Category: Friends

"The seed that we planted in this man's mind may change everything."

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Yet another super weekend. Friday started when I walked straight from work to Fieramosca for dinner with CBGB and GB’s sister & brother-in-law. We tried to sit outside, really we did, but the humidity was just oppressive. We took the bulk of our meal indoors, and had the relaxing and satisfying evening we always have there. The drink across the street probably wasn’t a great idea…it was hot, we were full and someone (not me this time!) ended up with most of a pint on their pants.

On Saturday, once Nellie had slept off the limoncello, we did our usual run to the market and then hid out in the air conditioning for a bit. Ultimately the day was all about seeing Inception (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Scotiamount, which I LOVED. So good. Such a rare combination, that; an action movie that feels gritty and still cerebral. I don’t want to give away much to those who haven’t seen it, but among the many memorable scenes there’s a long hallway fight and subsequent sequence featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt — certainly one of my favourite actors working today — that just blew my mind. What was left of it to blow, anyway. Highly, highly recommended, though I would say that there’s little need to see it in IMAX as we did. I think you could see this on a regular modern movie theatre screen and not lose anything. Plus, you wouldn’t have to suffer through the tragically cheesy IMAX laser light show before the film.

Not yet done with movies, we decided to take shelter from the rain and watch The Runaways (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on TV. Neither of us knew much about the band, or how it started, or even how young the girls were…just that Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Cherie Curry had been members. It was okay…really, it looked more like an art project than a movie, which is probably because Floria Sigismondi directed it. And while Michael Shannon was good, I mainly wanted to punch him in the face. So be warned.

Respite

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Just back from a semi-whirlwind trip to Halifax for a friend’s wedding. In addition to the ceremony itself, which was a ton of fun, we also squeezed in brunch with friends at their beautiful new home, dinner at Bish with my parents, brother and sister-in-law and even some down time on a few patios.

Aaaaaaaaaand then we returned to find Toronto in some kind of lock-down mode…stores closed, violent protests happening a few blocks away, upsetting displays from punks and police alike. I’m too tired to think much about it…just going to go to sleep and hope the city’s back to normal tomorrow morning.

Avast

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I’m getting too old for this.

Last night wasn’t a late finisher so much as it was an early starter. Dinner at Fieramosca (with a bottle of wine), then drinks with co-workers at The Pilot, then more co-worker drinks at Volo, and finally dinner at Origin. I think our meal was good. I know it was long. The ending gets a little fuzzy. The next morning was even fuzzier.

How fortunate, then, that we were scheduled to get on a boat and cruise around in the hot sun for most of Saturday afternoon. Our friend CB had arranged a little celebration for husband GB’s birthday, so nine of us piled on a catamaran and prepared to enjoy the weather. My stomach wasn’t quite ready for that, though; the first few minutes while we were tied up made me queasy, but as soon as we were underway I felt better. A little nap below decks helped.

We reached Centre Island, had a bit of a stroll and (somewhat inadvertently) took in the sights at Hanlon’s Point Beach. Then the skipper cooked lunch, which we ate on the grass, by the water, in the sun…pretty awesome. Back on board and birthday cake in hand we set back out, cruising through the harbor and all the way around the islands. It gave me a look at parts of Toronto I’d not seen before, like the north side of Ward’s Island and a bird colony on the Leslie Street Spit. I got to relax on the deck of a boat for a few hours, a cool breeze tempering the hot summer sun. Shaky start and a little sunburn aside, it was a brilliant day.

Yeeeeeaaaaah, I need a rich friend with a boat.

"Someone's ear is in danger of having hair brushed over it…"

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I learned something this weekend: that there are three indispensable ingredients of a great weekend. These are, in no particular order: beautiful weather, ample time and people with which to share it.

On Friday I did have to go to the office, but it was nice enough outside that I could walk there, and I didn’t stay long. By noon I was home, fed and ready to enjoy the unseasonably warm day. Nellie and I strolled down to the Bier Markt patio for sunshine and beer (me: Erdinger weiss, Weihenstephan weiss, Spaten lager and Delirium Tremens; she: KLB Raspberry Wheat, Big Rock Grasshopper, Okanagan Spring pale and Koningshoeven Tripel) on a lazy Friday afternoon. Nellie had an urge for an Urthel Hop-It so we wandered up to the Beerbistro in search of one; alas, they had none. So we availed ourselves of the rest of their collection (me: Maudite and Trois Pistoles; she: Durham Hop Addict and Koningshoeven Quadrupel) while making dinner reservations at nearby Harlem. We’d been there once last year and liked it and it felt like the right fit on a lazy Good Friday. One ill-advised cocktail later and were into the starter (catfish Lafayette…yum!) and then our mains. My pork hocks were okay, but Nellie wisely got the fried chicken. I didn’t mind that I missed on some of the flavour. The relaxation was tasting delicious enough.

