I am considering hauling my ass up to Bayview & Eglinton just to support this place, in the hopes that it catches on.
Toronto restaurant to eliminate tipping
Yes. Please. Just pay service staff 18% more across the board and end this archaic bullshit.
.:.
Cover photo by Robert Kosara, used under Creative Commons license
I’ve been intrigued by NAO Steakhouse — a Japanese-influenced steak place, in an old Yorkville house that used to be Boba — ever since it opened. A friend used to work there, but we never quite made it in during her tenure, and for whatever reason we just hadn’t gotten around to making reservations. This week was a tiring one at work though, so we decided on Thursday to try a new place to end the week on a fun note. So we landed here.
First we stopped in at Boxcar Social for an espresso and some drinks. I like that I can get great versions of both there.
Then, on to NAO. It’s a cool space, and they gave us a nice corner on the banquette, the feel of the place was a hit. And the food? Outstanding. The Japanese influence lent a little something to the typical steak experience, but the steak itself was top-notch. I also really liked the wine selection…not the kind of 4-pound wine list that confounds or overwhelms, but well-organized and well-thought-out. We tried to get a bottle of Rustenberg from South Africa, but someone snagged the last bottle just before we did. Instead we got a Chilean Carmenere/Cab blend that wasn’t on the list, which worked out just fine indeed.
Our meal:
Consider it added to the favourites section of my list.
.:.
Cover photo from NAO’s site
Pearl Morissette is one of my favourite Canadian wineries, but until a month or so ago I didn’t know they were also producing wine in California. I found out when I saw an announcement about a dinner at hot new Toronto restaurant Alo, featuring these California wines from PM. It was such a hot ticket (and Alo is such a small restaurant) that the event sold out in minutes, but they scheduled a second seating and Nellie, Kaylea, and I got tickets.
Winemaker Francois Morissette was there to speak about each of the California wines, and a few surprise Ontario wines as well. All the wines were predictably delicious, but we were just so impressed with how he’s found a balance in the Californian wines: using all the advantages of the hot (but not too hot, based on their vineyard locations) without the overbearing, overwrought, over-oaked tendencies too often found in California bottles. These are California wines made with the restraint of a Burgundian winemaker.
The menu, as best I can remember provided by P-M…thanks Milt!:
The rice + foie gras dish sounds like it should have been terrible, but it was goddamn delicious. And I hate foie gras.
The wines:
All in all, an outstanding meal. I really want to go back Alo now, and we’ve already ordered some of the California wine.
After dinner we still wanted more wine, so we decided to meet up with more friends at Archive. The girls started drinking sparkling; I stayed on the Pearl Morissette with the 2012 “Dix-Neuvième” Chardonnay. I lost track of what everyone got, but after we shared a bottle of Cab Franc from Saumur I was out of there. The rest of the group partied well into the night.
Last year our first Cask Days beer festival was a revelation. So many amazing beer, at such a well-run event, made us incredulous that we’d never been to one. For the past 11.5 months we’d looked forward to the 2015 installment.
We just got home from #caskdays2015, and the fact that I can type probably tells you that it was a little less epic than last year’s. Granted, there was no post-festival Wvrst bottle tour like last year’s, but still. It wasn’t quite as epic as last year’s maiden voyage.
I mean, sure, there was great beer and excellent food, and it was almost shockingly well-run. But here was my major disappointment: they were holding back so much beer that I couldn’t try half of what I really wanted. This is what I tried, and what I tried to try:
So, yeah. Literally the first two beers I wanted were sold out. Or, rather, they were being “held back” for later sessions. I get that they’re trying to keep enough around for everyone, but I tried to get those two within seconds of entering the building, and I checked back a few times, so they were NEVER available for our session. That’s brutal.
Just before 5pm I went hunting for my 11th and final beer, and my last four choices were all off-limits. I gave up and ate some fried chicken instead.
So I ended up drinking a lot of sour beer on the day, which was fine, and one or two of them were tremendous (the Parallel 49 and Stone City especially), but GOD I wanted a heavy stout toward the end.
Frankly, the shot of espresso (from Boxcar Social) and fried chicken (from Brando’s fried chicken) were two of the best things I had all day, and the food program in general looked killer, so kudos to the festival for that. Also: military precision on the porta-potty line.
What I took from this, though, is that a) the Friday night session is the only good one, and everything else is a poor cousin; and b) you have to buy your way into one of the premium packages to get decent beer. I guess I’ll keep that in mind for next year, and see whether the price is justified.
