Author: Dan Dickinson

Wild boar & pork belly. Who knew?

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Yup, my baby’s 30. We celebrated the milestone in fine style last night, having dinner with CBGB at Luce and spending the night in luxury upstairs at the Hotel Le Germain. Quel decadence.

First of all, the hotel: Le Germain is known as one of the best boutique hotels in Toronto, and it definitely lived up to our expectations. The hotel is gorgeous, from lobby to rooms…far nicer than the Soho Metropolitan. The decor, the raindrop showerhead, the king bed, the high-tech desk chair…the entire room was just perfect. It made for a pretty nice pre-dinner lounge and post-dinner slumber.

And, of course, there was dinner downstairs at Luce. Nellie and I had a drink at the bar while we waited for CBGB to arrive, and once they’d arrived at 7:30 we all sat down to eat. We had a quick look at the menu, but within a few minutes we all agreed that the best option was the tasting menu. And manoman, was that ever the right choice. We tried food that we would’ve never ordered on our own, but hey, what better time to try a whole bunch of new stuff than on a milestone birthday? At the end of the night they were nice enough to print up a quick list of the food (and matching wines) that we were served; it’s incomplete, but I’ll do my best to remember everything we had.

  • amuse bouche: quail egg on a salted potato fingerling.
  • zuppa: Vanilla scented lobster bisque with a scallop on cornbread. The wine was a 2004 Rallo Carta d’Oro from Sicily.
  • antipasti: Cannoli with asparagus, provolone & asparagus pesto, pappardelle with sea urchin and bison steak on a bed of barley and oyster mushrooms. The wine was a Majolini Franciacorta from Lombardia.
  • pasta: lobster-filled ravioli in squid ink with calamari, and quail with linguini pepperincino. Wine was 2003 Cocci Grifoni offida pecorino.
  • pesce: Cod with cod mash and pancetta paired with pork belly, and grouper with radicchio. Wine was a 2004 La Tunella Tibolla Gialla from Friuli.
  • carne: wild boar paired with something polenta-y, and rack of agnello. The wine was 1999 Villa Marianna Salice Salentino Riserva from Puglia.
  • formaggio: something that looked like brie but wasn’t, and a citrus sorbet.
  • dolce: four small blocks of baked chocolate mousse, and ‘Happy Birthday’ written out on the plate in chocolate.

It was easily one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten, and I think the others shared my opinion. I would have never guessed that I’d enjoy lobster bisque or lobster ravioli in squid ink, let alone something called “cod mash”, but enjoy it I did.

The service was fantastic: plates and utensils being placed and whisked in a flash, napkins folded the moment you stepped away from the table, background on each wine from the sommelier. There was a weird mixup with a cheese plate — it was placed on our table, then taken away a few seconds later — after we’d had a few bites — and taken to another table (!) despite our warnings. The servers had a brief but panic attack; we thought it was funny, but I’m not sure that other table would’ve thought so. It certainly weren’t cheap — I’m sure my father felt a chill go down his spine when I signed the bill — but how many times do you get to eat a meal that’s amazingly delicious and completely adventurous at the same time?

The meal had lasted three and a half hours. A final drink at the bar — CBGB stayed out late on a school night just for Nellie’s 30th…thanks guys! — and we retired to that beautiful room.

Pretty sweet.

Il Wanko. Sorry, that's the best I've got right now.

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We just got back from the tail end of Nellie’s birthday celebrations. Short version: dinner at Luce, a stay at Le Germain, shopping at Williams-Sonoma, Ashley & Bay Bloor Radio. That last one was more for me. Anyway, I’ll give lots more detail later.

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I watched The Life Aquatic (imdb | rotten tomatoes) earlier this week. While I tend to enjoy Wes Anderson films more than most people I know, I was onside with pretty much all the other fans: this one had a few good moments, but wasn’t as good as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, or even Bottle Rocket. Still, I think it deserves better than a 51% rating; a substandard Wes Anderson film still has twice the imagination and wit of most mainstream fare.

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Il Divo = better dressed Backstreet Boys.

Google chat

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I was so busy today I didn’t have a chance to write about Gmail chat. I seem to be one of the few people I know who had it enabled this morning; GB was the only other person I heard from who had it. It’s pretty sweet…opens the little chat window right there in the screen, in the right whitespace.

You can pop the chat layer out to a bigger standalone window, go ‘off the record’ so that nothing gets saved in the chat history, and it saves the history right in gmail to be searched along with everything else.

Fun. And good for people at work whose proxy server kills some IM clients.

In which I discuss the religions of football, basketball, Islam and Seinfeld

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The Superbowl happened. Yawn. The Superbowl ads were on. More yawning. Not that I’m a big football fan anyway, but I used to watch the Superbowl. Now it’s just too…staged. It’s no longer a sporting event; it’s a circus with a football game attached.

