. The story made me think of how it must’ve been at Pizza Corner last night; I assume it was like that scene from The Simpsons where Bart’s elephant is charging the peanut factory and the plant manager starts to give a speech about how “this is the day we’ve all been preparing for” before the elephant smashes through the wall.

.:.

Looks like the 60-story condo planned for the southeast corner of Yonge & Bloor might finally go ahead. While I’m glad I won’t be around for all that construction, I’m happy the corner will finally get a facelift. That intersection deserves better.

.:.

Dumbassedness of the day: a theatre in Florida, faced with complaints about the title of a popular play, is now set to present “The Hoohah Monologues” instead.

[via Boing Boing]

[tags]spendido, panorama, halifax pub crawl, pizza corner, yonge bloor condo, hoohah monologues[/tags]

"Man, that's faster than my recovery after ACL surgery."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Ted Haggard, he of the megachurch, meth addiction and male-on-male action, now claims to be cured of his homosexuality. This man is going to break the needle on his ridiculousometer.

The Onion weighs in.

.:.

Ridiculousness averted: according to the Quill & Quire’s blog (a great read for all things book-related, by the way) the Ontario Catholic school board* has decided not to pull Snow Falling On Cedars from school library shelves. The controversy (albeit minor) was due to the book being “full of dialogue that contained dozens of curse words, many of them modifying the nouns ‘God’ and ‘Jesus Christ.’”

* Remind me again why Ontario has a Catholic school board?

[tags]ted haggard, ontario catholic school board, snow falling on cedars[/tags]

10 years of nasal bleating

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Charlie Brooker is my new favourite hero, based solely on this article.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

GB, I await your scorn.

[Thanks Duarte]

[tags]charlie brooker, mac ads[/tags]

Long live the Thunder Pit

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I worked from home today, so I could see the “construction” workers milling around in the condo building site across the street. I’ve mentioned this hole before: my brother named it the Thunder Pit after some pipe bombs went off there, and I commented on how freaking long it’s taking to build. It’s now been 4.5 years since I visited the sales center, and the site is still just a hole in the ground. Oh, they make plenty of noise in there, and built pretty ramps into the pit, and weld lots of stuff…but there’s still no building there!

Our condo was sold, begun, built (all 45 floors) and is about to receive the first occupants, all in the same amount of time it’s taken these guys to square off the corners of the Thunder Pit. I feel better about our decision every time I look out my window.
[tags]bloor street neighbourhood, spire, condo construction[/tags]

At least he didn't nail anyone to the floor

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By the way, in case you’re wondering: I passed stats. Hallelujah.

.:.

In an ironic twist, an actor from the series Oz could be heading to prison in relation to a death that, ordinarily, one would only expect to see on TV. In fact, I believe at least one character on Oz was killed by being pushed down an elevator shaft.

That reminds me…I really must pick up the final season on DVD.

[tags]stats, oz, granville adams[/tags]

Fire in this guy

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Neither of us felt like cooking tonight (disclosure: I never feel like cooking, and even if I did, I’m  crap at it) so we ordered thai. Along with the requisite pahd thai, rice and veggie dish, I got some spicy noodles. They were a little bit hot, but just enough to be yummy. Anyway, as I cleaned up the last few bites of the noodles something happened. I could feel the back left of my tongue burning, but not in a spicy, peppery kind of way. It felt more like…I don’t know, like an actual burn, or how I remember bee stings felt, except it was on my freaking tongue.

I jumped up and grabbed water out of the fridge; that helped, but as soon as I swallowed the pain came back. I tried milk; same result. I tried eating an entire wheat thin while drinking milk, making some sort of edible mud pack in my mouth which (perhaps not surprisingly) didn’t really help much either. Finally, after another glass of milk, 5 minutes of foofing and a mouthful of plain rice my tongue began to feel normal again.

There must have been some super-hot half-peppers in the noodles and I put one in my mouth directly on that part of my tongue; the rest of my mouth was unaffected. I didn’t even get that runny-nose, watery-eye kind of thing that eating a crazy-ass pepper would give you. If I didn’t know better I’d say I’d put just-cooked food on my tongue and burned it, but the food had been on our table for 10 minutes and in the car for 30 before that, so that wasn’t it.

It’s like my mouth had its very own Tunguska event.

.:.

The contestants in this year’s NBA dunk competition have been named: Dwight Howard, Tyrus Thomas, Gerald Green and defending champ Nate Robinson. Nate Robinson, you may recall, took 17 attempts to put down one of his dunks last year, and still won the damn thing, showing just how stupid the event has become. The only thing I’ll watch for this year is the 3-point shootout.

I liked the suggestion last year (can’t remember if it was Kenny Smith or Charles Barkley): to save the dunk competition the NBA should ask Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Josh Smith to compete. That’d get me back in front of the TV.
[tags]pepper, thai food, nba dunk competition[/tags]

Don't spare the horses. Devil take the hindmost.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Today as I was reading my uncle’s WWI book I found something in one of the later chapters: a TTC transfer. It was from June 2004, and was printed at a station nowhere near my home. I remembered that Stanzi borrowed the book a few years ago; I guess she never made it past the Battle of the Jutland.

Two seconds later I picked up my Blackberry and noticed a new email…from Stanzi. Quel coincidence.

[tags]coincidence[/tags]

Wonderbread and Cheez-Whiz, gimmie!

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It’s cold. It’s colder than cold. It’s hell ass balls cold. It’s so cold every car made before 2002 squeals when it’s started. It’s so cold my headphone cord turned into a pipe on the way home.

.:.

My Nomad randomly played “What An Idiot He is” by Ashley MacIsaac today. I don’t think I’ve heard it in eight years; had I, I would’ve wondered how Ashley came to write a song about future president Bush.

“He’s always got a dumb expression on his face
Makes me feel sorry for the human race
‘Cause I’ve got a funny feeling that he’s runnin’ the place…”

.:.

I’m on my third WordPress theme of the day. I kind of like this one so far.

[tags]cold weather, ashley macisaac[/tags]