Loka, Toronto

If you’ve followed Loka’s story from the beginning, you’d feel quite emotional when walking into their brick and mortar location at 620 Queen Street West. Chef Dave Mottershall began this venture as the infamous @chef_rouge on Instagram posting incredibly appetizing food porn for his many,many followers. His pop-up at Hi-Lo on Queen East was such …

Wedding Cake v.2015

This past weekend, I made a wedding cake for 225 people in my 300 square foot apartment! The challenge became sooo real as I realized that I only have one usable counter space and a dining room table for all of the preparations. However, with a little creative thinking and using all possible surfaces in …

The Tempered Room, Toronto

What is your perfect dessert?   I know, such a loaded question for anyone with a sweet tooth since this choice is dependent on the circumstances around this item’s consumption… is it a hot summer day? a palate cleanser? a meal replacement? a post breakup remedy?… Regardless, for me, it involves butter, vanilla, cream and …

Nana Restaurant Toronto

Located at 785 Queen Street W. (in the Trinity Bellwoods neighborhood), Nana sparked a lot of excitement when its doors opened almost a year ago. Being the younger sister restaurant of one of my favourite places in the city, Khao San Road, my initial dining experience here felt a lot like meeting my significant other’s …

Brock Sandwich – Toronto

If you like sandwiches (and who doesn’t?!?!), you should check out Brock Sandwich on Bloor. Located in the heart of what I consider the least important part of Bloor (1260 Bloor St W) right across from several unfortunate “gentleman’s clubs” and even more vintage clothing stores, this little restaurant is worth the venture. The prices …

Taking food recycling to a whole new level

Figured this was a pretty neat piece of news to share with our readers.  Adam Smith is a trained UK chef who has come up with an interesting restaurant known as “The Real Junk Food Project”. He cooks up nutritious meals using volunteers and all food that is deemed “un-sellable” by supermarkets and restaurants. This …

Brunch at the Whippoorwill, Toronto

Happy 2014 to all our readers and welcome back. A short regroup and here we are, writing about what’s important: food and especially where to eat it in Toronto. Our last meal out on the town was just yesterday morning and it honestly was so disappointing that we rushed over to our computers to do …

Soupstock Toronto

In an effort to protest the limestone Mega-Quarry proposed for the agricultural land of Melancthon Township (100km northwest of Toronto), the Canadian Chef’s congress and the David Suzuki Foundation are organising Soupstock. This major effort will go down on October 21st, 2012 in Woodbine Park (Coxwell and Lakeshore) from 11am until 4pm. If this is …

Gordon Ramsay’s Desserts

“Pastry chefs occupy a very special place in the pecking order of a high flying restaurant kitchen, so…I take my dessert skills as seriously as I do all my cooking” – Gordon Ramsay Desserts by Gordon Ramsay is not a new book by any means, but definitely one that needs to be a part of …

The County General, Toronto

Located at the corner of Shaw and Queen West, this little venue is something to be reckoned with. Opened by Victor Barry and Carlo Catallo, the owners of Splendido, the County General offers a variety of greasy spoon classics with a new age twist. The food is delicious and is pretty much always available, even …

A journey around Toronto’s pastry world (2)

So here we go again, more pastry talk from our epic journey around Toronto. Last post I talked about Frangipane Patisserie, Nadege, Patachou and La Bamboche. This post will bring us to the east side of Yonge and all the delicious treats that can be found around that side of town. Rahier Patisserie (Bayview and …

Sugar, part 3

From a culinary perspective, sugar is a very important ingredient so understanding how it reacts while being heated, melted, dissolved, etc is very crucial. One of the most integral parts of this is an understanding of what happens in a simple sugar and water solution. In this case, the sugar molecules have a tendency to …

Sugar, part 2

There are several different types of sugars, all with various qualities and sweetness levels. Different sugars give different impressions of sweetness with sucrose being the longest to be detected on the tongue and the most lingering of the bunch. By comparison, fructose registers quickly and strongly but it also fades very quickly. But before we …

What is a macaron?

So all week I’ve been posting about these wonderful little desserts but I haven’t even answered the most basic of questions: What is a macaron? Before I get into details, I would like to point out that we are talking about French macarons as opposed to the North American coconut counterparts…. those are spelled with …

History of the macaron

Their name comes from the Italian word “maccherone” which means to beat or crush, used here in reference to the nut (predominantly almond) flour that these desserts are made with. Although the history of the macaron is a little foggy, most sources agree that they date back to the early 1500’s when Caterine de Medici’s …