Category: Food / drink

Matthew Danger

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

If you’re going to have friends, have friends who know wine and who can cook and who have access to a great cottage and who like to share and who are generally just the best. This was our weekend:

Matt smoked some ribeyes…

…while we opened the vertical of Bachelders Chardonnays we brought: the 2009, 2010, and 2011…

…and brought the last bottle down to the dock…

…to watch the sunset.

Seriously, look at that.

Couldn’t have asked for a better spot to enjoy a special wine.

Sunset turned from yellow to red as our night ended.

The next day we tallied the damage. Beer not included.

Sunset the next evening was almost as spectacular…

…and paired with beer this time…

…as the last of the clouds drifted away.

There was even time for a little fishing before dark…

…and the evening’s campfire.

Day 2’s consumption. Much of this went with a feast of lobster, shrimp, scallops, and squid.

All weekend we were entertained by chipmunks, chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, and the odd hummingbird. We also did battle with a squirrel.

If there’s a better weekend than relaxing in that place, swimming in that lake, eating that food, drinking that wine, all with those friends, I haven’t found it yet.

.:.

Side note: all of these pictures were taken with our phones, sans filters.

Cover photo by Thiophene_Guy, used under Creative Commons license

Boxcar & Bellwoods & balcony

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I will admit that I enjoy my team at work thinking that I have some kind of superpower for finding cool places. I introduced them all to 9 Bars and Monk’s Table, and have taken them to places like Dineen Coffee and Wvrst and Bar Hop, so they think I have some kind of talent. Truth: it’s just an internet connection and mild obsession. But when I brought them all to Boxcar Social yesterday after work, they really thought I had magical powers. Great coffee by day, good beer/wine/whisky selection by night, and relaxed backyard-feeling space all day.

My team drank cider and Muskoka. I, and others, drank Bellwoods: the Wizard Wolf, the Monogamy (Summit), the Omerta. The Omerta actually showed up while I was drinking the other two — nothing like just-in-time delivery.

More just-in-time: Nellie and I coordinated a pick-up order of some pizzas at Mercatto, which showed up just as I walked in the door, and which we enjoyed during a quiet night at home. We ate, and drank wine on the balcony, and started the kind of quiet weekend we’ve craved for a while now.

1907408_10152548432155673_4604174786674803594_n

.:.

Cover photo by Thiophene_Guy, used under Creative Commons license

Coney Island Parachute Jump

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Just got back from a weekend of fun in Halifax to celebrate my birthday. I’m kind of tired, so no prose this time. Just the highlights of places we hit, both new and familiar.

BAR AT THE PRINCE GEORGE HOTEL
Since we stayed at the Prince George hotel we decided to have a lunch at the new bar downstairs. The fried chicken sandwich was pretty tasty, and they had a surprisingly good beer selection; before I started on the locals I had two from Dieu Du Ciel: the Blanche du Paradis and the Aphrodisiaque.

FIELD GUIDE
After meeting up with our friends we tried to hit this place, but they don’t open ’til 6pm. Next time, then.

STILLWELL
This was the one I was really excited about. It’s a new(ish) place modelled after places like Volo and Pony Bar, and I’ve been following their progress and Twitter account since they were under construction. We all started with samplers; I got the PEI Brewing 1772 IPA, North Brewing Belgian IPA, Boxing Rock Sessionista, and Picaroons Dark and Stormy Night. Our entire group then split a stellar bottle of Brooklyn Sorachi Ace — what a treat. I wrapped up with the Uncle Leo’s Smoked Porter, which tasted like bacon. By the time I left this was my new favourite place in Halifax.

AUCTION HOUSE
This was another new stop for us. There’s a gimmick where they raffle off special appetizers and desserts and such, and people bid using paddles at their tables. We only took part in one auction and weren’t quite willing to part with $20 for a dessert, but it was still kind of fun. We split half a dozen appetizers and I had a Hell Bay Dark Cream Ale.

CARLETON
This was another first for me, even though the Carleton has been there for years. See, when I lived in Halifax, the Carleton was a SMU bar, so I didn’t go there. And old habits die hard. Anyway, it’s gotten a bit swankier inside, and the live music was pretty good. Not a great beer list, but they did have Unibroue Blanche de Chambly and cocktails named after local 90s indie bands like Thrush Hermit and Eric’s Trip. So there was that.