Saturday was the first day in about two months that I haven’t had to go to work, so I celebrated by sleeping in. Despite it being another beautiful day we didn’t really get out and about that much as we were prepping for dinner with T-Bone and The Sof. Well…Nellie did the prepping, I just cleaned up and provided moral support. Anyway, after a great meal (baguette w/ honey, balsamic and goat cheese; sausage-stuffed pasta with pancetta and sage; steak from Cumbrae’s and three kinds of cheese) this is what our table looked like:

Just for the record, that’s:

  • Marie Stuart champagne (which we brought back from France last fall)
  • Nino Franco prosecco
  • Stratus Icewine
  • Z52 Zinfandel
  • Hidden Bench Fume Blanc
  • L’Acadie Alchemy
  • Noval 2001 Port
  • Blanche de Chambly
  • Christofel Nobel
  • Doppel-Hirsch Doppelbock

And yes, in case you’re wondering, Nellie does like to drink her beer from a wine glass toward the end of the evening.

Sunday was, blessedly, another lazy day. A good lie-in, brunch at the Jason George, a nice long talk with my mom who turned 60 (!) today and Zombieland (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which was excellent. Tomorrow it’s back to work, in spite of my best efforts to take a day off, but for the first time this year I feel like I really got my money’s worth out of a weekend.

Oh, and the other ingredient for a perfect weekend? Consecutive shutouts.

http://www.thebiermarkt.com/home.html

I think "gluttony" was a foregone conclusion

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I knew I was in trouble when I saw all the glasses.

Last night Nellie, T-Bone, The Sof and I treated ourselves to one of Toronto’s Wintercity culinary events, Ex-Communication by Chocolat at MoRoCo Chocolate. This was the description:

“Une soiree of la luxure and sinful indulgence.  Experience a 6-course guided tasting dinner of sweet and savoury pleasures:  3 savoury courses and 3 Valrhona Chocolat dessert courses paired with the finest Champagnes, The Macallan & Highland Park Scotches, Canadian wines, followed by Courvoisier Cognacs as digestifs.”

Sold.

We arrived last night, queued with the rest of the guests and were immediately handed a glass of Champagne Gatinois Grand Cru. We were brought to our table which was covered in glasses…eight wine glasses, eight whisky glasses, four water glasses and four champagne flutes. It was obvious what kind of evening we were facing. We settled in and prepared ourselves for the theme of the night: the seven deadly sins.

  • Wrath was a shot of 60% dark Valrhona sipping chocolate paired with two scotches: 15-year-old Highland Park and 12-year-old Macallan. I like Highland Park, I love Macallan and I lurve dark chocolate…but my god, I never knew how well they went to together. A bit of chocolate on the tongue followed by whisky and zowie. I had a new hobby. An amuse bouche came out too…can’t remember it exactly, I think it was avocado and citrus on a crispy something or other. Good. As Nellie put it, our bouches were amoosed.
  • Envy was the best food course of the night: Japanese scallops in a white chocolate hollandaise sauce. We all loved it. I don’t even really like scallops. Paired with a 2006 Riesling from Alsace, enough of it to drown a small child.
  • Gluttony was subtitled “duck-duck-booze”, and aptly so: there was duck leg confit (yum!) with a chocolate puff pasty (meh) and slices of deck breast in a dark chocolate and chili glaze (YUM!). Still working our way through the Riesling, obviously.
  • Sloth consisted of a roasted filet mignon in a chocolate port reduction paired with a 2006 Penley Estates merlot. From here on out the savoury was over, and it was all sweet.
  • Pride was something pretty unusual: a chocolate “soda” float. Basically drinking chocolate mixed with soda water, from what I could tell. I didn’t love it but I thought it was interesting. Everyone else was less than impressed.
  • Greed consisted of two parts: a small serving of light chocolate mousse, and a dark chocolate & sweet red beet cake. I loved them both, but Nellie didn’t care for the beet cake at all. At this point we were getting pretty full, and the rich food & booze was starting to weigh on us.
  • The final course, Lust, was just too much. Three warm chocolate truffles apiece, 70% ganache and coated in coconut, sitting in a (rather icky) pool of passionfruit bubble tea sauce. We each had one, and it was quite good. The Sof noticed that the menu described the truffles as “flamed with Courvoisier VSOP Cognac” and we wondered what that meant, right up until the server showed up with a bottle and a lighter. They might’ve rehearsed this part a little more as the poor thing was unable to light our truffles in most cases, instead soaking our truffles through with Cognac. When I tried it…well, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. I was glad she’d left my third truffle unscathed so that I could enjoy it, but the whole affair was so rich — as was the glass of Courvoisier paired with the truffles and the shot of port to send us off — that we all felt done in.

