Last night we met up with friends K & E at La Paella, a Spanish restaurant just down the street which none of us had ever been to. We sat on their covered patio on a warm, rainy evening, and ate & drank…uh, a lot.

We shared four tapas plates — grilled lamb chops; sweet pimientos del piquillo stuffed with beef cheeks; sauteed garlic shrimp in Spanish olive oil; and Oyster mushrooms, garlic & olive oil, pan seared in Andalucia sherry wine — before digging into a paella of rabbit, wild boar, Spanish chorizo, Jamon Serrano, green peas and piquillo peppers. It was all washed down with several bottles of Rioja and Duero. Dessert was everything on offer: almond cake, manchego cheesecake, house-made chocolate, and some kind of flan? Anyway, the star was the 1968 Bodegas Toro Albala Don PX Seleccion.

It was a long, lovely dinner, the likes of which we haven’t had in over a year.

This morning Lindsay’s old friend N and N’s girlfriend J left for Montreal, having stayed with us the past few days. It was a treat having them here. It felt odd to even have guests in the house again, but the week was just so chill and fun. And they kept cooking for us, which felt pretty luxe.

Last night was especially fun — after drinks & decor ideas and book browsing, they made an amazing dinner of tenderloin steaks wrapped in bacon, Caesar salad, and oven-roasted fresh-cut fries. We had plenty of wine before and during: Muscadet, Albarino, Ontario sparkling, Pet Nat, and Napa Cab. We sat outside in the perfect weather and wolfed it down. The dinner, the day, and really the whole week was just such a joy.

Come back anytime pals.

.:.

Cover photo by iSAW Company on Unsplash

Last night, for a friend’s birthday, we took part in a fun thing: a blind beer tasting (on Zoom, naturally) between people over five households. Each person bought five beers, wrapped them to obscure what they were, and safe-dropped them with the coordinator who then distributed them to each of the households.

So, last night we signed on, and tasted all twelve beers one by one, each time guessing what they were. There were, as we’d guessed, a lot of sours. Lindsay picked a smoked lavender stout from Avling; I picked up a seasonal east coast IPA from Radical Road. Both were hits.

Lindsay and I tied for the most accurate guessing. All in all, it was a really fun night, and a cool way to celebrate a friend’s birthday, even if she did try to kill us all with Delirium Tremens.

Earlier this week I traveled to the east end (even east-er than me) to catch up with my friend Andrea. We grabbed a table at Xola (I’d never been; she had) and caught up and had a pretty goddamn fantastic meal.

• cocktails: traditional margarita; El Mayor Extra Anejo Old Fashioned
• traditional guacamole
• pulpo asado: grilled octopus w/ reduction of balsamic vinegar, artisanal chorizo, sweet potato mash, refried beans, and roasted grasshoppers (!)
• duck confit tacos: moulard duck leg confit w/ pear & guajillo pepper sauce, salsa, and corn tortillas
• a special: duck breast in mole sauce
• bottle of Crianza

Also, turns out there’d been a bit of media buzz around the place when Leafs star Auston Matthews and his mom visited a few days earlier.

Last night we had dinner at Wynona with new friends E+K. It was a delight, and delicious. To wit: neither of us felt great this morning.

This right here was the lineup:

• grilled house focaccia
• burrata w/ fig, ham, honey, almond, fennel pollen
• little gem salad w/ buttermilk dressing, soft-boiled egg, crispy quinoa, feta
• charred eggplant w/ sugar snap peas, tahini yogurt, dukkha
• dry-aged rib eye
• cavatelli w/ duck confit, hen-of-the-woods, cured egg yolk
• bottles of Mencia, Pais, & Cabernet Franc
• dessert: something chocolate-based, something custard-based, and some late-harvest Semillon

On our way home we made a stop at Chez Nous for one more glass of wine. Which, of course, turned into more than that.

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I dragged my ass out of bed this morning to get to the first class in my next wine course, only to find the college had cancelled the course and just not told me. Great. Cool.

I didn’t have much left in me for today, so we just sat on the couch and watched Booksmart (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which was extremely funny.

We fêted the final hour of 2019 (and the first few hours of 2020) at a private event at Chez Nous last night. Copious wine, copious cheese, and some new friends. Good start to the decade, all in all.

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.:.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Last Saturday Lindsay and I and our friend Sarah, after drinks at our place, made an impromptu trip up the street to Ruby Watchco. We hadn’t been in quite a while, and my last experience there wasn’t the best, but we were hungry and the menu looked good and Lindsay could limp there, so.

Stupidly I forgot to write down what we ate, and it was of course gone from the website the next day, so to the best of my memory here’s what we had:

• cocktails
• a salad that I can’t really remember at all
• smoked trout rillette
  • rosé, which I think was the 2018 ‘Beausoleil’ St. John’s from Languedoc
• Thai lemongrass-marinated steak
• butternut squash & ricotta dumplings
  • uh, some red…honestly, I can’t remember what for the life of me
• Ontario cheddar
  • Chardonnay, which I’m relatively sure was the 2016 Rickshaw from Santa Barbara
• Panna Cotta
  • Cantina Formigine Pedemontana ‘Tramontino’ NV Lambrusco

It should be noted that my lack of memory does not represent a lack of quality. It was an amazing meal.

Bonus: surprise Trinette sighting.