It’s been a busy 8 days, considering I haven’t been traveling or anything. The mother in law visited for about a week. We had a huge dinner at Jacobs & Co. I spent Saturday, including a Fieramosca dinner, involved in a work conference. Good Jays games and bad Jays games. Absolutely insane amounts of work.
I spent tonight eating dinner at Hawthorne with Nellie, planning my attack on Cask Days tomorrow, and watching the Jays’ season end in game 6 against the Royals, in a game they probably could (should) have won. But hey, at least the Habs are 8-0 to start the season. So there’s that.
.:.
Cover photo by Loaded Dog, used under Creative Commons
This weekend has NOT been good for ye olde diet.
First, M+LK invite us over to their place for dinner, and it turns into the predictable feast: a huge charcuterie board, then grilled pork chops (finished with flaming bourbon), a (surprisingly?) delicious cabbage dish with pancetta, a butternut squash galette, and roasted veggies. Then a tray of desserts so ridiculous it beggared belief. Plus, a seemingly-endless supply of terrific wine, including a Thirty Bench 2010 Benchmark red.
In other news, my hand is scratched all to shit from playing with their kitties, Sam & Dean.
Today we welcomed Jenna (aka Nellie Jr) and a friend over for brunch. Nellie made Caesars and mimosas and cinnamon buttermilk pancakes and breakfast sausage and I needed a serious nap. I woke up just in time to see Josh Donaldson hit a walk-off home run.
Right now Nellie’s grilling up some steaks while a bottle of Two Sisters red warms up in the decanter.
The scale tomorrow will not be my friend.
Beautiful weekends are made even better when your friends in Niagara-on-the-Lake invite you down for the night.
CBJ+M picked us up Saturday morning, and we drove to the Sunnyside Café for breakfast before heading down to Niagara. And by “heading” I mean crawling slowly through traffic jams. Eventually we made it to Beamsville for quick stops at Thirty Bench and Hidden Bench. We also stopped at Kew, and for the first time in four visits got to sit outside on their lovely patio.
We headed on into NIagara, picking up some beer at Silversmith and pie at The Pie Plate, and tasting more wine at the ridiculously grandiose Two Sisters. Finally, we arrived at Brian & Mandy’s for a nice afternoon swim, with poolside sparkling wine and crudités.
Our hosts prepared dinner: a vast pile of meat (steak, pork chops, and sausages) with beet salad and goat-cheese stuffed red peppers, along with bottles of 1999 valpolicella. A strawberry rhubarb pie procured earlier that day topped it all off.
We played bocce by car headlight, and some of us went for another dip. Brian and I were the two last standing, and ended the evening with a little Lagavulin.
The next day started with coffee, then another swim, then a fantastic brunch of bacon and herbed goat cheese fritatta, followed by yet more pie: a peach raspberry pie, to be exact. We played one bocce rematch, and then got on our way.
Stellar weekend, guys.
I mean, they’re pretty much ALL busy at this point because of work, but this one was busy because of extra-curriculars.
On Sunday Nellie and I joined a bunch of people in a private suite at the Rogers Cup women’s tennis finals. I had really hoped to watch Serena Williams dismantle someone, but she had lost a day earlier in an upset to Belinda Bencic. Still, we weren’t going to turn down the chance to sit in a suite and watch world-class tennis, so we took an extravagantly-priced uberSelect up to York University and drank cold Pilsner Urquell in the shade. In the end, Bencic won the tournament while I was in the bathroom; her opponent, Simona Halep, conceded due to injury while I was peeing some Urquell. Boo-urns.
On Monday I met some vendors for a late dinner at The Chase, since they seemed particularly interested in seafood. I have no great love for fish myself, but it was about the visitors to Toronto, not to me. I’d underestimated the place though — the food was outstanding, and our server was terrific. I had a few glasses of Vouvray, an octopus + chorizo starter, one half of the parmesan-crusted halibut for two, part of our bottle of Norm Hardie chardonnay, and a forkful of each of the three desserts our server brought: chocolate, lime, and strawberry/rhubarb.
The next night I had a meeting at Beerbistro (hey, I didn’t pick it…it’s next to this guy’s office) where I bumped into the same gentlemen from the previous evening. I’d mentioned it to them, and they decided to conduct all their meetings that day from the bar. I stayed for two, then walked around the corner for an impromptu drink meeting back at The Chase. Well…the Fish & Oyster bar downstairs.
