Category: Food / drink

Photo by Adam Fagen, used under Creative Commons license

I couldn’t decide whether to call this post “the risin’ of Weizen” or “the Porter new order”

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a former colleague, an ex-Torontonian who now lives in England. He knows I’m a beer fan, and mentioned that a few night before, at some bar not necessarily known for the their beer selection, he’d been able to try a Le Trou Du Diable Shawinigan Handshake. Over his week-long visit he’d noticed a much more extensive penetration of craft beer around Toronto than when he’d left four or five years ago.

I’d slowly started to recognize the same thing of late, but hearing my friend’s observations just cemented it. Places like Smokeless Joe, C’est What, and Rebel House had been carrying the torch for craft beer, especially Ontario craft beer for ages, but I’d noticed a shift in the clientele of such serious beer places, especially Volo. It wasn’t the same faces, the same beer geeks, every time. We’d see people trying new beers, searching out new releases, willing to be educated. Beerbistro was probably at the front of that tide, with places like Bar Hop, Wvrst, Bellwoods, and Indie Alehouse forming the second wave.

The size and makeup of the crowd at this year’s Session Toronto was a huge indication of how craft is quickly becoming the expectation. Another is the fact that Spotlight Toronto has run a ’30 days of Ontario beer’ feature the last few years, and Mike DiCaro’s series wrap-up post does a far better job of exploring and summarizing this shift  than I’ve managed here:

“Sure there was the rare brewery making weissbier and seasonals like an imperial stout, but the vast majority of what you encountered were pale ales with an amber ale or IPA being exotic. Even though it was only ten years earlier that time feels like eons ago. It has evolved into a completely new environment for craft beer lovers today. The bold, flavourful and hop-forward American-style IPA has become de rigueur and you can find a local craft example of just about every style imaginable […] .”

My favourite example of the shift might be Triple A, for all intents and purposes our new local. Make no mistake, it was the food that drew us here, and the food that’s kept us coming back. The beer selection for the first few months was basic; the most adventurous beer on tap was Mill Street Tankhouse. For the past several months, though, while the menu still contains the PBRs you’d expect in such a lo-fi place, they also carry Kensington FishEYE-PA, Flying Monkeys Stereo Vision, and Amsterdam Big Wheel — none of them exemplary beers, but a definite step-up from their original mass offerings, and a nod to the demand out there for decent, interesting, local beer.

I, for one, welcome our delicious new overlords.

.:.

Photo by Adam Fagen, used under Creative Commons license

Image by Jen Riehle for Smashing Magazine

Happy Pride & Canada Day Weekend!

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

A  wise man once said, “The best weekends are spent with good friends and family, but are measured in good wine and beer.” Actually, no one’s ever said that. No one famous anyhow, just me. Like, just now. That wise man was me. So yeah, we drank a lot this weekend, is what I’m saying. But we drank well, and with a  narrative in mind.

On Friday we escaped work a little early and prepared dinner for our friends Kaylea & Matt. That it was #cdnwine day on Twitter (apparently?) was just a bonus. We grilled steaks from Cumbrae’s and drank lots of Canadian wine (with a few others thrown in for international flavour) and beer (courtesy of K&M) and welcomed three of their friends and actually made use of our balcony for pretty much the first time this year. It’s possible that we ate too much and drank too much and didn’t get enough sleep, but it was worth it.  Here’s what went down (our gullets):

Wine

  • 13th Street 2011 Pinot Gris
  • Malivoire 2007 ‘Moira’ Pinot Noir
  • Nyarai 2011 Viognier
  • Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
  • Shypoke 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Versado 2010 Malbec
  • Featherstone 2011 Cabernet Franc (thanks Steph!)

Beer

  • Beer Academy Hopaweizen
  • Beau’s Festivale Plus Sticke Alt
  • Goose Island Sofie
  • Parallel 49 Gypsy Tears Ruby Ale

The next morning was basically an exercise in how fast we could get a peameal bacon sandwich and giant-ass Fahrenheit coffee into each of us, before sending Matt & Kaylea on their way. Then Nellie and I plopped ourselves on the couch, inexplicably watched the wretched Movie 43 (imdb | rotten tomatoes), and eventually Uber’d up to our friend MLK’s, where CBGBLB were visiting. We enjoyed their backyard while GB made some amazing barbecued ribs. We took along a few more treats for dinner too:

  • Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
  • 13th Street 2011 ‘Arome’ Essence White
  • Tawse 2009 ‘Laidlaw’ Pinot Noir
  • Tawse 2010 Wine Club Syrah

It wasn’t a late night, obviously, given the yesterevening’s festivities. We took a quick stroll through the Pride-related mayhem on Church Street on our way home, and were reminded that it’s totally legit for ladies to go topless in Toronto. Bless.

