Category: Toronto

Leek & morel

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Last night Nellie, T-Bone and I partook of a Santé Wine Festival event at Pangaea, a restaurant near where we live. It was sponsored by Lungarotti wines, and hosted by a former sommelier who now works for the winery. The idea was that the chef would make dishes to match each wine course for the dozen or so tables in attendance.

As soon as we sat down our server poured a 2004 pinot grigio; as we were waiting for the rest of the guests to arrive they just kept pouring the wine and bringing appetizers: grilled quail with plum sauce, truffle quiche, a seared tuna amuse bouche, and a shell containing scrambled egg and caviar. I loved the quail, skipped the quiche, didn’t mind the tuna and cautiously tested the caviar. I’d not tried it before, and I can’t say I’d spend a small fortune on it, but it was interesting.

Next came two appetizers: rabbit stuffed with wild leek and morels, paired with a 2004 torre di giano (both of which I liked a lot), then fiddlehead risotto with grape tomatoes paired with a 2002 cabernet sauvignon…also both good. The main course was a lamb shank with lingot beans (whatever those are), truffles and vegetables — which I thought was just okay — with two wines: a 2002 rubesco and a 2000 rubesco riserva. It all ended with a raspberry Bavaroise (like mousse sandwiched between a thin shortcake and a biscuit, I guess) with poached rhubarb and fresh berries, paired with a 2001 dulcis. I liked this a lot more than Nellie, who gave me most of hers, but it was all so sweet that I felt a little sick. But it was nothing a little water splashed on my face couldn’t fix.

The funniest part of the evening was when T-Bone’s social instincts took over and she made friends with a nearby table. While the rest of the room emptied out we all turned around and chatted with the two couples, probably for half an hour or more. I think T-Bone knew their life stories by the end.

It was a pretty great deal, really, since the tax and tip was included, and we had a great deal of wine to go along with our food. We also found out that Lungarotti makes some pretty decent wine for some pretty low prices, so Nellie could be looking for it on her next trip to the LCBO. Which was the point, I suppose.

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For the first time in a few years, the films we saw at Hot Docs didn’t win any awards.* Martyr Street, which we had on our short list but didn’t end up picking, won the best documentary award; Mystic Ball (which I think T-Bone went to see this weekend) won the special jury prize.

*unless, of course, one of them wins the audience award, which will be announced tomorrow

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Ever see the movie Cop Land (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? It’s not bad. Nellie and I saw it eight or nine years ago, just after she moved here, and I remember being severely annoyed with the old woman behind us who exclaimed “Oh my! Oh dear! Tsk tsk!” every time anyone swore or fired a gun.

Anyway, it was on IFC last week and I tifauxed it just for kicks. I forgot how many good actors were in it: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Peter Berg, Janeane Garofalo, Robert Patrick, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra, Cathy Moriarty and John Spencer, with Edie Falco and Deborah Harry in bit parts. Even Sylvester Stallone, who stars in it, is pretty good, and you can’t say that very often. If you skipped it ’cause it looked like another dumb Stallone cop movie, give it another chance.

.:.

[tags]santé, pangaea, lungarotti, hot docs, martyr street[/tags]

How I plan to deal with selfish, dimwitted assholes

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Let it be known: if ever I see some fuckwit throw a puppy out of a moving car and into a river — like this mouth-breathing shitbag did — I’ll make it my life’s work to track him down, spit in his face and piss on his foot. If I were a more violent man I’d bring along a softball bat and break his dog-throwing arm.

I wonder if he did it because he’s so incredibly cruel that he doesn’t mind throwing a dog into a river to drown, or if he’s just so stupendously ignorant that he doesn’t know what else to do with an animal he doesn’t want or can’t care for. Either way, he deserves to wear some of my piss.

.:.

[tags]assholes, puppies[/tags]

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Weird…I was looking for a sample menu from Dooney’s, a cafe/restaurant in The Annex, and found their site…which is like some kind of left-leaning editorial/news service. Lots of literary news and books reviews (not surprising; Dooney’s is a known writer hangout), but I’m still looking for that sample menu.

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Congratulations to the Senators for making it to the second round. As my second favourite team I’m hoping they win it all should my beloved Habs falter. This would also have the added benefit of sending Leafs fans into a state of catatonia.

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[tags]toronto, dooney’s, canadiens, ottawa, senators[/tags]

Deeeeee-lish

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I just picked up a brownie from Camros, the new organic food store that’s opened up near my place. Yes, it was over $3, but it was so big that I had to split it with T-Bone.