MAXWELL’S PLUM
Yet another Halifax institution which had never had the pleasure of my company. We were getting pretty silly by this point. I remember starting with a Boxing Rock Hunky Dory Pale Ale and ending with a Big Spruce Cereal Killer Oatmeal Stout; there may have been another in between those two but I can’t be sure.

STILLWELL
That’s right, we went back. It was that good. And before I left I’d noticed they had bottles of Dieu Du Ciel Péché Mortel in the fridge, which our friend Becky had never tried, so I ordered two (and some delicious Atari fries). After this magnificent reprisal the girls dragged us somewhere awful. I won’t even discuss it here. Awful.

PIZZA CORNER
Aaaaaaaaaaand the evening was back on track. And by “evening” I mean 2am. And by “back on track” I mean covered in donair sauce.

EDNA
After a very slow start to Sunday morning we dragged ourselves over to EDNA for brunch. By the time we left it had joined Stillwell atop my list of favourite Halifax places. The food was outstanding — I had a smoked pork chop, eggs, beans, toasted sourdough baguette, duck fat potatoes, and a cappuccino. The space (rustic, open) felt completely welcoming, the music (folk, blues) was perfect, and the clientele was almost universally happy and attractive. I can’t wait to go back for dinner some day.

TWO IF BY SEA
We braved the drizzela and walked down to the waterfront, stopping at TIBS for some fuel: capp #2. From there we threaded the needle of Buskerfest crowds down the waterfront, past a superyacht, all the way to the market.

GARRISON
The rain had let up and the sun was out now, so we stopped for two wee samples on the Garrison patio. I had the Raspberry Wheat and the Nut Brown.

HENRY HOUSE
Since we were just around the corner and felt we needed just a little more food in our stomachs we visited an old familiar haunt for some spicy calamari and a Granite Brewery Best Bitter on the patio. Nellie got one of her new favourites, the Ringwood.

STUBBORN GOAT
Sunday night’s plan was to have a proper dinner at another new stop, the Stubborn Goat. The Murphy girls rejoined us, and we added three others, but none of us had much in the way of energy. Even Nellie and I had to power through a few drinks, but we couldn’t leave that beer selection untouched. I had a Boxing Rock Sessionista, a Picaroons Best Bitter, and a Dieu du Ciel Pénombre. The menu looked impressive, though it didn’t really blow us away…or maybe that was the service, which was pretty amateurish the whole night. Still, I want to go back — our friends assured us this was out of character for the Goat, so we’ll keep it in mind for next time.

No Pizza Corner on night #2; we all rolled out of there and made for home. I crashed into bed immediately; Nellie insisted on watching The Other Woman, which even Kate Upton in a bikini couldn’t save. Our travel back to Toronto was unremarkable except for the limo driver who had spent his childhood working on a blueberry farm only a few miles from our own. Small world.

Thanks for the 46 hours of fun, Halifax. It was a hoot.

Photo by Peter Kudlacz, used under Creative Commons license

“Mmmm. Gueuzy.”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Well, that was a beer-y weekend. It actually started Thursday night when Nellie and I found ourselves near Volo and stopped in for some Great Lakes drinks (Chill Winston for me, Audrey Hopburn for her) before some dinner at Mercatto. At that point we’d momentarily switched to wine, and decided to watch Red Obsession (imdb | rotten tomatoes) while we drank a bottle of the Tawse wine club T-Blend Red.

My Friday afternoon was spent on a boat cruising around Toronto harbour for a work event, during which I consumed quite a few bottles of Steam Whistle. We were dropped off a few minutes away from the Amsterdam Brewhouse, so a few of us secured a table until Nellie and our friends MLK arrived. The food was pretty decent and I kept to the lighter beers (until the one-off Boxer (10 Count) farmhouse ale with Brett) so I could remain more or less coherent. After dinner we retired back to ours where we shared a (spectacular) bottle of Five Rows Sauvignon Blanc.

We took it easy on Saturday, just lying about and running a few errands, before meeting our friends JP + Sue at Triple A for some barbecue. We ate our ribs and steak and brisket and sausage and drank Camerons California Sunshine APA (mostly), then made a quick stop at our place to share a bottle of St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition on our balcony before heading to C’est What for a few more. I’m glad I picked up a bottle of that gueuze before the LCBO ran dry.