Sunday, much like Saturday evening, was sunnier and warmer than expected, so we found our way to a patio. The Bier Markt patio, to be exact, wherein I drank two ice cold Erdinger weissbeers and earned myself a sunburn. North of us, the Pride Parade snaked its’ way around central Toronto. We could see the tail from our balcony as it formed, even that far north. In honour of the day, we drank a bottle of Daniel Lenko 2008 ‘Chardonngay’ Chardonnay with dinner.

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And then what better way to spend Monday — Canada Day — than watching the White House get trashed, a la how the British/Canadian troops did it in 1814, in the risible Die Hard rip-off White House Down (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? Well, I guess we did come up with a better way: Nellie made a meal of shrimp and scallops and corn paired with a Southbrook 2004 ‘Poetica’ Chardonnay (the label for which featured a poem by Martin Tielli, one of my favourite Canadian musicians) and lamb paired with a Stratus 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. Canadian food, Canadian wine, Canadian talent. Delicious patriotism!

.:.

Image by Jen Riehle for Smashing Magazine

Session 101

Dan Dickinson4 Comments

Okay, it wasn’t actually called that, but I’ve been thinking of it as the third annual Session 99 beer festival…hence 101. Officially, though, it’s just called Session Toronto now.

Since the festival had moved from 99 Sudbury up to Wychwood Barns, taking Uber there and back — especially on such a stinking hot day — was a worthwhile splurge. And when I say stinking hot, I mean hot enough that pretty much everyone was sweaty and various degrees of stinky. I was stupid enough to wear jeans, and spent the whole afternoon yelling, Nick Miller-like, at the sun. Going inside didn’t help as the humidity in there was worse…especially when it came time to make my one and only bathroom stop. It must have been over 50° in there with the humidity, and by 7pm the situation had become something less than sanitary. I vowed never to go back in, no matter how dire the bladder situation became.

Right, with all that out of the way, let’s get to the beer…so much of which was outstanding this year.

  1. Oast House ‘Hef’ hefeweizen
  2. Sawdust City ‘Red Rocket’ coffee stout
  3. Left Field ‘6-4-3’ double IPA
  4. Great Lakes ‘Thyme Lord’ saison
  5. Beau’s ‘The Tom Green Beer’ milk stout
  6. Spearhead ‘Jamaican Fire’ ale
  7. Wellington SPA
  8. Lake Of Bays ‘River Walker’ summer ale
  9. Highlander Brew Co. ‘Lion Grass’ summer ale
  10. Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel
  11. Indie Alehouse ‘High Maintenance’ Belgian strong ale
  12. Central City ‘Red Racer’ IPA
  13. Flying Monkeys ‘Machete’ oatmeal stout
  14. Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel (again)
  15. Left Field 6-4-3 double IPA (again) as we stopped in to buy me a shirt
  16. Black Oak saison

Also: a killer pulled pork sandwich from Hogtown Smoke, and cupcakes (Spearhead Moroccan brown ale teacupcake, Canadian mancake) from The Sassy Lamb.

We left shortly before closing, and walked around the corner to The Stockyards to pick up dinner. Sadly, it seemed like all the other Session-goers had the same idea, and when we heard the chef yell that it would take at least thirty minutes for any fried chicken orders, we bailed. We picked up some wings on the way home, and ate them with an ice-cold Shawinigan Handshake from Trou du Diable. Beer day for the win.

Tawse, Five Rows, Hidden Bench, Stratus…and now Pearl-Morissette

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

It’s dangerous having a friend in Niagara. Especially when that friend is gracious enough  to invite you over (for the second time in as many months) to enjoy their pool and join them for dinner, as they did this past Saturday.

Joined this time by our friends CBJ+M, we planned to hit a few wineries on the way down. Our first and most anticipated stop was Pearl-Morissette, the one winery I’ve continually heard that we must visit. We were a little hesitant since I’d heard similar things about Marynissen which turned out to be an utter disappointment, but we had little reason to fear.

Once we actually found the place — there are no signs, no parking lots, no tour buses or bachelorette parties (thank heavens) — we realized we’d stumbled into something pretty special. It’s very much on a working farm, and not fancy…we gathered, in a barn, around a lone board perched atop some barrels. François, the winemaker, guided us through tastings of each of their wines (Riesling, Chardonnay, Cab Franc), starting with barrel samples of the 2012, then the 2011s still ageing in the bottles, and finally the bottled 2010s.  He took the time to explain his adventure with each wine, the struggles and victories and lessons. No tasting, this: we were listening to a craftsman guide us through his past four years’ work. We took twelve — four of each — home, and bought four more for our hosts. CBJ+M took a half dozen as well, and Pearl-Morissette became an instant favourite for all of us. Frankly, we could have called it a day there and been happy.

