Gilead Cafe, star chef Jamie Kennedy's latest culinary outpost, is tucked away in a small lane between Front and King Streets. Inside, the kitchen serves fresh soups, sandwiches, and a killer gourmet beef poutine.

Read guest contributor Kitty Lo's full review of Gilead Cafe, in our restaurants section.

The Parkdale-High Park riding is a tight race this election with local favourites Peggy Nash (NDP) and Gerrard Kennedy (Liberals) squaring off for the first time. Green candidate Rob Rishchynski and Conservative Jilian Saweczko are running visible campaigns, but are really just battling for bronze.

Nash was first to hit the streets and distribute signs - using leftovers from her previous campaign with "re-elect" stickers added - but Kennedy quickly countered with signs of his own. In a sort of candidate love-fest, it's become standard to see signs for both candidates in the same window or yard.

The campaign took a strange turn with recent vandalism in the riding, but neither candidate seems to be ahead of the other. It's hard to predict what this election will turn on as constituents weigh their loyalty to the incumbent (Nash) and their longtime former MPP (Kennedy).

Does Happy Seven (one of Toronto's most favourited late night Chinese restaurants) have a rat problem?

According to Jesse Ship, Arts Editor of Format Magazine, it just might. He took what he says is a photo of a rat in the window of this popular Chinatown restaurant on his way to work this morning.

In his words: I was just walking past happy Seven today on Spadina and snagged images of a rat in the window on my cell phone, sitting right next to the health inspector sign. The restaurant wasn't open yet.

Here's a closer look: Update! A video that confirms this is a rat has now been posted on Vimeo. It's embedded below.

As a technologist (wow, that term sounds dated) the start-uppity, trend-setting culture of Silicon Valley has always been alluring to me. Lord knows I have the thick-rimmed glasses, the MacBook, the (potentially long) sideburns, and have been in enough Starbucks to qualify to move across the continent. In the end though, I chose to stay put in Toronto because of my friends and family.

Fortunately for me, Toronto has a unique, burgeoning tech scene of its very own.

Case in point, WordCamp Toronto: A two-day conference about blogging and the tools to make it happen -- in this case, WordPress. Those two days, I should point out, were this past Saturday and Sunday, so I had to ask myself: Was I ready to spend $25 and give up my weekend at Centennial College's Student Centre @ Progress Campus, to listen to people potentially go on and on about blogs and technology? You bet your bippy, I was!

Harper's Conservatives announced yesterday in Toronto their highly anticipated (waiting until the last week of an election will have that effect) party platform.

But for our purposes, now is the chance to review the environmental component of their platform, as done for the Liberals, NDP, and Greens.

I'm admittedly sympathetic to (small-c) conservative policy, but what the Conservatives have released as their environmental plan cannot possibly avoid being labeled "skimpy". Under the heading "Ensuring Health and Environmental Well-Being", there are only four sub-points dealing with environmental issues, so it won't take too long to break it down here:

Photo: "Eye Wide Shut..." by chewie2008~, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA:

Police in Brampton have no right to pull you over and ask you to pay for your crime in cash, on the spot. Real cops tried this on me once in Manila, but if this happens in the GTA, you've gotta ask yourself if the guy asking for money is actually a police officer. Chances are, he isn't.

The tanning industry (I'm talking about people paying to get fake-sunned, not animal hides being prepped in Acton) is an odd one to begin with. Now it's coming under government scrutiny because so many salons aren't playing by the rules designed to keep it safe.

The Daily Bread Food Bank's fall food drive is not going very well, and drastic shortages of donations are a cause for concern. Perhaps with the looming economic meltdown, people are starting to worry more and more about themselves than those in far more dire need?