Category: Food / drink

The bitter drink

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Another weekend. Another epic weekend.

Friday

Christ, it was impossible to get out of Toronto. I’ve never seen Billy Bishop airport like that. A lot of commuter fliers + a few canceled flights = chaos on the island. My flight was an hour late leaving, and sat on the Montreal tarmac for fifteen minutes while we waited for an open slot. I didn’t have much in me but to get in a cab, drop my bags, listen to music, play some poker, and drink some beer.

Saturday

I had a plan. A plan for beer. After driving in a delicious breakfast sandwich it was off to Le Saint Bock — tremendous beer, and tasty frites, but a weird vibe…I’m not used to craft beer places also being sports bars. Anyway, after pints of Hefeweizen and Saison, this was the sample lineup:

  • Malédiction Milk Stout
  • King Kunta Shiraz Saison Noire Impériale Vieillit en Fût de Shiraz
  • Pénitente Blanche Épicée
  • Harvest Ghosts American Brown Ale au Piment Bhut Jolokia
  • Jésus Chéri Ale Brune Impériale Aux Cerises
  • Black IPA (Brasserie Dunham)
  • L’ambiguë Rousse Bitter (La Voie Maltée)
  • Cidre à la Cerise (Vergers de la Colline)

Next up was L’Amère a Boire, just up the street. While the beer here was less impressive (the stout and red were fine, but…just fine) the food was very tasty. Rabbit dumplings? Lamb spring rolls? Yes please. Also: hot butch servers. Anyway.

A delicious, colourful stop at G&G Patisserie and a much-needed americano at Café Sfouf later and then it was time for Station Ho.st, the home bar for Hopfenstark.

It was fricking rammed with beer nerds and stressed servers, so it started off rocky, but got a little better — especially when the flammekueche w/ crème fraiche, oignon, lardon, and emmental cheese showed up. The beer was almost too nerdy, if you know what I mean.

  • 7 Sisters: Mérope Belgian Pale Ale
  • Baltic Porter de L’Ancrier Baltic Porter
  • Saison Station 55 Saison amère
  • Berlin AlexanderPlatz Berliner Weisse

Clearly that wasn’t quite enough booze and food, so after a brief respite it was off to Pullman wine bar for some late-night charcuterie and fromage, and glasses of pinot noir and cab franc and more cab franc and barolo.

I barely remember getting home.

Sunday

Sfouf indeed. Pastries and coffee please. Honestly, not much happened on Sunday apart from some delicious relaxation, until it was time for dinner at Maison Publique…and mon dieu. What a dinner.

First of all, the wine list: it’s entirely Canadian, and it’s easily the best Canadian wine lineup I’ve ever seen. Not the biggest, but certainly the best-curated. When I first walked in I saw bottles on the bar from TH Wines, Tawse, Pearl-Morissette, and so on. I ordered that TH Wines Cab-Merlot by the glass to start.

And then there was the food. Gawd. It was…well:

  • octopus & lentil salad
  • beets in marjoram, aioli
  • ricotta gnocchi in duck + pork ragu
  • magret de canard
  • olive oil cake

For the main meal the sommelier suggested a bottle of 2007 Southbrook Poetica Cab Merlot, which was amazing. After dessert he recommended glasses of Closson Chase chardonnay and Southbrook Triomphe Cab Franc.

The wine, the ambience, the service…it might be my new favourite place in Montreal.

Monday

Time to head up to my work conference in Mont Tremblant. A ginormous yummy breakfast, mimosas, and a péché mortel filled me up until I made the long drive up. Mercy.

Montreal, je t’aime.

 

 

Ero

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Jeez, what a week. I’m afraid to even come near my scale.

Tuesday was a drink & bite at Richmond Station and dinner at La Bettola.

Wednesday was stellar catering from Food Dudes at an event.

