Archive for the 'eating out' Category
I’m sorry I didn’t report immediately back about our dinner at CharCut last night – the truth is we passed a crime scene on the way to our car, then had a particularly unsettling experience immediately upon our arrival home (W was across the street, sleeping over), which necessitated calling the police, double checking for locked doors, and subsequently barely sleeping. I spent until the wee hours trying to mellow out by flipping through recipes, with not much fortitude left to upload photos and rave about the bone marrow gratin and mortadella and tiny Yorkshire puds with warm puddles of gravy we had for dinner. But I will now.
Mortadella: hand-mixed pork studded with pistachios and truffles – they stuff this inside a whole pig’s head, then slice it thinner than paper.
There was bone marrow gratin! (top) with garlic brioche toast, and a charcuterie platter with the aforementioned mortadella, house-cured meats (like shaved heritage duck ham with cave aged Gruyère) and sausage (Winters turkey chorizo with pickled saffron tomatoes):
and duck fat poutine with truffle gravy, a wee pot of Raclette with sweet, soft pull-apart brioche rolls, and the crispy chicken skin salad (it isn’t just crisp-roasted chicken skin stripped off the bird, but more intensely crispified by way of a light mahogany batter and additional frying) with tender baby romaine lettuce leaves and a peppery buttermilk dressing that reminded me of my Grandma in a way I still can’t decipher.
When we found ourselves with plates still covered with gravy and a dish of the buttermilk dressing (I could have eaten with a spoon) we requested a bit more bread and they brought a plate of wee Yorkshire puds and a little pot of chicken gravy to douse them in.
Also: Beer I Actually Liked (trust me: this is earth-shattering. I’m not a beer drinker. But I actually liked this stuff. Perhaps I’m just a beer snob?)
For dessert, chocolate chip cookies and a wee vanilla shake and a skillet of warm bombolone; Italian doughnuts filled with homemade (do I detect booze in there?) Nutella.
This morning: oatmeal for breakfast. Perhaps a run. (Or a waddle.)
March 03 2010 | eating out | 23 Comments »
A fabulous meal of Buffalo Horn Ranch bison au jus, scalloped potatoes, roasted beets and house-made goat cheese, cucumber salad, braised red cabbage and thickly buttered baguette (all passed around twice); then Saskatoon cobbler with vanilla ice cream, tea and coffee: $49.
Bottle of wine: $35.
Leftover biscuits on the way out: free.
Getting to sit down to dinner and laugh with so many of you: priceless.
Beating Russia was pretty sweet too.
I realize that ripping off a MasterCard commercial was extraordinarily cheesy, but it’s all I’ve got.
I’ve been lulled into submission by too much red meat and red wine and a double serving of carbohydrates for dessert, and all of that is being pummelled by a 4 year old who has already turned sideways and gone all starfish in my bed and is repeatedly kicking me in the side of the gut.
But it really was a great night – I loved meeting the seventeen of you who came – the Farm Table Dinners at Forage are a great happy medium between going to a restaurant and eating at home, family-style. (As K put it, it’s like a big family dinner – without the fighting. Or the dishes. And Grandma is a spectacularly good chef.)
A huge thanks to Wade, Sue and the crew for making it happen and feeding us so well. (But honestly. Why do I have to be such a dweeb? Could I possibly turn down the crazy I-want-to-kill-and-eat-you-in-your-sleep expression on my face? It is in no way indicative of how my dinner made me feel. Have a good sleep, now.)
February 25 2010 | eating out | 25 Comments »
Honestly, I haven’t been this excited about a new restaurant opening in a very long time.
CHARCUT Roast House, which has been in the works for in the neighbourhood of 3 years now, is finally about to open. Like, tomorrow. John invited me down for a sneak peek on Friday night, and I arrived to find his mom and a dozen or so others (and a few of their moms) hard at work cleaning, organizing, installing and yes – even starting the prepping in anticipation of Monday’s opening.
Yes, it’s a carnivore’s Disneyland. But there’s a lot on the menu for non-meat-eaters too. I already know what I’m going to have first: Romaine and Crispy Chicken Skin with Buttermilk Dressing.
