Category: food

What’s wrong with wine by the glass, and pinot grigio

Beppi Crosariol has a good article in the Globe and Mail arguing against ordering wine by the glass. I know what he means: once, I ordered a glass of red from a good restaurant and it was warm because the bottle was sitting on the bar fridge! Ugh! That went back.

If you want to order by the glass, see and order what was recently opened, and try and stick with fresh whites. (What is true for glasses also goes for 1/2 litres and anything that comes from an opened bottle. Although in some cases, if it’s a recently opened red, you may get the benefit of the wine opening up a bit.)

See for yourself by reading this: Wine by the glass? I’ll pass

P.S. He also had a nice, snarky comment (on this varietal) that I love:

“(Hey, if you’d wanted a white wine with no flavour, you’d have ordered a pinot grigio.)”

There are some pinot grigios that do have flavour, but why chase them around when there are so many other white varietals that do have taste?

(flickr photo from sunnyUK photostream)

Toronto, beer and BeerBistro

The blog blogto.com has a really good review of a great bar/resto in Toronto: Beerbistro. I highly recommend this place to both visitors and residents of our city.

One thing they neglect to mention is the great pairings they do with beer and food. They make it easy to forget about wine. And if you love mussels, you MUST go here. Not only will you find a diverse selection of beers, but you will find different ways of preparing mussels to go with those beers.

Winterlicious: fine dining, good prices, in Toronto

Every winter, some of the finest restaurants in the City of Toronto participate in the justly anticipated Winterlicious event. They offer fine prix-fixe meals for lunch and dinner at very reasonable prices. If you are coming to Toronto in the winter, this is the time to come! For more information, see the very informative City of Toronto web site. Come for the food and enjoy the rest of the city.

P.S. There is a Summerlicious too! Just as good!

Chicken Schnitzel and other great Hungarian food at Country Style Hungarian Restaurant in Toronto’s Annex

blogto does a great job of covering Toronto, including restaurants. And this review of Country Style Hungarian Restaurant is no exception.

There used to be a number of Hungarian restaurants in the Annex, including the Korona, my old favourite. Sadly, most of them are gone. But not Country Style. Head on over to 450 Bloor St West and have one of these…

…and you will be very glad you did! 🙂

(image link to blogto)

The great Aroma espresso bar in the Annex, Toronto


Here’s a few reasons why you want to go to the Aroma Espresso bar located in the Annex of downtown Toronto (on Bloor around Bathurst):

– it’s in a great location. The Annex is great, and if you are going to a film at the Bloor, Aroma is a great spot to drop in before or after
– it has great ambience (see the link below for more photos)
– it has friendly service
– it has great coffee, plus they give you a chocolate with your coffee! (See photo above)
– when you order one of their delicious muffins that have a very light crust on the outside and fluffy on the inside, they warm it for you.

Those are just a few things I discovered on my visit. Try it yourself…

blogTO | Aroma Espresso Bar

The nyimes.com No Knead Bread: so simple, even a four year old can make! So you can too

Over at the excellent food blog, Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen, is a review of the No Knead Bread recipe that was featured in the nytimes.com a while ago. Better still, Jaden provides instructions so simple to follow, even a 4 year old can do it (and she has photos to prove it). If nothing else, have a good read of the recipe:

No Knead Bread, Revisited

P.S. This article: How to Turn Cheap “Choice” Steaks into Gucci “Prime” Steaks is also highly recommended. Heck, just sample the entire blog. 🙂

Cook’s: for serious cooks and people who are serious about cooking

If you are serious about cooking, or want to know the definitive way to cook something, I highly recommend Cook’s Illustrated.
It’s a great magazine about cooking as opposed to a collection of recipes. You will get recipes, too, but you will discover a whole lot more about the process of transforming food.

Plus they have reviews of cooking tools, premade sauces, menus, and much more.

Be smart: eat chocolate

This study says eating dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. The participants in the German study ate just a small amount of Ritter chocolate. (Ritter is good and easily available in Toronto). The article goes on to say:

Every day for 18 weeks, the volunteers were instructed to eat
one-square portions of a 16-square Ritter Sport bar, or a similar
portion of white chocolate. White chocolate doesn’t contain cocoa.

Systolic blood pressure,
the top number, fell an average of nearly three points and diastolic
dropped almost two points in the dark chocolate group, compared with no
change in blood pressure readings in the white chocolate group.

Tests suggested that steady exposure to dark chocolate prompted
chemical changes that helped dilate blood vessels and regulate blood
pressure, the researchers said.

So there you go: take two blocks of chocolate every day, have a glass of red wine, and don’t forget the apples, and you should live to be 100!

For more details, see Chocolate reduces blood pressure – Yahoo! News