Thursday was my first visit to Buca Yorkville, and holy shit. I mean, holy shit. What a meal, easily one of the best I’ve eaten this year:

  • Starter: three smoked fish from Nova Scotia, including a scallop & lobster sausage (with a glass of Franciacorta)
  • Main: calamarata alla carbonara di mare (pasta with pecorino, cured hen’s egg yolk, white fish roe, and sea urchin bottarga); ravioli di zuzza (pasta stuffed with roasted delicata squash, smoked burrata fonduta, and white truffles); and polipo e vongole (braised octopus, BC clams, veal bone marrow, carvola nero, crisp artichoke, and fregola sarda); all paired with some wine from Mt. Etna that I can’t remember now
  • Dessert: lemon tart with gelato, paired with some kind of sweet wine which also escapes me

Friday was a long day at work, a quick stop for cheese and beer and wine at Boxcar Social, and then meeting some friends for drinks and delicious pork belly steam buns at Bar Hop.

Saturday was all over the place:

  • breakfast at XO Bisous
  • an unsuccessful first visit to Greater Good (it was closed)
  • a successful first visit to Blood Brothers
  • a hurried walk to, and pint at, The Three Speed
  • some purchases at Burdock‘s bottle shop (including their new collaboration with Pearl Morissette)
  • way too much lunch at Libretto
  • a few hours of work followed by espresso back at Boxcar
  • a drink at Weslodge
  • dodging costumed drunks on King Street
  • enough junk food to kill a teenager

Somebody get me a vegetable, post haste.

 

 

Cover photo by Patrick Q, used under Creative Commons license

In which brother #2 and I eat and drink our way around Toronto

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Brother #2 arrived Friday night, hungry and thirsty after a week of local work. We fixed that.

Friday night we had beers and food at C’est What, along with a surprise Burlchester sighting, and a wee bit of bourbon at home after.

Saturday we started with coffee and scones at XO Bisous, did a little tasting at Left Field, had lunch at The Wren, had one more beer at The Only, saw Star Trek: Beyond (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which was crap, and finally had dinner at Triple A.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL3x6TUgyCo/?taken-by=dadickin

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL31khZgrtf/?taken-by=dadickin

This morning we got extra-large coffees from Fahrenheit and then, after running a few errands, ate brunch at Batch. Then he was off, like he was never here except a few pounds heavier.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BL6RdjuAX3E/?taken-by=dadickin

Come back anytime bro.

.:.

Cover photo by Patrick Q, used under Creative Commons license

Myriad(e) delights

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Work took me to Montreal last week, and I stayed through the weekend to enjoy a city I see far too rarely. Fortunately I’ll have an excuse to see it a lot more now, so everything described below just represents a sampler of what’s to come.

Thursday

A dim sum food truck pulled up right outside my work event, so some pork buns got demolished while I talked to startups and VCs.

Dinner was at Modavie wine bar in the old city. The live music was pretty outstanding…the lady had pipes. I ate rillette de canard and crème brûlée and felt very French indeed.

Friday

First up: coffee and food from nearby Café Veritas. Pretty solid.

I kind of skipped lunch after meetings at the Montreal office, instead just heading to Café Myriade for a cappuccino and croissant.

After going back to the office for a bit it was time for a quick stop at Brutopia for a brown ale and a bowl of sausage.

After some research, Bocata was the dinner choice, and it was goddamn outstanding: unbelievably soft bread + oil; beef carpaccio; octopus a la gallega; lobster roll w/ fennel, endive, and pear salad; plenty of good wine; and a lemon tart for dessert. I still feel full thinking about it now.

Saturday

More coffee, this time from the Espace Café. The croissants here were even better.

A morning of work deserved a big-ass brunch, so Maamm Bolduc it was. My omelette was full of chorizo (yay!) and mushrooms (what?) but some careful surgery saved the day.

The day’s true objective, though, was the Dieu du Ciel! brewpub. Oh, the flights!