And lest you think an organic brownie would taste like muddy sawdust, it was a damn fine brownie. Not the best I’ve ever had, but certainly a good brownie. Put it this way: if you haven’t told me it was 100% organic, I wouldn’t have known.

Well…I suppose they're experts at ball handling…

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Stephen Brunt, in yesterday’s Globe column (it requires registration, but if you search for ‘Stephen Brunt’ through Google News you can get the full content) is all too happy to jump on the reduced expectations of a Stanley Cup win in Montreal, recounting a friend’s observation that the city, content with winning a round or two nowadays, has become like Toronto. In this he may touch on the truth, but he’s more wrong that right. Montreal doesn’t have the same expectations now that they did, even as recently as 10 years ago (once Patrick Roy, who was known to single-handedly win a cup, left town just two years removed from their last cup win, the expectations began to drop), but become like Toronto? Not quite. Having lived here in Toronto for the past few, I’ve had plenty of chances to roll my eyes at LeafsManiacs. Yonge street doesn’t fill with honking cars when the Leafs win a playoff series, it fills when they win a playoff game. When they win a series, the mayor begins planning the parade route (at least, Mel Lastman did; David Miller seems a bit less frantic. Lastman actually wanted to throw them a parade for getting to the third round, for chrissakes).

There’s also a difference between the cities in the sports demeanor come October. Montreal fans are hopeful that their team can win it all, and passionate about the season’s outcome, but will grudgingly admit that their chances aren’t good. Toronto fans, on the other hand, seem genuinely convinced that their team will win it…each and every year. I’ve never experienced anything like it. They like to claim it’s devotion and dedication, but it smacks mainly of delusion. It’s kind of creepy. Like being in a sports bodysnatchers town.

.:.

Hot Docs starts tonight. Our first documentary is about soccer-playing Guatemalan prostitutes. Seriously.

Cat Power, bunny suits and War Pigs.

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Jane Jacobs, dead at 89. The world is a less reasonable and intelligent place without her.

.:.

In the kind of news that — presumably — Ms. Jacobs would have been happy to see, Toronto has opened its first New Mobility Hub near Exhibition Place. Bike lockers and a wireless hotspot at the center of a GO Train station, two streetcar lines, a bus route and a pedestrian walkway. Putting a few of these around the city, mixed with a few carpooling services, could really make a difference for commuters. I don’t think it’ll get people out of their cars en masse, but it’s a start, and a good one. Find out more at movingtheeconomy.ca.
[via Spacing]

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Two links from Wired‘s Listening Post blog: a video clip of the Flaming Lips and Chan Marshall singing Black Sabbath‘s “War Pigs” on Austin City Limits, and a short article about the weird new Pepsi ads with Jimmy Fallon and Parker Posey (I haven’t seen any with Eva Longoria) dancing nuttily around city streets.

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The Canadiens survived a crazy ride last night and beat the Hurricanes 6-5 to take a 2-0 series lead, heading back to Montreal. While I’m happy their up two games, and I like their chances, I won’t get too confident. It wasn’t that long ago — 1997, I think? — that the Canadiens were up two games on the Rangers heading home and they lost the next four.

I’ll celebrate when they’re in the second round.

ScaryStupidScary

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I think that when my guy at Harry Rosen teases me for spending way less than usual, I have a bit of a clothes spending problem. And here I was proud of myself for walking out with only a pair of shoes (these ones, in fact).

.:.

I watched a pile of movies this weekend, most of which we’ve had stored on the PVR for a while and I just hadn’t gotten to (along with the fifteen or so still on there):

