blogTO | Posts by Catherine

Ten Great Hot Drinks in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:55:10 PDT

I'll admit it, these chilly mornings have me thinking about where I put my "layers". Anything thickly woven that was once attached to a sheep.

Our teeny tiny summer is officially over, and as hard we try to avoid eye-contact, we can all feel Fall sitting there, staring at us. And the best defence is a good... hot beverage. Nothing says "I'm not scared of you, cold!" like an unbelievably creamy warm drink (though usually when I'm backtalking the cold, it's less PG-rated).

This year I'm mixing it up with my autumnal beverages, looking for some of Toronto's more differenter options -- beyond lattes.

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The Best Fruit & Vegetable Stores in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:44:45 PDT

The guy who compares apples to oranges is missing the point, but he's less doomed than the guy who tries to price compare oranges to themselves. Down that path lies madness. Oxford has 10 oranges for $4.99, College Fruit Market has 12 for the same. Mona sells them 2 for $1. You can get 4 yellow peppers for $2 at Valley Farm, or 3 for $2 at Maple.

But if you nickel and dime over fruit you'll never enjoy it, and it's one of the city's great accessible pleasures. By drawing passers-by in to have a closer look at the cherries, corn, or mangosteens, fruit and veg markets create the tasty streetlife we dream about in our off-grey offices. Look for the shady awnings and stacks of fresh peaches, and bite into some colour on your way home.

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The Best Card, Paper and Stationery Shops in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:57:01 PDT

Except for a brief blip around the holidays, most mail is a grating medley of flyers, junkmail and bills. But mixed in with my recycling-to-be the other day was a thank you card from my friend's little girl (Hi Bridget!).

Getting unexpected, genuine post in the mail is like finding a $20 in your shorts' pocket when you bring your summer wardrobe back out. There's the heart-fluttering "what's this?" moment, as it puts lustre on an ordinary day.

Plus the underrated fun of actual card shopping. Where you can build a narrative around what the proprietor seems to think you'll be doing while you write your note. Maybe writing letters awakens your inner need to own soaps shaped like ducks. Develop a hankering for decorative ceramic tiles? Roger's Chocolates? Inspirational fridge magnets about changing the world? An apron that says "Will Cook for Sex"?

I might open a store that sells greeting cards, pulled pork, and cat toys. I genuinely think I could get away with it.

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The Best Cheese Shops in Toronto

Catherine — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:42:52 PDT

When you ask a cheese lover what it is they like about it, often the response is not so much words as it is a low gurgle of pleasure at the back of the throat.

But you can't force cheese love. You shouldn't startle a strictly cheddar eater with a Stilton or Roquefort. Though you might introduce them to a Cambazola or Saint Agur. To people just building their cheese palate, it can seem like an exercise in pain -- how much stink can you stand.

Until your senses are stretched in ways that make previously unpalatable scents and textures intoxicating. Similes become more flowery and favourable, replacing "smells like gym socks dipped in camel intestines" with "smells like seduction and a warm evening on the Champs-Élysées".

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Atelier Thuet's Brunch Smackdown

Catherine — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:26:09 PDT

To brunch, to brunch, to eat a fat pig (thickly sliced). And also some pastries, and red wine poached eggs and the mother of all french toasts.

I mean, just the description was like a double-dog dare. It wasn't french toast, it was a french toast sandwich: "French toast sandwich with seared smoked pork loin, Paul Sherk's maple syrup" ($18).

Who can plate french toast in a way that makes you say "yep, that's $18 worth of french toast"? Thuet can. At their newest digs in Liberty Village.

Butter up that bacon boy, we're going brunchin'.

Check out all the heart pounding, artery clogging goodness in my review of Atelier Thuet in the restaurants section.

The Best Places to Find Stuff Made by Local Designers

Catherine — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:09:44 PDT

So we're eating local, and it's delicious. But food is only one of many things that can be homegrown. Art, artifacts, clothes, notepaper, posters, ceramics. If it can be knit, spun, inked, daubed, reconstructed, deconstructed, fused or 'smithed, there's a local designer producing it.

The last few years have seen a clutch of designer collectives open in Toronto. As Shopgirls Gallery Boutique puts it, the local talent was evident, the opportunities were not. So, in true Canadian spirit, Toronto artists created their own opportunities, opening their own stores and galleries.

Come check out what the colonies can do.

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The Best Florists in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:40:44 PDT

Flowers weren't always the mild-mannered simile for beauty they are today. Take dahlias: harmless filler flower now, formerly the Aztec flower of war, the bloom of choice to accompany human sacrifices to the Serpent Woman.

(I feel like I just broke some unspoken rule about keeping the phrase "human sacrifices" out of feel-good flower posts. Oh well.)

Then there's tulips. Today they crowd the entrance to every convenience store, yet during Holland's Tulpenwoede ("tulip fury") a single bulb was once sold in exchange for several loads of wheat, oxen, a mess of pigs, a dozen sheep, booze, butter, 1000 lbs of cheese, a bed, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker (see Torontonian Andrew Smith's excellent "Strangers in the Garden".)

Proust said he only had to think of lilacs to smell their scent. For those of us with less vivid sense memory, here is a short list of some of Toronto's best florists (which almost never trade in oxen).

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The Best Vintage Furniture Stores in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:40:28 PDT

You can't swing a Danish teak side table without hitting a great vintage furniture store in Toronto. Vintage furniture can be bought as-is, refurbished, or you can get vintage essence by picking up a reproduction of a classic.

Most of the stores listed here offer a little of all of the above. But they're all good options, and they all get us out of the stores where one beige starts to look very much like another, and back into the scary and exciting world of personal style.