  1. Ultra Mosaika (pale ale w/ mosaic hops)
  2. Déesse Nocturne (dry stout)
  3. Nativité (blonde hefeweizen)
  4. Rosée d’hibiscus
  5. Résurrection (porter)
  6. Voyageur des brumes (bitter)
  7. Sul’ pouce vers une autre galaxie (IPA w/ galaxy hops)0
  8. Pionnière (imperial black IPA)
  9. Solstice d’été aux cerises (cherry sour wheat)
  10. Rigor Mortis double (abbey double)
  11. Isseki Nicho (imperial dark saison)
  12. Route des Epices (spiced ale)
  13. Tête de Corbeau (pale ale w/ denali hops)

The day’s beerventures weren’t done though, as friends were met at Brouhaha, another top-rated Montreal beer joint. I had three; I honestly can’t remember what anyone else had. I very much remember the food though: Alsacienne flatbread (lardons, caramelized onions, crème fraîche, cheese) and smoked duck wings.

  1. Charlevoix Bootlegger (brown ale)
  2. Brouehaha Saison Voatsiperifery (peppercorn saison)
  3. Charlevoix Vache Folle (imperial milk stout)

Sunday

Grey, rainy, quiet. A bunch of amazing pastries, coffees, shockingly good beer procured from a Metro grocery store (Péché Mortel! Maudite!), and not wanting to come home. Alas.

The Dickinson tour

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Totally forgot to talk about brother #1’s visit last Sunday. That’s been a rarity — living abroad has meant brother #1’s excursions to Toronto have been few and far between.

After picking him up at his hotel and escaping the hordes of Jays fans + World Cup of Hockey attendees, I took him on a gastro tour familiar to any Dickinson brother: Quantum for coffee, Wvrst for drinks, and Patria for some dinner. It was a beautiful fall day but did cool off a bit. Still, with Patria’s outdoor heaters it was just warm enough to sit outside, even in my t-shirt.

.:.

Cover photo by Tom Magliery, used under Creative Commons license

Cover photo by tikitonite, used under Creative Commons license

How I eat now

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It occurred to me today how differently I order food now. I used to call a number, have an awkward conversation with someone about how I would like to customize their menu, and then wait impatiently for food to show up somewhere between 20 and 90 minutes later.

Now I open an app like Foodora (nee Hurrier) or Uber Eats and order what I want, and then get constant status updates (or live GPS icons on maps) as my delivery progresses. Or I do what I did just now, and order something from a nearby restaurant using Ritual; by the time I walk to the restaurant the food is waiting for me and the suckers waiting in line think I have magical powers.

Of course, Uber seemed magical to people at first, and now it’s ubiquitous (at least in downtown Toronto) so this won’t stay wonderous for long, but for now it’s pretty cool. And anything that saves me even a few minutes is a tiny lifesaver these days.

Now pardon me while I destroy this Blazin’ Hawaiian burger from Big Smoke.

.:.

Cover photo by tikitonite, used under Creative Commons license

Ba Rizabell

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Last night I had dinner with T-Bone at Bar Isabel. I forgot to write anything down or take any pictures. There wasn’t much break in the conversation; our server could barely get our order in. I remember an Isabel Fashioned, a cured meat plate, jamón croquetas, shishito peppers, tostadas with tuna and pig’s ear, a big pork dish, a quarter octopus, and a bottle of English sparkling…Coates & Seely, I think? And some 1962 Don PX to end off. It was all veeerrrrrrrrrrry tasty.

Afterwards we walked off some of that food and had a drink at Archive. T-Bone had a Sancerre. I had a Pearl Morissette Pinot from Sonoma. We planned our next dinner and hugged goodbye and caught Ubers in oppositely directed vectors.

Eigensinn Farm, again

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Nearly three years ago we ate at Eigensinn Farm, Michael and Nobuyo Stadtlander’s place in Singhampton, and reckoned we’d never probably never go back. Then, a few months ago, a plan formed with our friends Brian & Mandy to book a dinner (their first time) along with their friends who live nearby. After a lot of follow-up emailing we got the date we wanted, and after some wine planning last week and some road-tripping yesterday we arrived in beautiful Grey County at the friends’ place. It was great having a home base nearby; doing the trip up and back in the same night last time was a little much. Plus, their place is beautiful and they have a dog and a cat, so I was happy. The cat hated me though.

