News

Oysters On The Rocks

One night in January at Canis, a fine new restaurant on Queen West in Toronto, the evening specials included kusshi oysters on the half shell. Kusshis are tumbled, deep cup Pacific oyster farmed in Deep Bay, on the East coast…

“Yelp, I Need Somebody”

“Please don’t write a bad restaurant review of us on Yelp,” my server at Toronto’s La Banane restaurant joked on a busy Thursday night as I snapped several pictures of the trout en croute that had recently arrived at the…

RIP Hôtel Herman

The end of January brought surprising, sad news from Montreal, via Facebook, where on its home page, Hôtel Herman announced that it would be closing at the end of February. Coincidentally, the scheduled release for CB100 was Feb. 28. And…

Oh Canada, Oh Truffle

Read these two words, say them out loud, and repeat. Canadian. Truffles. You're smiling now, aren’t you? Well you should be. Because this is not fake news; it is the real thing, fresh out of B.C., where in mid-December the…

Jacob Richler on Irish Whiskey

The Irish whiskey category is on fire of late - and I don’t just mean this week. Over the last decade, stateside sales are up some 600%. Some attribute this to the Emerald Isle’s newly proliferating brands, blends and single…

Fast Food vs. Fine Dining

Many of Vancouver’s fine-dining enthusiasts will have noticed by now that David Hawksworth’s long-time culinary director, executive chef and culinary aide-de-camp Kristian Eligh is no longer to be found at any Hawksworth operation. And in Toronto, diners in the know…

Is a Healthy Diet Affordable?

The old saw that eating healthy food costs more than eating processed or fast food has been officially debunked. If you don’t believe the hype, the proof is in the chia pudding according to this recent study from the U.K’s…

The Return of the Bread Basket

This year, diners and restaurateurs are once again embracing the humble bread basket—so long as it’s stacked with quality carbs. As Michael Pollan says in the TV adaptation of his book Cooked, “I would bet that if you took a…

Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants 2017 Launch Party

Toronto's Shangri-La Hotel was the place to be on Feb 28th as the crème de la crème of Canada's food scene came together to toast the release of the 2017 list. Editor-in-Chief Jacob Richler and Publisher Geoffrey Dawe unveiled the 3rd annual rankings and handed…