On Thursday, after a quick dinner at Monk’s Table we walked to Boxcar Social for — and I swear I didn’t just dream this — a bourbon and chocolate tasting. Arranged by Tipsy Teachers, with bourbon selected by @BourbonThing and chocolate made by Chocosol, we tried (after a little chilled drinking chocolate) four squares of chocolate paired with four bourbons:
I learned last night why I like bourbons such as Four Roses (even this one, a 100-proof) and Basil Hayden’s: they have a much higher percentage of rye. So there you go: delicious, AND I learned something.
Nellie went camping on Friday, and so I, mercifully, did absolutely nothing.
You know what feels weird? Not working on a weekend.
Apart from my birthday weekend a few weeks ago, I’ve worked every weekend since…well, I can’t remember. If I’m in the city, I’m working.
Not this weekend though. This weekend I’m relaxing and enjoying the summer. We walked over to King West today to buy some stuff for Nellie’s upcoming camping trip, and tried out Mascot Brewery (verdict: cool rooftop, okay beer, absolutely horrid DJ) before retreating to Bar Hop for a better one. Now we’re just lazing about, playing games, listening to music, getting ready to make dinner. Maybe picking out a movie or two.
Relaxing, in other words. And it’s fucking awesome.
So, my 40th birthday was last week. I’m not one to particularly care about birthdays, even milestone birthdays, but I was excited about this one. Nellie had something planned to celebrate my birthday, and I had no idea what it was. It was a complete secret. Well, almost complete — the night before we left, from my desk as I tried desperately to wrap up work before taking two days off, I saw her waving around a Porter boarding pass. That narrowed the field somewhat.
I’m writing this five days after the birthday festivities ended, in part because work insanity resumed immediately, and in part because it’s taken me that long to recover. Here’s what happened:
We got to the island airport, excited to use the new tunnel. Sadly the tunnel wouldn’t open until that afternoon, so the ferry it was. While waiting in line for the ferry I was surprised to see Kaylea & Matt appear. For a second it seemed like a coincidence, and I thought, “Where are they going?”. Then it clicked — they were coming to wherever my birthday weekend was happening! Traveling companions! Amazing!
Once we checked in and got through security Nellie revealed where we were going: a tour of Quebec breweries, starting in Quebec City and ending in Montreal. Badass! We boarded a little late and took off for Quebec City.
After a wait for our bags and a slight snafu with the rental car (which worked in our favour — we were given a much bigger car for the same rate) we piled in and drove downtown, listening to an awful 80s/90s mix on french radio.
Nellie and I haven’t been to Quebec City since our honeymoon, but Matt & Kaylea knew their way around, so we dropped them at their hotel, checked in ourselves, and walked back to meet them near the Chateau Frontenac. We saw Matt walk around a corner just ahead of us, and when we caught up…boom, there were Jeff & Steph! (Talking to a cop for some reason.) Jeff gave me a full-on bear hug and we all went to find some lunch.
Kaylea knew this place called L’Inox where they make their own beer, so that’s where the adventure started. We sat on the sweltering patio and drank tasty beers and tried to get a little food down our necks before our limo (more on that later) arrived. As we sat there, another surprise: CBJ+M arrived. What the? Deceit! Skullduggery! What great friends. I have great friends.
It started to pour, so we ducked inside, finished up, and then got into the stretch limo Nellie had rented. We were headed north to Baie-Saint-Paul to visit Microbrasserie Charlevoix, but first we had a stop to make. On the way out of town our driver Felix (who was 12) stopped at an SAQ, dropped Nellie and Kaylea, and executed an 8-point turn in tighter quarters than I could even imagine a limo being able to fit. Bubbles aboard, we took off north.
We drank Veuve Clicquot, passing Montmorency Falls and Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, eventually arriving in Baie-Saint-Paul and the Charlevoix bottle shop. The cashier confirmed that we were the first limo ever to pull into their parking lot. There’s no tasting room, but we loaded up bottles, including a bunch of Vache Folle milk stout. Jeff insisted on buying an expired bottle of rye pale ale from a display out front.
To sample their beers we drove into town to Le Saint Pub for dinner. Or late lunch. Or something. I didn’t eat enough, but did drink another 9% milk stout. We left there, and admired the pretty little town while Felix fetched the limo.
Felix drove us down to the St. Lawrence, where the Rivière du Gouffre empties into the bay which gives the town its name, and we took in the view before jumping back into the limo home.
Back to Quebec City we drove, drinking Charlevoix beer as we went (the expired ryePA? Delicious.) and checked into our respective hotels. Frankly, the rest of the evening is a blur for me. I’d had too much to drink, and not nearly enough to eat. I remember meeting everyone in the bar at the Hotel Clarendon. I remember grabbing cabs to get to Le Projet, which seemed like a really cool place for the few seconds I was there. And I remember the day getting completely away from me, if you know what I mean, and needing to go home immediately. Nellie and I managed to get ourselves into an Uber and I conked out. Way to ruin your birthday, Dan.