Nellie and I did have a purpose, though: to stock up on some summer wines. So we stopped at Creekside to pick up some bottles and eat lunch on their deck (the food? excellent), stopped again at 13th Street (which was incredibly busy), and made the day’s final winery stop at Southbrook. We made one final pickup at Oast House Brewers for some saison and country ale before arriving at our friends’ house. Some hellos and tours and cold beers later and we were into the pool, not to depart until it was nearly time for dinner.

Our friends stuffed us with enormous steaks, potatoes the size of footballs, garlic scapes, Penfolds Bin 389 Cab/Shiraz, and strawberry shortcake. Following some electronic competitiveness we all crashed upstairs.

Rain threatened the next day so we kept our return trip plans basic, stopping at Hidden Bench and Thirty Bench for some quick purchases and having a huge lunch at the local pub The Butcher and Banker. We arrived home, sorted our 24 new bottles into their proper homes, and immediately dispatched one of the new arrivals (a Thirty Bench rosé) to celebrate an enjoyable weekend.

Arf

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

One of the brothers is in town, and we’ve been having some low-key Dickinson-esque fun. Last night we went to Wvrst to have some tasty sausages and beer, got into a deep discussion regarding Game Of Thrones, and shot some strangers in a few Call Of Duty deathmatches.

Today we  perused St. Lawrence Market, sucked back some Fahrenheit coffee, introduced him to The Newsroom, strolled happily among the dogs at Woofstock, had some frigging delicious sandwiches at the Hogtown Smoke food truck, and drank cold beers in the warm sun on the patio at the Bier Markt.

“A person who claims an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.”

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

First thing about yesterday: it was hot.

Second thing about yesterday: the mother-in-law returned from a side trip and, along with Nellie, promptly got to work washing the windows and cleaning up the balcony. I rewarded them with cold beer from Beer Academy. We drank them, and a bit of Benjamin Bridge Nova 7, on the balcony to celebrate.

Third thing about yesterday: we had reservations at Richmond Station. It was, as usual, tremendous. We started off with salad and a radish dish, all just incredibly fresh. Then Nellie and her mom each had the lobster bisque while I had the scallop crudo with jerk spice, all paired with a 2011 Domaine Breton “La Dilettante” Chenin Blanc from the Loire. Then for our mains Nellie had the halibut, while her mom and I had the duck. I’d say it was  pretty much the bets duck  I’ve ever had, and I’ve had me some duck. The pairing for that round was a beautiful 2011 Christopher Pacalet Gamay. The feature dessert of the night was an amazing-looking deconstructed cinnamon roll but we just didn’t have an inch of room left. We came home and drank our final bottle of Shypoke Charbono.

Saturday!

Photo by images_of_money, used under Creative Commons license

The key word here is control.

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Oh, right. The LCBO might go on strike. Yawn.

Seriously, I don’t see this as a problem at all. Which is probably not what the LCBO wants to hear, since they’re counting on using the threat of a strike on the eve of May 2-4 weekend — Think of all the poor cottagers! And where are frat boys supposed to buy their Laker?! — for leverage. But, living where I live, it’s a minor inconvenience at worst.

I assume that resourceful establishments such as Volo, Beerbistro, Bar Hop, and Wvrst will still have a healthy supply of beer coming in. If I want to bring excellent beer home I can always just pop by Bellwoods or Beer Academy.

And I get that I’m lucky (though I prefer to think of it as being well-prepared) to have >100 bottles of wine at home just waiting to be opened, but — like the rest of Toronto — I’m an hour away from Beamsville and Vineland, where we can buy stellar wine from the likes of Thirty Bench, Rosewood, Hidden Bench, Fielding, Daniel Lenko, Tawse, Kacaba, Megalomaniac, Foreign Affair, and Vineland Estates. People at the east end of the GTA or Ottawa are 2-3 hours from Prince Edward County, where they could enjoy the scenery and stock up on more than enough outstanding wine to get them through an LCBO blackout.

Remember: nature abhors a monopoly. It also drinks local.

.:.

Photo by images_of_money, used under Creative Commons license

“Friends, relations, tribe, nation, common people.”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I spent most of last week at a conference just outside of Phoenix. This was my view each morning:

Not bad, right? But with this trip coming right on the heels of the previous week’s trip to Boston, I was ready to come back to Toronto and have a couple of quiet weekends. Fortunately while I was away the long Toronto winter finally breathed its last. I arrived home Thursday to find runners and cyclists swarming the waterfront, leaves finally breaking out on trees, and the Canadiens playing their first playoff game.