And now…I need a nap.

BtgtC9QCYAAYqBb

.:.

Photo by Peter Kudlacz, used under Creative Commons license

 

Mischief

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Last weekend, by the grace of good friends Matt & Kaylea, we made our now-annual pilgrimage up to a cottage in the Kawarthas. We stopped in Barrie on the way up to pick up a passanger and to eat some pizza & charcuterie cured meat, cheese, and Peruvian olives. We made it to the cottage that night, and crashed shortly after.

The next morning I woke up to this:

…met a new friend:

…went for a swim:

…lay in a hammock:

…ate some lunch, with a very special bottle of wine: a Benjamin Bridge 2004 Brut Reserve:

…smoked a pork shoulder (well, watched Matt smoke it):

…and went for another swim:

See how calm the water is there? Yeah, so did the resident mosquito population, and they ate me alive. Could be worse though: I could have gotten as badly sunburned as Nellie.

Friday was a rapid-fire drive north through traffic, and Sunday didn’t amount to much other than rain and buttermilk pancakes, but Saturday…bacon, sunshine, swimming, sparkling wine, swimming, pulled pork, swimming, camp fire…Saturday was glorious.

Get the di taleggio

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

It’s been more than two years since we visited Prince Edward County, which was entirely too long. I almost forgot how much we love it there.

The love came rushing back to me pretty much as soon as we arrived at Norman Hardie‘s for some tastings and wood-fired oven pizza. The food and wine, the fresh air and green fields, the County camaraderie…it’s starting to feel like home out there. After Hardie we hit stops from our previous trips, including Rosehall Run, The Old Third (where there was a chocolate lab puppy so cute I wanted to just eat her like candy), Closson Chase, Hinterland (where they fed us pulled pork sandwiches outside), and Lighthall. We also hit a few new ones like Hubbs Creek, Broken Stone, and Trail. Hubbs Creek was really good — nice Pinot Gris, decent Pinot Noir, and a very interesting Sussreserve Gamay rosé.

We checked into our room at the Newsroom Suites, had a little nap (I’d sampled a lot of wine), and walked across the street for dinner at East & Main. It was, as always, terrific. Nellie had mushroom ravioli and the steak frites while I had the scallops and the duck special. Our server recommended a bottle of Karlo Estates Quintas to go with it, and it lived nicely indeed amongst our two mains.

The next day I got up early for breakfast at The Tall Poppy while Nellie slept in. Soon we were on our way again, checking in at Huff Estates and and TerraCello for early-morning tastings. TerraCello was a new stop for us; we liked that they’re doing very different wines there, like a straight Vidal and a De Chaunac. They also do wood-fired pizzas, though they weren’t quite up and running yet that morning due to an overnight power outage. No problem though; we just skipped back over to Norm Hardie’s for round 2. Bumped into an old colleague while there too, which was a pleasant surprise.

And with that, we were off back to Toronto. Here’s the motherlode we brought home:

  • Broken Stone 2013 Pinot2 (x2)
  • Closson Chase 2011 KJ Watson Pinot Noir (x2)
  • Closson Chase 2012 South Clos Chardonnay (x2)
  • Hinterland 2011 Sparkling Rosé
  • Hinterland 2013 Whitecap
  • Hinterland 2013 Borealis (x2)
  • Hinterland 2012 Lacus (x2)
  • Hubbs Creek 2013 Pinot Gris (x2)
  • Hubbs Creek 2011 Pinot Noir (x2)
  • Hubbs Creek 2013 Sussreserve Gamay Rosé (x2)
  • Huff Estates 2007 Cuvée Peter J. Huff Sparkling
  • Huff Estates 2011 South Bay Chardonnay
  • Huff Estates 2012 Cabernet Franc Rosé (x2)
  • Lighthall 2011 Muté White Port
  • Lighthall 2012 Mes Trois Fils Pinot Noir
  • Lighthall 2012 Gewurztraminer
  • Norman Hardie 2013 Calcaire (x2)
  • Norman Hardie 2012 County Chardonnay (x2)
  • Norman Hardie 2010 Pinot Noir (x2)
  • Old Third 2012 Pinot Noir Blanc (x2)
  • Old Third 2011 A La Volée Sparkling Pinot Noir (x2)
  • Old Third 2013 Golden Russet Cider (x2)
  • Rosehall Run 2012 Pixie
  • Rosehall Run 2011 The Swinger Syrah
  • Rosehall Run 2011 Pinot Noir
  • Rosehall Run 2012 Gamay
  • Rosehall Run 2012 Certain Ratio
  • Terracello 2013 Riesling
  • Terracello 2012 Vidal
  • Terracello 2013 De Chaunac
  • Trail 2013 Unoaked Chardonnay
  • Trail 2013 Sauvignon Blanc

À la prochaine, county.