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The Best Tea in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:40:08 PDT

Tea people are just nice people. They're as knowledgeable and passionate about their product as coffee people, only slightly less keyed up and twitchy.

And, let's just get it out of the way, when we're talking about tea, we're talking places that specialize in looseleaf tea (one exception to be spotted below). Most prepacked bagged tea is made with the bits and pieces left over after sorting out the tea leaves. They take the sweepings, the tea "dust", the remnants of real tea, then they bag them, and we drink it. You deserve better than bagged floor scrapings.

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The Best Cupcakes in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:37:33 PDT

As Mugatu famously said "Cupcakes are so hot right now." Apparently Toronto doesn't just have Fashion, Theatre and Financial districts, we also have a Cupcake district. Queen Street East is dominating the cupcake industry. Of the 10 cupcake destinations below, 4 of them, count'em, four, are located along Queen Street East. (5 if you count Dufflet's Beach location). Eastenders are a bit cupcake crazy. And that's a crazy I can get behind.

Most of these shmancy cupcakes don't come cheap. It's around a $3 minimum per indulgence. Which, big picture, isn't actually that much. If money were experiences, the cost of a cupcake would be about equivalent to a ride on the TTC. Public transit is a lot like a cupcake actually. They're both colourful, and satisfying, and, um, they smell good and. No wait. Analogy.. falling.. apart.

For full disclosure, here's my bias in judging cupcakes: I like cupcakes that taste fresh, and are soft and moist. Substance over style. Not that I don't enjoy haute couture confectionery, I do. There's an urban hipster in me trying to get out. But when we get down to it, yummy treats go in the belly, not in the eyes. (Unless someone's really mad at you and expresses it by chucking a cupcake in your face. But I digress.)

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The Best Sandwiches in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:30:00 PDT

The only criteria that unites the category of "sandwich" is the presence of some sort of bread. So long as there's bread wrapped around or on either side of something edible, you can call it a sandwich. It's a blank canvas, open to anyone with some filler and an idea.

This list captures just some of what Toronto has to offer. Vegetarians won't love California Sandwiches' veal meatball option, but they'll be well-served by Urban Herbivore. If you're more in the mood for slow roasted meat, look to Black Camel. Because when you think of a spitting dromedary, you think good meat sandwich. Or at least you might after trying their brisket.

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The Best Bread in Toronto

Catherine — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:12:32 PDT

Bread is one of the most concise and versatile film props. It was bread that finally drove Sam and Frodo apart. Yet when a film needs to look idyllic, the art director can still just pop a baguette in the scene (preferrably sticking jauntily out of a bike basket) and take the rest of the day off.

Toronto's taste in bread is growing up. We're getting away from the "how many grains can you fit in a loaf" game, which, while fun, isn't all that bread has to offer. These days we're favouring artisanal loaves, and we won't settle for any bread without a crust sturdy enough knock a man out at a thousand paces.

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The Best Juice Bars in Toronto

Catherine — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:06:57 PDT

Little kids are juice junkies. They're on a hamster wheel of sipping a juice, spilling a juice or being offered a juice. When we're young and finicky, our list of acceptable fruits and vegetables is about five items long. Which is why our parents hit us with the juice. Juice sneaks under the radar and quietly delivers vitamins and nutrients to unsuspecting children.

Then we get older and we eat the real thing. We show off with our full fruit bowls and elaborate salads. Juice falls by the wayside. Forget about it, we can barely remember to drink enough water. And there are so many interesting fermented drinks to explore. And the coffee. Oh god the coffee.

Enter the juice bar. Juice bars make juice newfangled and interesting. You don't just drink juice, you design, compose, substitute and supplement it. Virgin orange juice no longer. Beets! Parsley! Wheatgrass! Coconuts! Take all those fruits and vegetables you have been unable to bend to your will (I'm looking at you, kale) and turn them into a refreshing beverage. Juice bars wrangle those tricky pineapples and beets, distilling them down to their tasty essence.

By the time these top juice bars are through with them, fruits and vegetables have turned from something to quench your thirst into protein power-boosting smart smoothies --getting as close as we've come so far to Willy Wonka's three-course-meal gum.

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The Best Health Food Stores in Toronto

Catherine — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:00:00 PDT

Health food stores have come a long way, baby. When I was young, and my well-intentioned hippie parents were raising us on a diet of fruit leathers and wild rice casseroles, I spent a great deal of time in health food stores. If I close my eyes, I can still see the giant unmarked tubs of natural peanut butter, and smell the slightly astringent smell of chewable vitamin C.

But right around the time Lisa Simpson admitted she was going to marry a carrot, things started getting better for healthy eaters. A lot better. Even these days, while big business is slapping 'natural' and 'organic' all over themselves, independent health food stores are increasingly mainstream, stylish, and plentiful, with fantastic options all over downtown Toronto.

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Tapasurbano

Catherine — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:31:04 PST

It's not fair: who wants to take over the space of a neighbourhood favourite like Queen West's Sugar? Wait, no. Would that be harder or easier?

Urbano is the new "Italian-inspired tapas parlour" at Queen and Shaw. Which, honestly, I got a little excited about.

(Though I couldn't go for a few months because I was still mourning the end of Sugar brunches. Too soon.)

Then I went, I saw, I ate. And I got a little less excited.

This is where you go to fill up on Calabrese bread and straightforward food (like that lemon chicken over on the right). And it'll be good. But your socks will remain on your feet (because they won't be knocked off, get it?).

Read on in the full Urbano review in our Restaurants section.