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening, and a pretty good value in the end: three excellent meat dishes, wine, scotch, champagne, cognac and a formidable amount of chocolate for $125 including tax and tip. Not bad at all. A little much for a Monday night, maybe, especially for a lad with an 8:30 meeting, but there you go. I suspect, cardinal theme notwithstanding, that they could have scaled it back to five courses (dropping the soda and the fiery chocolate boozeballs) and hit the mark perfectly. Maybe next year.

On the first four days of Christmas…

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Here’s what we’ve been up to in the four days since we left you:

On boxing day we enjoyed the main part of Nellie’s gift to me: gold seats at the Air Canada Centre for the Montreal Canadiens / Toronto Maple Leafs game. We were eleven rows from the ice, right at one of the blue lines, and had a great view of the ice. I was actually surprised by the number of Montreal fans in attendance…I’d say maybe 20% of the fans were cheering for the Habs. It was amazing for me to be that close to the ice — in my previous visits to Canadiens games (both in Montreal) I’d been in the nosebleeds — and to see and hear everything. It was also nice to see my team win for a change (the Habs won 3-2 in overtime) as the first two games I saw were losses. Nellie had fun too, eating a hot dog and drinking beer and making eyes at Carey Price. It was a blast, and an experience I was worried I’d never get to have in Toronto. Top-notch Christmas gift, baby!

.:.

December 27th was actually our anniversary. Typically we’d go out to dinner to celebrate, but it being Sunday everything was closed. We hung out with CBGB for a little bit and generally just took it easy.

.:.

Yesterday we thought we’d get out of the house and see what all this Avatar fuss is about, so we walked in the freezing-ass cold to the Scotiabank to buy tickets. Little did we know that tickets to the IMAX screenings had been sold out for days. Bah, forget it. We cut back across King Street and decided to stop in at the beerbistro so that the afternoon wasn’t a complete loss. I had a Tilburg’s Dutch Brown Ale and a Maudite, while Nellie had a Durham Hop Addict and an Urthel Hop-It, which I think is her new best friend. We went to movie plan B at home, watching Defiance (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on the PVR (it was okay…given the subject matter it probably should have been a little more engaging than it was). Then we got ready for dinner.

Much like North 44, Scaramouche is such a quintessentially Toronto restaurant we couldn’t hardly believe we hadn’t yet tried it. An anniversary seemed like an ideal time for such an adventure, and it was settled. First, the room: pleasant, if a little dull & dated, and while we were seated at the window to appreciate the famous view, the evening’s snow squalls made it difficult to see much. Second, the service: a little off, to be honest. Our server was efficient enough but not exactly friendly, and somewhere between dessert and the bill he just disappeared. We never saw him again, and after several minutes of waiting we finally got someone else’s attention and they tag-teamed our bill, etc. So that was weird. Third: the food, and this — most importantly — was the best part. I had warm duck salad, venison wrapped & roasted in smoked bacon and coconut cream pie for dessert. Nellie had butter poached lobster, a grilled kerr farms filet mignon and her dessert was three kinds of cheese. We had various glasses of wine before dinner and with our apps, but the real star of the evening was the 2006 Petite Sirah/Zinfandel/Mourvèdre ‘Phantom’ Bogle. Excellent without the food and downright superb with it, neither of us wanted to finish the bottle, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Nellie’s port and my Calvados with dessert were good, but I know we were both thinking about that wine. Oh, and the restaurant did make a nice final flourish with our dessert plates:

scaramouche dessert

.:.

Today was a bit more pedestrian: grand plans of shopping withered on the vine when we realized it was -20 with the wind chill, so we opted instead for leftovers, chocolate, napping and more movie-watching. Today the PVR served up the Warner Herzog documentary Encounters At The End Of The World (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Really, I could watch anything by that man and be happy, but from a strictly mechanical sense it did precisely what documentaries are supposed to do: answer some questions and raise still others.

Tonight the plan (well…my plan) is to watch Canada’s junior team play the Slovaks, and then tomorrow it’s back to work for a bit. In other words: wow, it’s been a relaxing vacation.