(Love the hand-written note: because you can’t have any salad without meat.)
I could easily end there, with a side of Raclette (!) and house-made pickles. (The Raclette comes with a little cast-iron pan of brioche knots with garlic butter, served pull-apart style.) But if you move over to the left you’ll notice BONE MARROW GRATIN. Just roll that around for awhile – bone marrow gratin. Further down, Crispy Fois Gras Croquettes. Duck Fat Poutine. House-made sausages and cured meats. I’m going to need bigger pants.
There are wonderful people at the helm here – a lot of very big hearts. The menu will change daily as they play in the kitchen. You have the option of your own table, a seat at a long communal table (a thick slab of wood that came all the way from San Francisco) or to saddle up to the bar at the kitchen to watch them cook as you eat. Everything is made from scratch. And the prices – they’re about on par with Earl’s. Cheap, as John puts it – he and Connie are the chefs at CHARCUT, and they just want to feed people – to let them share the experience of wonderful, real food. It seems to me they’re going to succeed. (Four friends – two couples – have paired up to make it happen – the founders of CHARCUT are Chef Connie DeSousa, Chef John Jackson, Service Director Jean Francois Beeroo and Carrie Jackson.)
Everything in the restaurant has a story, from the reclaimed wood to the communal table and cow painting – I don’t want to spill all the beans yet though – I’m doing a story for the FFWD Bar & Restaurant Guide, so have to leave some stuff to the imagination.
The calm (and clean) before the storm:
Copper bowls make great bathroom sinks:
Come to think of it, I didn’t even get a photo of the enormous custom-made iron chandeliers that incorporate glass mason jars – they hadn’t been hung yet, and still sat on the cement floor by the entrance. I imagine it’s been a mighty busy weekend around there.
CHARCUT opens tomorrow. I’ll pay them another visit at my earliest capability and report back. As a personal favour to you guys. In the name of research, of course.
February 21 2010 | eating out | 12 Comments »
I got a great email from my mom, who is currently blissfully kayaking and walking on the beach in Costa Rica and thus behind on her internet consumption, including my blog updates. It read:
When dogs get hurt, they have to be kept from licking their wounds and making it worse. People too sometimes. Stop licking or we’ll have to put a cone on your head.
Too bad that wouldn’t fit inside a fortune cookie. It may be my new mantra, posted on my fridge or bathroom mirror: STOP LICKING OR WE’LL PUT A CONE ON YOUR HEAD.
(Which isn’t to say I’m still licking – as you know I’m on to bigger things. But, you know, my Mom knows me pretty well. And I thought it was a great analogy, if a little behind the times.)
There wasn’t much cooking done this weekend as I was more or less attached to my computer, working on Blog Aid. We ate roasted pepper and tomato soup, pizza and chili from the freezer, and C took me for an I-don’t-think-you-suck lunch at Alloy, where we had veggie pakoras with mint chutney (above), wine and burgers with yam fries saddled up beside. We both asked for sides of mayo, because what the hell.
Tonight we went to Mike’s cousin’s for a belated turkey dinner, at which his two stunning teenage daughters sat on either side of W and got him to eat boiled carrots straight up. By merely asking.
They picked me up off the floor in time to witness him eating HALF A BRUSSELS SPROUT. Not even disguised. For real. (You should know that we’ve endured many the hour-long standoff over something that could just possibly be a vegetable.) He was all like, sure ladies - I eat vegetables all the time.
I can see now how his teenage years are going to go.
Speaking of eating your vegetables, C’s new year’s resolution is to come up with more ways to eat beets and lentils. I adore that. It’s important to have achievable goals. I do a lot with lentils but had no beets to experiment with this weekend, and didn’t make it to the market. I’m sure you lot have a wealth of experience when it comes to both. Care to comment?
(Blog Aid update tomorrow – I promise. Exciting things are happening! But I have an article deadline first thing tomorrow morning that I should probably get moving on.)
