Category: Food / drink

Finally, it has happened to me, right in front of my face, my feelings can't describe it

Dan Dickinson

In amongst working, running and studying today I forgot to blog about last night’s Canoe experience. I shall start from the beginning. Well, not really; the beginning would be three years of frustration and missed opportunities to dine there, which have been well documented here.

T-Bone decided not to come with, so at the last minute we called around to see who’d be interested. In the end our friend MS came with us and we all arrived around 8. The view from the restaurant is a large part of the reputation, and it didn’t disappoint; we sat at the bar for a few minutes and took in the view of the lake and the islands. The restaurant itself is just as nice.

The food was as good as promised: my salad was very good, my pork tenderloin with apple bacon dressing was superb, and my molten chocolate cake with pistachio ice cream and spicy chocolate sauce from Soma friggin’ near made me cry. For drinks we asked the waiter to recommend a wine; he came back with a rosé and, given the look of shock on my face, had to explain rather quickly. He claimed it went well with both my pork and the pasta the ladies had ordered, so we have him the benefit of the doubt. It did, in fact, go reasonably well with the wine, and though I still would’ve rather gotten a lighter red, it made for an interesting story. I went to Canoe and had me some rosé.

Overall, the meal was amazing, the view is spectacular, and the service (except for some slight comic relief whenever the serving staff appeared) was extremely good. Our server — Mark, if I remember correctly — handled our meal and our questions perfectly, even giving us the restaurant’s number and telling us to call him in case we ever wanted advice about wine, even for a meal at home. This, of course, was just manouevering for a tip, but it was well played.

We’ll be going back, unliciously. Mission accomplished, Canoe.
[tags]canoe restaurant, summerlicious, did i really use a ce ce peniston lyric in the title?[/tags]

"Yes, absolutely…what?"

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As I lay on the couch last night, trying desperately not to feel like crap, Nellie popped in Shopgirl (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was better than I thought it would be; I’d heard poor reviews when it first came out, and the trailers made it look like more of a cliche than it turned out to be. I’d say “elegant” is a pretty good word for it, perhaps “minimalist” fits as well. However, I’m doomed to always associate it with light-headedness and mild nausea.

.:.

I’m feeling better this morning, but hope to feel even better by tonight as we have dinner at Canoe (finally!) with T-Bone and I don’t want the experience to be muddied by, you know, feelings of impending death.

[tags]shopgirl, canoe[/tags]

Queasy

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Well, we’re an unhealthy bunch here at the Dickinson ranch. I felt a little wonky all day; around 3:30 I felt fully wonky and left work, came home and laid on the couch until Nellie arrived. We had a summerlicious dinner tonight with some friends and I didn’t want to miss it, but didn’t really feel up to eating. I was actually a little dizzy until we got to the restaurant (Goldfish) and I had some bread and water. Now that I’ve eaten (it was pretty good, but not great) I feel better, but still just a little off. Nellie, on the other hand, started feeling nauseous toward the end of dinner and got progressively worse. I’ll just be happy if we can make it through the day sans vomit.

.:.

A phrase I never thought I’d type: Mogwai will be on the Miami Vice soundtrack.

.:.

More than 200 dead in Lebanon now, including several Canadians. The Guardian seems surprised that western powers haven’t intervened, but they shouldn’t be. The US has always back Israel very heavily; they won’t move to stop any Israeli attacks (within reason), and no other western or european country will do anything unless America makes a move first. Or perhaps what seemed in the Guardian like surprise was just veiled criticism?

I just bought a copy of Munich yesterday and began watching it today. I wonder if Ehud Olmert struggled with the moral justification of his reciprocal response as much as Golda Meir struggled with hers? I’m amazed anyone runs for political office in the middle east, knowing that you could — and probably will — have to make decisions like that.
[tags]goldfish, mogwai, miami vice, lebanon, canadians, israel, ehud olmert, golda meir[/tags]

8 oz. USDA Prime Beef With Brie de Meaux, Grilled Porcini & Shaved Summer Truffles

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Last night kicked off this year’s Summerlicious fun. For the third time in as many years we went to Bymark, accompanied by T-Bone and #4 (as I believe he’s known). Let’s face it, we were there solely for the burger; it was as good this time as it had been in years past (I didn’t miss the foie gras). It normally costs $37, so you’d expect it to kick ass…and it does. Every time. The only bad part was that, due to our late reservation, we didn’t get to the burger until about 10:30 at night, so this morning when I woke up I could still feel the burger’s in my stomach.

We also got to try some Francis Coppola wine, followed by a bottle of Pacina. If a bottle had come out labelled “Brandino” or something it might’ve freaked me out.

.:.

Any plans I had of sleeping in a bit late this morning came crashing to a halt at exactly 7 AM when some yahoos started running jackhammers across the street. It was so loud the cats freaked out and hid in the den, and even closing the double windows couldn’t drown out the sound. I could even hear some guy out his balcony yelling, “Hey, shut the fuck up!!!!” at the jackhammering dudes, but to no avail. If anybody couldn’t hear, it was them. Anyway…it seemed a little early for such nonsense. Surely there’s a bylaw I could reference if I weren’t too lazy to complain…

.:.