As sure as those are signs of spring, so too is Hot Docs. My travel schedule kept us from seeing our usual five screenings this year, but we did manage to squeak in a few. First, after a bite and a beer at The Oxley followed by a few spectacular glasses of wine (my ’99 Peter Lehmann Shiraz really stood out) at Opus we took in a late screening of Blackfish. I get emotional every time I think about Tilikum or Dawn Brancheau or pretty much any other part of that film so I’m not going to describe it much more here. I’m just going to say this: SeaWorld can go fuck itself. So can MarineLand. So can anyone who goes there.

After our customary pre-Hot Docs stop on the patio at the Victory Café…

…we hit our second screening: Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: The Life And Time Of Tim Hetherington. It was directed by the author Sebastien Junger, with whom Hetherington had shadowed an army platoon to create a book called War and a documentary called Restrepo. Not long after the documentary was nominated for an Oscar Hetherington was killed in Libya covering yet another war zone. Junger made the documentary to explain who Tim was, why he was so possessed with telling stories this way, and sharing more of his brilliance than we were likely to ever see otherwise.

After that we needed another drink. We made our way (slowly, happily) down to Bellwoods Brewery, which we’d shamefully not yet tried despite it being named the 3rd-best new brewery in the world last year. We had several tasty pints and ate bread and salumi and rosemary fries, and sat in the perfect inside-but-almost-outside weather.

Spring!

 

Freeballin’

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

About halfway up to our friends Matt & Kaylea’s cottage last Friday we got a text from Matt telling us to meet them in Norland. Turns out he’d forgotten his key to the cottage, so we were to meet them at the Riverside Inn and wait for a backup key to arrive via family. So we did…and in so doing stumbled upon the theme for the weekend.

We entered the inn around 5pm on a Friday, and found it completely empty. Not a soul in the place except wait staff. We asked for a table, thinking we’d have our pick. The hostess asked if we had a reservation. Kaylea replied that, “No, we’re just freeballin’ it.” Matt and I looked at each other…uh, what now?

FREEBALLIN’ [free-bawl-in]
verb
1. Usually used to refer to males who are without underwear.
2. The act of not wearing underwear.

We were pretty sure she didn’t mean to use that term. And it turned out that no, indeed she didn’t…she thought it indicated that we were winging it, no real plans, just having fun. In any case, the server understood and Matt and I had a giggle and we each had a pint of Cameron’s and then got down to the business of retrieving the key and making our way to the cottage. But freeballin’ had become the mantra.

We got to the cottage (after almost hitting a wild turkey on the highway) and realized very quickly that, unlike last summer, there would be no swimming. No canoeing. No watching a gorgeous sunset from the dock.

The shitty spring we’ve been having meant that we’d be spending our cottage time indoors. Luckily, we had provisions.

Like, say an Ontario rainbow trout with asparagus and smashed potatoes (prepped by Matt), and a bottle of Semillon-Sauv Blanc. That was the nice, light setup for the main event of the evening. Like last summer when we brought a 2001 Closson Chase chardonnay (which I’d won at auction) to the cottage, we brought two wines for a side-by-side comparison: a 1999 Thirty Bench cabernet franc (won at the same auction) and a bottle of the recently-released 2010 vintage.

That cab franc is pretty much my favourite red wine full stop, but I’d never tried anything older than 2007. And while the 2010 is just as good, the 1999 was something else entirely. A little less muscular than the newer vintage, but so much more refined. Tremendous stuff. I managed to start a whole twitter debate about who the winemaker was, finally receiving the correct answer right around the time that we emptied the bottle and noticed his name written on the label. Oops. The night gets a little fuzzy after that. I remember Matt saying “We are good at drinking.” I remember Nellie saying, “Matthew, NO.” And I remember them not being related. I also remember an epic struggle with an overzealous smoke detector at 4am.

The next morning we chugged some coffee and scarfed peameal sandwiches shlepped from St. Lawrence Market the day before and did a quick supply run into town (which was suffering from the same flooding that’s been plaguing the rest of cottage country, though not as severely.). There we picked up a De Souza meritage and a Côtes du Rhône and a mini-keg of Lake of Bays Crosswind, as well as 14 pounds of pork shoulder from the local butcher and a few more groceries. There were sightings of dazzling rubber boots, a ferocious pickup truck, and an awe-inspiring mullet, each more spectacular than the last. Nellie, in dire need of Vitamin Water, felt bad about making Kaylea drive to three different stores to find some. Not to worry, Kaylea said, we’re just freeballin’ it. In fact, she freeballed a traffic light just for good measure.