  • Warrendale (Allan King Films) was a CBC documentary made in the late 60s that the CBC refused to air. It was about emotionally troubled kids living together in a house with some (remarkably patient, by the look of it) caretakers, and seemed shocking in a few ways: the language the kids used (you’re used to any TV made during the 60s being scrubbed so clean that to hear a little boy screaming “fuck you!” over and over is startling), and the methods they used to control the kids (calming them during tantrums by wrapping up their arms and legs). It was also a little weird to see a teenage girl being bottle fed by the same woman whose face she was screaming in earlier that day. Interesting, certainly, but hard to watch.
  • The Rules Of Attraction (imdb | rotten tomatoes) wasn’t so serious, but it was depressing in its own way. I’ve come to learn that I don’t really like movies based on Bret Easton Ellis novels, and I’m also more certain than ever now that I despise the 80s; Ellis, if his books even remotely resemble an accurate picture of what things were like for rich college kids, has just given me more reason to despise them. I’ll say this for the movie: it managed to keep me from thinking about Dawson’s Creek every time James Van Der Beek was on the screen, which is no small feat.
  • I got back to the serious stuff with Ghosts Of Attica (imdb). I knew little about the Attica riots, since they happened four years before I was born, but if you’ve seen Dog Day Afternoon and you watch enough Oz you pick up a few things. It ended up being a similar story to a topic I’d discussed recently with friends: the Kent State massacre, which happened just 16 months before the Attica riots. The problem — social unrest and mass uprising — and the response — a violent overreaction by police — were eerily similar in both cases. Whatever horrible things the Attica prisoners did to get themselves thrown in prison (ignoring any bearing racism or poverty might have had on their incarceration), they didn’t deserve to be shot in the back, and the guards surely didn’t deserve to be shot in the same cowardly way by their would-be rescuers.

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We also downloaded the first season of Deadwood this weekend; I watched the first couple of episodes, but I’m just not as into it as Nellie is. She’s always had a bit more of a western fascination than I.

.:.

Now that basketball’s over with (for me, not the Raptors…although I think even I played later into the year than they did…) I’ve gone back to running. I only did two miles tonight, just enough to get back into it. My legs felt a bit tight, probably since I haven’t run on a treadmill in a while. It should be warm (and dry, more to the point) enough soon to run outside, but that doesn’t last long; by June Toronto’s too choked with smog and humidity to run outside. For me, anyway.

CBGBBQ

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The Star has once again started dumping free newspapers outside my door. They do this a couple of times a year, unprompted. Normally a free newspaper is a good thing, except that I feel compelled to read a newspaper if it’s put in front of me (well…unless it’s a complete shitrag like The Sun) so I end up getting to work late every day. My own fault, I suppose, but dammit, they’re enabling me.

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Carl Bernstein, a guy who knows a thing or two about impeaching presidents, asks in the HuffPo if the president should be impeached. I have a recommendation, but I don’t think I get to vote on this.

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I’ve won tickets from Now Magazine for the second time in as many weeks. This time it’s for The Sentinel, which probably won’t be quite as good as Brick, but hey…it’s free and I was gonna see it anyway, so 3 shy little hipster hoorays for Now.

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This month’s Toronto Life, in addition to humorous letters, contains an article about the Don Valley Parkway. They make the point that further north — near Eglinton or Lawrence — it feels like a big, dead, cold highway, but the further it gets into the downtown core, it paradoxically becomes more and more green…more trees, more grass, better conformity to the landscape. Near the Bayview extension you can see the Don River, trees, fields, and the downtown towers pulling up over the trees. The first time I rode down the DVP with a friend, shortly after moving here, I was blown away as we neared the bottom of the valley at sunset, shocked by how green space I could see (I lived at Yonge & Sheppard, so I wasn’t used to seeing any), and then suddenly we were on the Gardiner and I was looking at the incredible cityscape. I remember it was the first time that I liked looking at Toronto.

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CBGB had us over last night for a barbeque, which was pretty sweet. It’s never a bad thing to have friends who own meat grilling equipment and live within the city limits in quick transit distance. And, of course, are nice enough to invite us over on a whim on a sunny Sunday afternoon for some red wine & red meat. It made us [sigh] look forward to the day when we have our own barbeque.

D.Y.S.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

From the CBC: Accused Serbian robber sews up lips, tongue to avoid court hearing. Ow ow OW. Surely there was a better way to avoid a hearing.

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From a letter to the editor of Toronto Life magazine (which they don’t post online, unfortunately), regarding last month’s condo story:

“If to be a hipster condo owner in downtown Toronto means saying things like ‘The very best thing about living here is Olivier at Clafouti’ without a trace of self-parody…then count me in as a renter who would rather put a bullet through his temple than live among these prats.”

I snorted my iced tea when I read this, and made a mental note not to be this kind of condo owner. If you ever hear me going on about how delightful so-and-so at Rosewater is, for god’s sake, punch me.

Truer words…

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“Understandably Leaf supporters are on a high right now, with the team recording points in each of the past 9 games. It’s the same classic symptoms that Leaf Nation has been plagued with for too long now. A few wins and the Stanley Cup is now a sure thing, management is praised, contracts are extended, and everyone forgets that Jean-Sebastien Aubin isn’t Martin Brodeur.”

[Courtesy of {gasp} Torontoist]