After staying pretty much quiet for the whole offseason, the Canadiens have finally made a move or two: they dumped Richard Zednik before signing Mike Johnson and Sergei Samsonov. Zednik-for-Johnson is a good equation; adding Samsonov gives them more depth at centre, but it sure as shit doesn’t give them more size. They might be going for some sort of record; has any team ever started the year with 4 centres under 6 feet? If they dump Radek Bonk I believe they’ll manage it (’cause no way on God’s green earth is Mike Ribeiro 6 feet tall).

The Raptors have made some minor moves as well, adding two European players (Jorge Garbajosa and Anthony Parker) and signing John Salmons this afternoon. And, of course, there was the trade for T.J. Ford a while back.

.:.

If you watched The Daily Show last night you saw Ted Stevens, the Senator from Alaska, make a fool of himself trying to explain net neutrality to Congress. As this ABC article says, “It’s too obvious that this man has no idea what the Internet is exactly and no idea about the issues behind Net neutrality. It seems like a miracle that he can even find the crapper.”

You can hear the pitiful shilling here. By the way, dig how he pronounces “Deutsche”.

.:.

Also on The Daily Show last night: Shawn Wayans, star of the upcoming Little Man, which appears to be a right piece of shit. It has a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes right now, just slightly worse than the 22% sported by You, Me and Dupree.

.:.

Finally, and obviously most troubling, is what’s happening in the middle east. Israel didn’t want their soldiers to be kidnapped, but they’ll certainly sieze the opportunity to go on the offensive. The US will obviously back Israel should anything escalate, just as Syria and Iran will back Hezbollah activity in Lebanon. The question, in my mind, is whether Saudi Arabia and/or Egypt would intervene if Israel moves more aggressively into Lebanon, or even against Syria. If the US found itself trying to decide between Israel and Saudi, all while fighting a war in Iraq and rattling sabres at Iran…it could get even messier (if that’s possible).

[tags]summerlicious, bymark, francis coppola, pacina, canadiens, richard zednik, mike johnson, sergei samsonov, anthony parker, john salmons, daily show, ted stevens, net neutrality, little man, dupree, israel, lebanon[/tags]

"Jim Henson knew his place"

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For the sake of my waistline, I really need my family to stop visiting Toronto. Last night we took another brother and his wife to Fieramosca — our second visit in as many Saturdays — and left the place stuffed, as always. The staff actually ribbed us a bit, saying “OK, see you tomorrow night!” as we left. Smartasses. I had the salsiccia e quaglia alla griglia, a sausage & quail plate that TimmyD got last week (which I just had to try), my brother had the linguine di mama ninetta (a favourite of T-Bone’s), and the ladies shared the seafood pasta for 2. The hostess Mani (sp?) gave us some Tiramisu to keep us busy while the ladies had their after-dinner glass of Amarone. 3.5 hours later, we managed to waddle home. Oy.

Sadly, we didn’t get to spend much more time than that with them. They arrived mid-afternoon, after trying to deal with some lost luggage, and after we got some food into them the ladies went shopping while my brother and I sat and Starbucks and caught up on things. Then we popped down to Henry’s to find them a new digital camera (and may have found one ourselves: the Canon S3 IS), swung by the condo to have a look, strolled down to Front Street and then came back up on the subway (fighting for seats with Indy fans) to relax before dinner. While relaxing we put it on Just For Laughs — there was really nothing else on — and saw a very bizarre, very funny ventriloquist act by Nina Conti…it was weird to see this beautiful woman do a surrealist comedy act with a smarmy monkey. Anyway. Good fun, but it’s too bad they could only stick around for half a day.

Now then…to find a salad…

[tags]fieramosca, henry’s, nina conti, molson indy[/tags]

Hell all

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That subject line is a lot funnier if you worked at Delano.

.:.

Word of advice: if you should find yourself drinking a chocolate chiller from Second Cup (or any other similar frozen drinky thing), restrain yourself from sucking it all back in one or two gulps. Today I inhaled so much ice in one go that I temporarily incapacitated myself. I’d hate to see it happen to you too.

.:.

My music “inbox” is getting out of hand again: Be Your Own Pet, Danielson, Danny Michel, Jesu, John Frusciante, Jolie Holland, Primal Scream, Thom Yorke, Tilly & The Wall and a few others that wouldn’t fit on my memory key. Is there some part of my music habit that I can outsource? Perhaps my evaluation of new music can be offshored?