One Year Ago: Potato Skins and Spinach Pizza
January 17 2010 | eating out | 37 Comments »
Aw, I’m all verklempt. I’m so glad to have you guys here, cheering me on, balancing things out, telling me what I need to hear when I can’t see past my thighs. (Especially my right one, which is inexplicably two inches bigger than my left one.) It’s silly, isn’t it? The hungry part of my brain easily convinces the part that controls my hands and mouth that life is too short to worry about aesthetics, that I shouldn’t waste my time caring about my hair or what I can or can’t wear and who might see me, but rather seize the day (and the donut) and appreciate what I have. Which is all true. Especially when news comes of the death of someone close to many friends and colleagues, and another old friend is suddenly admitted to the ICU. What better salve than a comforting meal shared with people you love? To obsess about that extra piece of buttered toast with tea before bed seems trite. Lucky me to have such worries as a job as a food writer and too much bakery bread with strawberry-balsamic jam.
I want to do it up right, to live unreservedly, deliberately and without regret, not because life is short, which too often it is, but because I can. I sometimes look at life as if it were one of those little plexiglass booths they have at car shows – the ones a person can win a minute to climb inside of and grab as many fluttering dollar bills as they can. If you won a minute you wouldn’t just stand there, would you? If you had that opportunity to reach out and try to catch as many experiences as possible in the time you had? Would you care who was watching? (I suppose I would, what with all that jumping and bending over and plexiglass.) And what do weight and self-consciousness have to do with it, except perhaps make it more difficult to maneuver in that little booth?
Ah, the bottle of Red Rooster Cab Merlot from the Naramata Bench is doing its thing. You can tell when I start speaking in bad metaphors. I’m telling you, if you had half a bottle of red on board this would all make perfect sense.
So I ate out twice today. We’ll call it research-slash-therapy. It’s far easier to carry out a new years’ resolution to spend more time with friends than to eat food, not too much – mostly plants. And it’s sometimes difficult to follow through with both when socializing so often involves chatting at a table laden with yummy stuff.
This morning was spontaneous lattes and morning glory muffins (they do all their baking from scratch now) at Caffe Rosso, and then after a meeting at the Epcor Centre I popped over to Giuseppe’s Italian Market on 1st St, beside the Drum & Monkey, for pizza.
One Margarita and one Giuseppe’s (spicy pancetta, purple onions and sundried tomatoes specked with red pepper flakes) made from the rolling out of chewy dough to blasting in the wood-fired oven while we wandered the store and ogled giant meatballs, cheeses, homemade sauces, sausages and pastas.
The slab of cake-shaped chocolate ganache wasn’t our fault. The manager showed up at our table with it, having overheard the guy who made our pizza raving about how good it was. And it really was; like a big triangular Icy Square on a thin layer of sponge cake that really served only to keep the giant truffle from sticking to the plate.
After a full two days without chocolate, it went down all too easily. I had help, but not much; she left me to finish the second half myself and I didn’t even argue.
Yes, it’s Friday, and as such I have Free Stuff.
This time it comes with a caveat: there won’t necessarily be free stuff every single Friday in 2010. Sorry, but as you may have heard I’m having some difficulty keeping on top of things, and coming up with stuff and shipping it out every week is one of them. But I hope to have stuff for you most Fridays, and good enough reason to come on back and check in anyway even when I don’t.
There isn’t much connection between my post and this Free Stuff; the story goes I discovered a box of Epicure Selections stuff in my office while trying to purge and organize (you know, the new year and all that), and it seemed like as good a prize as any. (Shameless plug: my friend Christina, who posts comments here a lot, is a consultant, if you’re looking for one.) The goodie box includes: Sun-dried Tomato Focaccia mix, Steak Rub, Guacamole, 3 Onion and 3 Cheese, Chive & Bacon Dip mixes, Rustico and Marinara tomato sauce seasonings (just add crushed/canned tomatoes) and Poppyseed Dressing mix. I haven’t tried any of them myself, but hear they’re pretty tasty.
You know the drill: leave a comment to enter, and I’ll pick a name on Tuesday. Although I always love to hear what everyone ate for dinner, I’m also curious if you have new year’s resolutions, and if so, what they are? (You learn so much about people by their resolutions – new years’ or not.)
January 09 2010 | eating out | 82 Comments »
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