The next morning was a rough one, but I got some coffee and a bagel in me, and we got on the road. It was raining when we left QC, but the clouds soon broke and the sun appeared and we drove through the beautiful Quebec countryside. Nellie needed some fluids and I needed some grease, so we stopped in a little town called Donnacona and she got a vitamin water and I got McDonald’s drive-through fries. Those fries saved my life, yo.
Not long after we pulled off the highway at Fromagerie des Grondines for some cheese, then got back on the highway and continued on to Shawinigan. The plan was to visit Trou du Diable, another brewing favourite. Again, no tasting room per se, but WHAT a cool shop: an almost overwhelming selection of bottles available, and great swag. Nearly everyone bought a tshirt or a hat — I’m wearing mine as I type this. We could have stayed there all day if we didn’t have places to be. I still had no firm idea of where those places were, mind you; I was just along for the ride.
Oh yeah, and I got another surprise when we pulled into the TdD parking lot: brother #2 and his wife, who flew in from Nova Scotia the night before. Incroyable! I didn’t see that one coming. I got a little choked up. Had to wait a second before getting out of the car.
So now we were ten, and loaded up on beer, and — after a grocery stop in Trois-Rivières — on our way to a town called Sorel-Tracy on the Richelieu River. We arrived around 4, at a house called Le Maison Relaxio, and I promise that I am NOT making that up. Once we walked through we understood the name. It’s a beautiful, modern five-bedroom house with a big indoor pool, a games area, outdoor patios with decks and grills and stoves, a sauna, a hot tub, an enormous kitchen, a home theatre in the basement…it felt like we were in Beverly Hills. And it was ours for the night.
We snacked on an enormous charcuterie board and cracked craft beers and blasted hip-hop. We went for swims, and swung in hammocks, and battled at air hockey. We sat on docks, played pool, sipped wine. Matt and Jeff did every activity station in the place, like they were at camp. Before long Matt and his line chefs began preparing dinner: burgers made of beef and pork, stuffed with confit goose, and topped with local cheddar. Also: potato salad and grilled corn, and (obviously) wine and beer.
There was much more swimming after dinner. Nellie made friends with a plastic dolphin. Kaylea and I drank expired milk stout straight from bottles. Jeff swam around with the pink umbrella. Steph crashed early as she is wont to do. No one wanted to leave or let the day end, but eventually we all crashed. We needed three more days here at least.
Today it was back to Montreal, so everyone fueled up on a giant pork-ridden breakfast. I drove in a leftover burger for good measure and THAT GOOSE my god almighty god. Anyway, it was a short drive, but no one really had the wherewithal to tackle either Unibroue or a long drive to Brasserie Dunham. We just wanted to get to Montreal. We dropped CBJ+M at their hotel, and drove a few more blocks to our own: the Hotel Place d’Armes.
Unfortunately our room wasn’t ready yet, so we left our bags and went out in search of coffee. I found an espresso at Café Différance, and we found fresh local beer at Les Souers Grises, a brewpub on the site of an old nunnery.
We walked back toward our hotel along the Promenade du Vieux-Port, stopping for some tacos (me: chorizo; she: lobster) at Taco Box.
We walked in the hot sun to our hotel, where our room…still wasn’t ready. So off we went to the hotel bar to cool down with wine and gin, until suddenly…CBGB showed up! Nellie told me the surprises were over! Tricksy! False! We had a drink with them, but only one, as we all needed to clean up and now our room was ready. And what a room it was: a two level loft suite. Nellie had gone all-out, no doubt. We put on some tunes, showered, changed, and were ready for a drink when Andrew & Denise popped over.
We walked up the flight of outdoor stairs to the rooftop patio. Well, the lower one; the upper one was full and featured no shade, which is no place for two Dickinson men. We took over the corner couch, ordered a bottle of Möet et Chandon, and enjoyed the views.
We needed a drink locale to rally prior to dinner in the plateau, so we picked Gorge Rouge, a fairly hipster hangout a block from our restaurant. My French isn’t quite up to the task of a complex drinks list, but we muddled through, and got another surprise when two more friends showed up: MLK! In fact, they’d driven to Montreal just for this dinner. What a pair of beauties.