The first (and likely only) time I've been able to say Mazel Tov

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While getting ready for our friends’ wedding yesterday Nellie commented on how unusual it was to see a relationship develop from infancy — before there even was a relationship — to marriage. We were lucky enough to see the culmination of that last night. Our friends tied the knot, and they did it in style.

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The venue was The Carlu, which we’d never been to before. It’s an inspired, elegant space which, two days prior, had hosted Prince Charles. He even left a decorative centerpiece. The ceremony happened in a beautiful candle-lit room with a view of the city, and the reception afterward gave everyone a chance ooh and aah appropriately. I had the opportunity to catch up with old friends, even an old colleague from Delano, while fruitlessly hunting for the lamb lollipops we heard were making the rounds.

Our meal, in keeping with the bride’s foodie inclinations, was among the best I’d ever had at a wedding: lobster risotto to start and beef tenderloin with potato gnocchi, both paired with a recommended wine. A trio of desserts wrapped up while the speeches continued, and quite a collection of speeches they were. All were touching, but I thought the bride and her father stole the show.

Dinner gave way to dancing, and speeches to laughter. The bartender, who I came to know quite well over the course of the evening, commented that it was the best (which I took to mean busiest) dance floor she’d seen. At 11pm the caterers began serving gourmet poutine, a nod to the groom’s Montreal heritage, which was an enormous hit with many, especially Nellie. Some time after that we hoisted the bride and groom on chairs, which is harder than you might think, especially when you’re the only one throwing an entire side of the chair up in the air. My arms are a little sore this morning, but it was worth it to be able to sing Hava Negila.

At the end of the night with the remaining few dozen left on the dance floor and drinking drinks, I found myself sitting, staring, smiling broadly as I saw my friends so happy. Happy not just because the evening came off so perfectly, but also from the sheer joy that comes from being part of such an effusion of love. I remembered the feeling from my own wedding, and could see it on their faces. We were lucky enough to be there, twenty-five months to the day (so the groom told us) from their first date, to see the end of the prelude, and the beginning of their story.

I don't know where Tilburg is, but I want to go to there

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Just had dinner at beerbistro with Nellie and Stanzi, who’s in town for a momentous occasion. More momentous than dinner with us, that is. We were just an appetizer before the main course.

Dinner was fantastic. Frites, pakoras, cheese fondue, bacon-wrapped shrimp. Nellie had two tripels from Allagash, and Stanzi had their wit. I had a Maudite and a Tilburg’s dutch brown ale, of which I’d never heard but of which I became damned fond.

And now…sleepy. I had an 8am meeting this morning. I have another 8am meeting tomorrow morning. I have a 7am (!) meeting Thursday morning. Thank god daylight saving time ended this week.

"Then that Cobain pussy had to come around & ruin it all."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

At the end of a long work week I didn’t have much left in me last night, so we met up with CBGB at The Auld Spot for some comfort food and beer. Disappointingly something seemed to be wrong with the Denison’s, but a Mill Street Tank House Ale did just fine. Really, I was just in it for the pulled pork sandwich. Which I love. I know this because typing the words “pulled pork sandwich” made my mouth water. Hey, there it goes again.

Upon returning home we could see Buskerfest happening just down the street from us, but it was a little chilly out and, as I said, energy levels were low. We also have a mission to clear off the PVR before leaving for France, and so we watched The Wrestler (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was excellent, as I expected it to be by now. I think I’d put off seeing it for so long because I know how wracking Darren Aronofsky movies usually can be, but this one didn’t leave me feeling drained. Of course, all the things I’d heard about Mickey Rourke’s performance were true. He was on the screen virtually every second, and made Randy the Ram real when it would have been so very easy to make him a farce, or fantasy.

Actually, I’m rather glad I left it this long. I think if I’d watched it when it first came out the hype — the unrealistic expectations of the miraculous performance we all heard about — would have blurred what a wonderful performance it actually was.

How to enjoy a fickle summer

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I do enjoy a good summer weekend. Yesterday I left work a little early and met Nellie at the Rebel House, and two more friends joined us shortly after. I ate pheasant sausage and a bison burger and drank pints of Denison’s and Neustadt. Nellie ate mac ‘n cheese and drank KLB and Neustadt and Okanagan Springs and (!) Big Rock. It was a pretty Canadian evening.

Today has been an absolutely stellar day. We slept in, watched a movie (Traitor), visited the market and have spent the last little while enjoying a picture-perfect day on the balcony. In fact, I’m writing this on my balcony, using my new Dell netbook, listening to tunes on the outdoor speakers, watching boats sail around the lake. In a few hours we’ll grill the steaks we just picked up, crack a bottle of red, and pretend I don’t have to go to work tomorrow morning.