Earlier this year at a downtown Toronto Italian restaurant where the entrees run nearly $50 a pop, a waiter placed a tiny plate of penne with tomato sauce in front of me. He then launched (uninvited) into a three-minute lecture…
In 2018, Toronto welcomed 15.9 million overnight visitors, occupying over ten million hotel rooms—a record for the city. Canadian hoteliers got inspired and 2019 produced a crop of Canada-bred properties: a four-year renovation transformed a strip joint into the chic…
I was originally taught a 1:1:1 ratio, but it always seemed a little off to me. The whisky would get lost, and the balance was off. So I rejigged it to be heavier on the whisky while relaxing the Campari and…
Introduced to me by one of my mentors, Robin Goodfellow, this is an oldie but a goodie. It represents the very close relationship I have with cocktails that are simplistic in ingredients yet complex in flavour. I’ve always admired forgotten classics…
The Royal Champagne Hotel has transformed what was once a humble carriage house (Napoleon was said to frequent it) into the Champagne region’s first destination spa that does double duty as a sumptuous retreat for gourmands. Michelin-starred Le Royal makes…
In 1997 at The Restaurant in London, when Marco Pierre White was in the midst of his final push for Michelin perfection (which is to say, adding a full deck of five sets of red—not black—knives and forks to his…
This simple recipe was a family staple in my house. My mother used to prepare it on Sundays, especially when we had friends and family visiting. Making it always reminds me of cooking alongside my mother as a child and…
This charming celebration of Jewish North American culinary traditions is something of an anomaly nowadays. Most of the Jewish chefs and cookbook writers making waves are either focused on advancing new Israeli cuisine (Yotam Ottolenghi and Michael Solmonov) or, well,…
She was one of 12 promising international chefs featured at June’s Al Mèni, the popular Rimini food festival created by Italian culinary superstar Massimo Bottura. And legendary food critic Andrea Petrini has invited her to participate in two of the…
To get to Blackberry Mountain, you’ll drive three miles up a dirt road that weaves through the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s the perfect introduction to this Relais & Chateaux wellness resort’s MO: to help guests find bliss via a complete…
After a few too many Caribbean beach vacations spent trudging around the festering seaweed from Brazil heaped on the once-white beaches, last winter I decided to join the throngs of other dispirited sargassum refugees on a direct flight from Toronto…
Growing up in Saskatchewan I had a lot of friends of Ukrainian background, like my best friend, Christian, whose family regularly invited me over for dinner—even for holiday meals. I got to understand Ukrainian food quite well. The best thing was…