When it was nearly time for our dinner we walked the block to La Salle À Manger, and filled a table for 14. No, wait, make that 16: JP+Sue had just arrived. NOW, Nellie promised, there were no more surprises. This was it: the finale, the apex, the ne plus ultra. So we tucked in to dinner. And oh my. Dinner.
There were oysters. There was house-made charcuterie. There was seared tuna. There was some sort of enormous concoction of shrimp and salad and tomatoes and onion rings piled on a single huge loaf of bread. There was boudin noir. There were probably things I’ve forgotten now one week on. And finally, there was an entire suckling pig, including the head (which I held up Lord Of The Flies style, and which JP ate). Through it all there was a never-ending supply of goddamn outstanding wine, hand-picked by Kaylea. The Loire cab franc she ordered nearly stopped my heart. She gets me.
We bought a shot for the kitchen staff — they came out of the kitchen to thank us — and then we killed the lemon dessert which signaled the end. What a meal. What an event.
The adventure ended here for a few people: MLK, CBJ+M, and Andrew & Denise who had to leave early the next morning. For our part, we didn’t have much left in us either. We hailed an UberX and sped home.
One friend who knows me well (too well?) whispered an instruction to me that night: to look around the table and never again doubt that people love me. My insecure brain will never fully believe it, but there they all were. Those words glowed in my head as I drifted off to sleep.
Sunday we slept in, because of course we did. We ordered a big greasy room-service breakfast and headed back up to the Plateau, because it was time for church: a visit to the Dieu du Ciel brewpub. I had somehow, criminally, never been to this place, the home of Canada’s best brewery and maker of my favourite beer, Péché Mortel. The intrepid ten left over from dinner the night before were all here, and we enjoyed a tour with one of the brewmasters (who actually sat with us for hours and talked beer…such a great guy) followed by a tasting flight. Then we basically just killed the rest of the board. I’d started feeling ill while in the brewing room (humid, no air moving, not enough food in my stomach, etc.) and had a bit of a slow start, but the chai beer seemed to save me. I sampled three or four more, and was starting to rally.
CBGB departed for their train, and three of the remaining little piggies went to market (Marché Jean-Talon, that is) to fetch dinner for the evening. The rest of us went around the corner to Dépanneur As to buy some beer. There was so much Quebec beer there I’d never heard of that I didn’t know where to start. Jeff, JP, and I each loaded up a box, waited forever for a cab, suffered through said cabbie’s ridiculous roundabout route, and arrived at Matt & Kaylea’s Airbnb rental.
Their place had a beautiful (and dinosaur-ridden) back patio, so we drank cold beer and wine, and put Ben Harper and Nina Simone and NoFX and Bob Marley records on the turntable (!), and ate another Matt-feast: shrimp, oysters, duck bacon & goat cheese, scallops & chanterelle mushrooms, seared yellowfin tuna, a maelstrom of king crab, and (since we were in Quebec) a tarte au sucre. That was it. I could eat no more. We hugged it out and caught our last Uber of the trip.
MONDAY
The fairy tale was over. Time to go home. We collected our steed, dropped our beer off in the trunk of JP’s car, drove to the airport in the most clusterfuck-y manner possible, and checked in to our flight. Not that we were in a time crunch, but it’s still nice to sail through that Nexus line at security.
Our flight home barely even seemed like a thing, it was like a thought. We arrived back in Toronto barely 100 hours after we’d left, but it felt like we’d been gone for weeks. We walked through the island airport tunnel for the first time, and a few minutes later were home, suddenly feeling very lonely.
Of course, I needed that alone time. Not that I’d have traded it for anything, but the constant social interaction and being the ostensible reason for the festivities was just as exhausting for me as the rich food, heavy drink, and lack of sleep. Much like our other epic adventures with friends, I needed a vacation after our vacation.
But like all great adventures, they turn more brilliant as a day or two passes. Only today, after an especially intense week at work, do I really feel like I’m able to see the arc of the thing. During the weekend itself I was so busy being shuttled around, and then so overwhelmed by everyone’s arrival and attention, that I was barely reacting or getting excited. It took almost a week for the emotions to hit me. Gratitude. Appreciation. Joy, outright joy.
I can’t, and certainly didn’t, thank anyone enough for coming all the way from Toronto and Barrie and Ottawa and Nova Scotia. I’m bad at things like that, but I think they know that about me by now. I think they also know I love them whether I say it or not.
I also didn’t (and almost never do) thank my wife enough. The sheer logistics of what went into this trip was incredible, let alone the care and thoughtfulness. I might have guessed the destination, but never could have expected the company. I could never have anticipated the memories I now have.
I am so lucky. And what else could a man want on any day of his life?
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 