As for dinner, I didn’t think it could possibly live up to my memory of our first visit. I was so wrong. Here’s what we had:

Amuse geule. This was a collection of six or seven things on a horseshoe-shaped plate: a Malpeque oyster, a bit of perch in butter and hazelnut, a bit of pig head cheese, a white fish in a dill sauce so good we licked it off the shell it was served on, something that looked like prosciutto, some kind of cured meat wrapped around a chunk of pear, another cured (and smoked) meat on a triangle of toast, I think one other thing that I’m forgetting. We were handling the wine pairings for the first half of the meal, so we paired this with a 2005 Benjamin Bridge Brut Reserve — a hit, it seemed, with all those who hadn’t tried BB before.

Lobster soup with asparagus. Until we got there we didn’t know what kind of soup this would be, so we brought wine options. Once we found out it was bisque-y we opted for the 2009 Hidden Bench Tête de Cuvée Chardonnay, and it didn’t disappoint. Neither did the soup — great buttery chunks of lobster and asparagus, and the broth was so good we (nearly) all tipped the bowl up and drank every last drop.

Composition of Eigensinn Farm piglet. I mean…seriously. It was so succulent and delicious I almost cried. The wine we paired it with — a 2009 Maison Roche de Bellène Grand Cru Clos de Vougeot — was something I’d been holding onto for a special occasion, and this dish certainly qualified. It was goddamned amazing. All of it.

Pickerel with sugar snap peas. Delicate, flaky but still meaty…just perfect. The wine was another game-time decision since we didn’t know how the pickerel was prepared, so we went with a 2015 Five Rows Sauvignon Blanc.

Black currant sorbet. I was glad to see the palate cleanser is still served in the upside-down bottoms of broken wine bottles.

We went for a short walk around the garden before the main course, during which Brian took over and opened his sparkling: a dry & delicious 2009 Trius 5 Blanc de Noirs. Palates: cleansed.

Eigensinn Farm lamb with garden vegetables. Madre de dios. It was so delicious we (who had been pretty boisterous all night, probably to the annoyance of some of the other guests) went quiet and just made moaning noises. Enough. Mercy. No mas. For this Brian broke out a 2007 Southbrook Poetica Cab Merlot, which I think I would have loved a little more had it been a little less Merlot-heavy. But that’s my thing. We quickly finished that bottle, though, and opened another special one: a 2012 Ravine “Stadtlander” Reserve red blend, which had been signed by chef himself. It put a nice little personal signature on the evening, and how amazing of Brian & Mandy to share that with us.

Cheese with walnut raisin bread. There were three cheeses: a Grey Owl (my perennial favourite), a mild blue (Benedictine from Quebec, I think?), and a third which I can’t remember but which was delicious. They all were. We finished off the rest of the Stadtlander reserve.

Dessert with strawberries. Uh, yeah. We expected a small dessert. Out came three desserts on the plate which, to be totally honest, I don’t quite remember. Nellie says there was a crumble of some kind and some sage ice cream. I just remember being really full. I also remember that we had it with the friends’ Colaneri late harvest Riesling. Oh, they told us while we were eating that one of the desserts had hand-written fortunes inside. That explained the over-chewy bite I had just pulled out of my mouth and had attributed to their first miss of the evening. Needless to say I could not read my fortune.

Petit fours. Sure, okay.

All in all, this meal was significantly better than our first visit, and probably ranks in my top ten of all time. We left feeling very fat, and very happy.

.:.

This morning the friends fed us a grand feast (bacon, eggs, french toast done in a waffle-maker, and enough coffee to waterboard my hangover) and we were on our way back to the GTA. Brian & Mandy were headed elsewhere so they dropped us at the GO Train to Union Station, which afforded us an excuse to check out the food vendor market on Front Street. I had an excellent brisket sammie from Carbon Bar, and Nellie had a lobster roll. We’ll be headed back there in some upcoming weekends.