[tags]delano, second cup, enjoyment outsourcing[/tags]

"And like that…[they're] gone"

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The Brits have been seen off back to London. We dropped them at the airport this afternoon after spending the day enjoying Ontario. We wandered around Elora for a while, checking out the gorge and a few shops (including Stÿll, which I think is worth making the trip back for) before jumping in the car and heading to a nearby lake. It wasn’t as impressive as we’d hoped; we just drove along it until we found a spot where we could walk down to the shore. It wasn’t the nicest lake, so we just jumped back in the car (but not before I snagged a chocolate milkshake from a walk-up snack bar) and made for a town. We passed through a little rain — as it turned out, the only rain we encountered; pretty lucky as the forecast had been calling for storms — before reaching Orangeville. We poked our heads into an art gallery, a chocolate shop and a restaurant for lunch (it used to be a pub, or so my pub guide said, but it had been replaced by a restaurant…which I think may have made me sick…anyhoo) before getting back in the car and heading south. We arrived at Pearson in good time, got our guests checked in and on their way, looking for a pub on which to watch the footie match (which Germany lost after Italy scored very late in extra time).

We jumped back into the car once more (after I searched frantically for my Blackberry, which I — whew! — found on the floor) and I fought back post-lunch nausea long enough to return the car to a downtown Hertz, squish onto a subway and get home in time for some prime-time chilling. By the way, I like Toronto a lot less when I have to drive in it.

TimmyD blogged the whole affair on The Plummet Onions. It was great to have them here, great to show them a little more of Toronto, and great to know that it wouldn’t be too much longer before we see them again.

.:.

Recent tidbits:

.:.

Finally, I’m sad to say that Ash, the tiny-but-fierce cat and companion to our friends CBGB passed away this weekend. She was ancient and storied, like all great legends. I’ll miss her padding around CBGB’s place, I’ll always smile when I think about how she fell asleep on my lap on the way to Collingwood, and I’ll always laugh when I think about poor Ed having to pick her up with hockey gloves. Hopefully the smiles & laughter will come as easily to CBGB as missing her will.

R.I.P., Ash.

[tags]elora, styll, orangeville, indietits, philosopher’s walk. polaris prize, tornado, ash cat[/tags]

I suck at pool

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After an unspectacular (though, in the grand scheme of things, probably pretty good for such a tiny town) meal, we set out to have a drink before returning to our rooms. Being 10:00 the hotel bar was closed (!), but they directed us to a place up the street.

It was a pool hall / sports bar kinda place…cheap beer, free pool and TVs tuned to wrestling. We decided to play some pool; I suck, as it turns out. I’ve just never really played. I managed to win the second game by sinking three in a row, but then lost the last one by scratching on the 8-ball. Ah well. The best part was that the bartender gave us a bunch of free credits on the jukebox, so TimmyD and I went to town. It seems that I play better to Soundgarden.

[tags]elora, bar, jukebox[/tags]

Karate Snoopy

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OK, where to begin…just after I wrote that last post England lost to Portugal on penalties. Needless to say, the crowd at the Duke of York was mightily pissed. Still, we soldiered on, determined to enjoy Canada Day. However, our nation’s birthday isn’t quite the event that my brother experienced in Ottawa, so there wasn’t really much to do festivities-wise…we walked down St. George, cut through the U of T campus, walked along College and then down University, had a gawk at the new opera house, walked across Queen to city hall, stopped in the weird little waterfall park off of Richmond, walked across to the condo site, and then strolled down to C’est What for a cold beer and the first half of the France/Brazil match. During halftime we made it back up to our apartment, settled in and watched the second half while Nellie had a nap on the floor.

That night, after a few hours of downtime, we all went to Fieramosca. As usual, it was too much great food; we were all stuffed by the time we left. I had a relatively simple penne with chicken, sundried tomato, zucchini, and asparagus; Nellie had gnocchi and TimmyD has a plate of sausage (which I had a bit of; daaaaaaaaamn) and quail. After much limoncello with the hostess, we walked home.

This morning: no rest for the wicked. We all met at half-ten (that’s what the frickin’ British call 10:30) and hit Eggstacy for some breakfast; we left, more than a little bit stuffed but ready for some shopping. Some shoes, some clothes and some books* later and we’d had about enough of Bloor Street.

After all the shopping we spent a few hours on the patio at the Bishop & Belcher, then collected ourselves at our place before heading out to the Auld Spot for dinner. Once again, I was more than impressed with the food (Nellie liked hers a great deal this time). We left, getting home in time for me to write this, check some feeds and pack for tomorrow.

That’s right, I said pack; we’ve decided to spend a night out of the city. We’re visiting our uncle & aunt near Guelph, and from there we’re going up to Elora for the night. It’ll be nice to see…you know, trees. Etc. I’ll post again when we’re back on Tuesday, at which point our visitors should be jetting back to old blighty.

* TimmyD pointed out a book, based on this website, which is quite possibly the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. We laughing hysterically in the stacks at Indigo, and at home I was actually on the floor laughing as I read it. There are pictures. Nellie says she’s never heard (or seen) me laugh that hard. I understand that some people won’t find it that funny. If you don’t find it funny at all, then I can’t be friends with you anymore.

[tags]england, portugal, u of t, toronto opera house, c’est what, fieramosca, eggstacy, bishop & belcher, auld spot, elora, mnftiu[/tags]