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I tried watching the first few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD, but I just couldn’t get into it. It’s like watching an episode of Seinfeld with all the Jerry, Elaine and Kramer bits cut out. Same character, same neuroses, same whining. I couldn’t even finish the disc. Just sent it back. I’d probably have preferred to watch the Superbowl…

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I really, seriously hope that this is a joke. Or just a wildly overstated artist’s impression. I’ll be living a few blocks from the intended landing zone of this alien monstrosity, so I don’t relish the idea of getting a neon sunburn after every northerly neighbourhood stroll.

BlogTO: equally freaked.

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A few months ago I read that CBS would be broadcasting all the March Madness games online for free. Yesterday pc sent me the URL. God help worker productivity around the continent.

I think I’ll miss Selection Sunday as we’ll be on our way to (or wandering around) New York, but the papers the next day should be filled with coverage. I remember flying into Kansas City a few years ago on Selection Sunday; the next morning USA Today (not my choice; it’s what was outside my hotel room door) had a special March Madness section. I was in heaven. Actually, I was in Kansas City, but the pullout made it bearable.

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Ah, Canadian politics. You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.

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Gmail is adding some cool new stuff. My GoogleTalk sessions are stored in the gmail history, and now they plan to embed GoogleTalk directly within Gmail itself.

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There’s certainly no shortage of news about the Danish cartoons, but I found this article in The Guardian very interesting.

Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran’s best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.

I think this is an excellent idea. Here’s why: it uses reason rather than violence to make a point. Granted, it may be an intended as an exercise in petty revenge rather than a thought-out appeal for empathy, but let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s the latter. Of course, on seeing such a cartoon in the Hamshari daily, any reasonable person would say, “That’s absurd, of course the holocaust happened, there’s loads of evidential proof, the Jews of Europe didn’t just up and move to Uruguay, etc., etc.” Said reasonable person would then wonder to themselves how any newspaper could publish something so offensive to so many people. And, of course, it would then dawn on this reasonable person that they’ve just described the very situation that Muslims found themselves in when they saw offensive caricatures of one of their holy figures, and the reasonable person would admit their own hypocrisy and shortcomings and realize the error of the Danish cartoonist.

This assumes, of course, that everyone is reasonable. 🙂 But unreasonable folks certainly aren’t going to respond well to the torching of embassies and placards about killing either, so why not try to change minds with reason and intelligence rather than armed mobs? The only thing this violence has achieved is to give some people (who don’t like Islam much to begin with) an excuse to point fingers and call names…like these fine folks who Antonia Zerbisias calls out.

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OK, back to work.

Walnut

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We just got back from Noce — the last of our Winterlicious excursions — with T-Bone (as usual) and RC. It was really good, especially the starter (salad with walnuts, pear and cheese), dessert (three kinds of mousse) and wine (some kind of kickass pinot noir). The main — venison — was ok, but nothing special. The service was great, and my wife & RC claimed the gnocchi was pretty rockin’ too, so I’d like to go back on a non-licious night.

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After sucking large for the last couple of weeks, the Canadiens have won two shutouts in a row. I watched the game this afternoon against Philadelphia, and they completely dominated the Flyers. Hard to believe, after some of the games I saw them play even a week ago.

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Last night we continued our Winterliciousing with a visit to The Strip House. It was our second time; we went back mainly because we were craving steak, but also because they have a much more extensive Winterlicious menu than most restaurants (6 appetizers, 5 mains and 3 desserts). T-Bone came with, and her friend (who’s accompanied us three times on various ‘licious trips), and the conversation ranged from politics to thongs to cats to testes. I don’t know why. We also spent a great deal of time laughing at our server, who appeared to be stoned. He seemed nearly asleep, and kept dropping things and asking his hand, “What’s the matter with you? Why are you dropping things?” It was weird.

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This morning, as if we haven’t been eating enough decadent food lately, we met CBGB at Verveine for brunch. A basket of carby goodness and some banana-chocolate chip pancakes later and I thought I was going to explode. I had to cut a subway leg out of my afternoon errands just to work off the maple syrup that went on top of my breakfast.

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A brief, scathing and deadly accurate article written by Christopher Hume of The Star slamming all three levels of government for their ongoing bumbling, negligence and dithering when it comes to the Toronto waterfront.

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The jerk chicken salad from Whole Foods: it’s a good time.

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Is it me, or does the new Globe and mail website look as if they’ve just smashed together the Onion and the BBC?

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I just don’t get some people. Saying things like “We are now saying to insult our Prophet means death. We are being attacked and an attack against our Prophet will mean death.” or “In the Prophet’s time anyone who insulted the Prophet was beheaded. The same should happen now.” just doesn’t make sense to me. Has Pat Robertson been holding classes on how to promise national violence through the media?