Back at the cottage, the weather turned even less pleasant as snow squalls hit.

No spring day, this: it was well below freezing outside. There was nothing for it but to bundle up, build a fire, and make some delicious food. First: maple doughnuts. And by “maple” I mean that there was Dickinson Brothers maple in the dough, in the cream filling, and dusted on top.

Around the same time, Matt was busy teaching me how to make sausage. I was less than adept at this, but enjoyed the hell out of it. The first step was to chunk up half of that pork shoulder and add seasoning…

…the run it through a grinder…

…then bind it with water and skim milk powder…

…and then stuff it into the casings and twist it into links.

Et voila: breakfast sausage with Dickinson maple sugar and sage. The recipe came partly from Matt’s brain, a tiny bit from the sugar woods of Nova Scotia, and a lot from this book, our bible for the weekend:

After a quick visit to a nearby maple farm to pick up a few things (and talk a little shop) we got back to the cottage and re-commenced into the culinary activities. Next up was a second round of sausage-making for the lads and a sparkling wine tasting for the ladies.

That’s right: it was colder outside than it was in the fridge. Happy spring! Anyway, we all did a blind tasting of these — turns out I know the difference between Ontario wine regions, but not the difference between Ontario and France — paired with a bunch of cheese and meat we’d brought from the market the day before.

Finally, after a much tougher process for the Texas Canadian hot links (a second grind was needed, and the addition of some maple syrup and sparkling Ontario white called for a name change) Matt took them to the smoker.

We sampled a bit, and declared it a success.

Cheers.

We packaged up the sausages and grilled steaks for dinner to go with the reds we’d picked up earlier in the day. There was talk of playing debit card monopoly, but after a stroll down to the lake and back I just fell asleep on the couch. Matt took up a position on the other couch not long after, having heaved the (depleted) Crosswind keg onto the lawn. Hey, we’d worked hard that day, we deserved an early beddy-bye time. Anyway, it’s not like there was a set agenda. Freeballin’, remember?

The next morning we sampled the fruits of our labours, in the form of breakfast sausage. Mission? Accomplished, with deliciousness. We laid around as long as we could, but eventually had to pack up and go. Nellie didn’t do so well on the way home, but we made it back to T.O. with a fully-fueled rental car and about 20 minutes to spare.

We may not have gotten the weather we’d hoped for, but the food and fun more than made up for it. There were shapeless neon hats and snowman scarves and games of fetch. There was bird watching and data tethering and biomass burning. Most impressively there was handmade sausage and maple-y doughnuts and outstanding wine, but more importantly there were good friends and warm fires and hilarious videos, and all of those adjectives were totally interchangeable.

Freeballin’: better with friends.

No, not Bellie…Nellie

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Since our wine rack was looking a little sparse, we tootled down to Niagara to pick some up. We hit Kacaba (warning: maybe the ugliest website I’ve seen in a decade) and Vineland and Tawse, where they were pouring samples of their 2011 Pinots alongside the 2010 vintages from the same vineyards. We stopped at Southbrook and had lunch at The Garrison House (warning: that site autoplays Gordon Lightfoot). We picked up bottles by Le Clos Jordanne, Stratus, Lailey, Ravine, and Five Rows.

We weren’t just picking up for ourselves either. We gathered a case along the way for friends who’ve recently bought a beautiful home in Niagara-On-The-Lake, and who graciously hosted us for a dinner of soup and short ribs and copious amounts of wine. Then there was some throwback Wii Sports, and then some sleep — and thank god, because I’d been sipping wine since 10:30am. By around the same time the next morning we were on our way back to Toronto, fighting the wind on the Skyway and some Jays fan traffic on the Gardiner, but nothing too serious.

It was a quick there-and-back, but we came back with a fine haul:

  • Five Rows 2012 Sauvignon Blanc
  • Five Rows 2012 Pinot Gris
  • FiveRows 2012 Pinot Gris
  • Kacaba 2011 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay
  • Kacaba 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Lailey 2010 Unfiltered Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Le Clos Jordanne 2010 Village Reserve Chardonnay
  • Le Clos Jordanne 2010 Claystone Terrace Chardonnay (x2)
  • Southbrook 2010 Whimsy Lot “I” Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Southbrook 2011 Winemaker’s White
  • Stratus 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Stratus 2009 Chardonnay
  • Vineland Estates 2011 Elevation Bo-Teek Vineyard Chardonnay
  • Vineland Estates 2009 Sauvignon Blanc
  • Vineland Estates 2007 Reserve Fumé Blanc