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C. Nuttall-Smith

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Everything posted by C. Nuttall-Smith

  1. It closed a few months ago. Cursed location. Too bad.
  2. I think it's probably Colborne Lane that mkjr's thinking of, as it's just a couple doors down from the former Spinello.
  3. I quite love Prince Edward County, an area about two hours east of Toronto on Lake Ontario. It's becoming known as a wine region, with some fantastic wine makers and excellent limestone soils. You could go to Closson Chase, Norman Hardie and Rosehall Run, for starters, all excellent wineries (Jancis Robinson recently wrote about one of Hardie's wines, praising it as one of Canada's best). Dining in the area is brilliant: Harvest, the Carriage House and the Merrill Inn are all fantastic restaurants, with a focus on fresh, local, seasonal ingredients, and French-inspired approaches. Buddha Dog, in Picton, is a pretty exciting little (hot dog!) joint—sounds odd, yes, but the dogs are all made and dressed with local, seasonal stuff, with help from a few of the area's best chefs. Well worth a visit for casual lunch. Waupoos Cidery is a gorgeous place for a drink with one of the best views around. Great, great beaches (Sandbanks in particular) and bird watching (Long Point) if that's your thing.
  4. I tried Granowska's plum jam doughnuts yesterday. Very good. About $0.50 each, too.
  5. Let us know what you find. I'm interested to know, too, if you could find a Chinese take on donuts at any of the great Chinese bakeries north of town. Betcha could. Cheers, CN-S
  6. PS for the love of God, please don't go to Timmy Ho's.
  7. The donuts at Xacutti are brilliant. Here's a mention from the magazine: Xacutti Coconut-banana brûlée. Ginger doughnuts with cardamom caramel and vanilla ice cream. Warm apple lassi with champagne granita. Chef Brad Moore’s love affair with Indian cuisine even extends to desserts—and for this we should all be thankful. I haven't been to these places, but I pulled them out of our guides. One caveat: they may be out of date, so call first. Hope they help. Piegus European Bakery How many kinds of rye bread does one small Polish bakery need? Those who flock here (especially on Saturdays) have their favourites: dark or light, with caraway or poppy seed or dried onion, or (best of all) old Polish, with its crunchy crust and moist crumb. Huge cheesecakes have a multitude of toppings; Danishes and doughnuts filled with plum jam are always available. Closed Sunday. 3478 Lawrence Ave. E. (at Markham Rd.), 416-431-6081 Milbree-Viking Owners Heikki and Liisa Ottavainen are a talented team. While Heikki is busy in his smokehouse, preparing all manner of pork, fish and fowl, his wife, Liisa, labours in the kitchen, turning out a full repertoire of traditional Finnish fare. For starters, there’s cold-smoked salmon, double-smoked bacon, pork chops and ham, homemade sausages and smoked chickens. Customers travel from afar for Liisa’s rye bread (her mother’s recipe, prepared without preservatives, fat or yeast), and her heavenly doughnuts. There’s also a vast selection of pastries and meat patties. More space still is devoted to imported Scandinavian delights: crispbreads, chocolates, and herrings in various shapes, sizes and marinades. Closed Sunday and Monday. 133 Laird Dr (at Eglinton Ave. E.), 416-425-7200 Also, in 2003 we did a best donuts quest. The answers were Granowska's Bakery on Roncesvalles, the Little Pie Shoppe at 3147 Yonge St., and Xacutti.
  8. I bought a great one for my dad a few years ago at Ikea, of all places. I think it was about $12. You can check their catalogue online.
  9. It had location going for it (it was convenient, like Denny's), and a whole lot of grotty, greasy, tobacco-stained charm. And lord knows, there are far worse delis/diners in Montreal than Ben's was. But you always got the sense that they just gave up trying a long time ago.
  10. Wow. Thanks for all the replies, folks. And if I made it sound like I thought all eGullet members don't get how we review, I didn't mean to. I get the sense that in general you're a pretty informed bunch. I'm happy to be a member. Best, CN-S
  11. This probably isn't the best way of introducing myself to the forum, but I'm the editor who James Chatto mentions in his piece about dining incognito. I'm writing because it's disturbing how little some of the posters to this forum appear to know about how restaurants are reviewed. Maybe it isn't as obvious as we expect it is. And without question, there are plenty of "restaurant reviews" published elsewhere that don't take the reviewer's responsibility to readers seriously. But here's how it works at Toronto Life. First, when we review restaurants, we always pay the whole tab, plus tax, plus tip. There is absolutely no "I'm reviewing your restaurant tonight so the tab's on you." Any reviewer who did that wouldn't be a TL reviewer for long. The magazine spends thousands of dollars each month on restaurant bills—it's one of the single biggest line items in Toronto Life's editorial budget. That's the cost of what we do and there's no way around it. Restaurants aren't informed in advance when they'll be reviewed or who's reviewing them. We don't announce, "Oh, we're coming for dinner tonight, so please try extra hard." The goal of a good reviewer is to have as typical an experience at a restaurant as possible. And TL's reviewers know that and strive for it. Reviewers at the magazine most often make reservations under an assumed name, or, better, have their dining companions make the reservations. Ninety percent of the time, a restaurant doesn't know that we've been there to do a review until our fact checker calls. Let me also dispell some readers' impression (though not one that I've read here recently), that reviews are connected to advertising. They are not connected in any way. Period. I assign the reviews. I edit the reviews. I choose when to run the reviews. Much though I'm sure our advertising department would love it if we'd review all the restaurants that advertise with us, and that we'd review them with kid gloves (and I don't blame them for this—it's their job) we don't. Not even close. On dining incognito: great idea. And also, frankly, impossible to do consistently—and this is important: for a living—in this city for any period of time. Toronto is a small town. It has a relatively tiny restaurant industry. The same waiters, cooks, managers, wine stewards and hosts move through a handful of jobs at top-end places. When you dine out a lot, these people begin to recognize who you are, even when you're not a critic. The alternative for a publication like ours, one that reviews a few dozen places each month, is to use reviewers kind of in the same way that narcotics squads use undercover agents: let them work until their cover's blown. After that they get a gold watch and a desk job. For obvious reasons, this just isn't feasable. Mr. Chatto's article (aside from being smart, beautifully written, hilarious and vastly entertaining) does a great job, I think, of addressing just how, given these realities, a professional restaurant critic in Toronto does the job. I urge you all to read it. Finally, for anybody who wants to learn about how restaurant reviews are done elsewhere, I recommend the book "Dining Out:Secrets from America's Leading Critics, Chefs, and Restaurateurs," by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page.
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