10478440_10152477362920673_4679946050194463624_n

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.”

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I know Narragansett Lager doesn’t have a great rating, and I don’t think I can even buy it in Ontario, but I really want one now. From Fast Company:

From Spuds MacKenzie to Sam Adams, there have been many beer spokesmen over the years, but none of them can beat Quint, the Narragansett chugging shark hunter from Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws. Played by Robert Shaw, Quint was a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis who watched hundreds of his fellow sailors eaten alive by sharks. For sheer manliness, Quint’s the kind of beer spokesperson that makes Dos Equis’s The Most Interesting Man Alive look like a milksop.

So to celebrate both the film’s 29th anniversary and the Fourth of July weekend (when all of Jaws‘s shark attacks happened), the company is re-releasing the beer with the now iconic 1975 can design.

Image from FastCoDesign.com

“Little shakin’, little tenderizin’, an’ down you go.”

Cover photo from sessiontoronto.com

Session V

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Yesterday we attended the fifth annual Session beer festival, for our fourth straight year. This year it was in a significantly more convenient location for us: Yonge Dundas Square. More on that later.

First, the important stuff. Here’s what we tried:

  1. Brickworks Batch:1904 cider
  2. Oast House Bound To Your Own Weisses — collaboration with Cuff The Duke (both)
  3. Broadhead Long Shot White (him); Underdog Pale (her)
  4. Nickel Brook Berliner Weisse German sour (him); So Say We All session IPA (her)
  5. Lake Of Bays Lake Monster red wheat (him); Sarsaparilla Belgian wheat (her)
  6. Bell City session IPA (him); Lenoir Belgian ale (her)
  7. Sawdust City Always Take The Weatherman’s Ad-Weiss rhubarb dunkel weiss (him); Golden Beach pale (her)
  8. Central City Red Racer IPA (him); Steam Whistle Dark Sea Salt IPL — collaboration with The Darcys (her)
  9. Beau’s Maddaddamites Noobroo summer gruit — collaboration with Margaret Atwood (him); Flying Monkeys Citrus Mistress (her)
  10. Junction Columbus pale ale / Flying Monkeys Genius Of Suburbia session pale (him…dumped the Columbus after the first couple of sips and hurriedly replaced it with the Genius); Brakeman’s session ale (her)
  11. Spearhead Jamaican Fire coffee stout (him); India White ale (her)
  12. Wellington chocolate milk stout (him); Hillside Island Hopper pale ale — collaboration with the Hillside Festival (her)

For the second year in a row my favourite was a milk stout. Last year it was the Beau’s/Tom Green collaboration, and this year it was my final beer: the Wellington chocolate milk stout. Speaking of Tom Green, he made an appearance, still promoting (and drinking) said milk stout.

There were 18 other breweries that we didn’t hit, mostly because we’d either already tried everything they offered or the one-off produced for Session didn’t grab us. Or because we just didn’t want more cider. We did consume our annual Sassy Lamb cupcake though.

Overall, I enjoyed this year’s festival far more than last year…actually, it’s probably my favourite Session that we’ve been to overall. Last year’s location was further away, much more cramped, and it didn’t help that the weather was scorching. This year the weather was beautiful but temperate, and the bathroom situation was entirely civilized. The crowds were also much more reasonable..I think splitting it across two days allowed everyone to have some elbow room…you didn’t have to fight through a crowd to get another beer, and there were plenty of places to stand and drink. Well done, Session organizers.

We walked home after that last one, or rather, we walked straight to dinner at Triple A. A huge plate of nachos was exactly what we needed before heading home and splitting a bottle of — naturally — the Session Saison.

.:.

Cover photo from sessiontoronto.com