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Almost Famous and $150 giveaway for Lee

Jan 26th, 2012
by foodwithlegs.
10 comments

This time last year I had the pleasure of judging the Canadian regional for the S. Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef competition. They’ve generously given me another opportunity (like last year) to give away a gift certificate to a Toronto restaurant. You can find details on that at the bottom of the post.

As well, they connected me with Cole Nicholson, one of the George Brown culinary students who is competing this year. It was obvious from our discussion that Cole is taking his entry seriously and putting in the time at six a.m. practice. Between that and the support he gets from his coaches and other instructors at George Brown I wouldn’t be surprised if he matches Jean-Francois Daigle’s success from last year and repeats for GB. Continue reading →

Posted in: Cookbooks, Events.
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Grocery Wars: Loblaws vs. Longo’s

Jan 25th, 2012
by foodwithlegs.
4 comments

Loblaws vs. Longo's for hard to find ingredients.

Between holiday gifts and boxing week Amazon sales I’m willing to bet that many of you are spending January plowing through recipes from new cookbooks. In many cases you’ll be looking for ingredients that almost never make it on to your regular lists. If you find yourself with a car and outside downtown you’ll be well-served if you end up a place like the uptown Pusateri’s, Highland Farms, or the west-end’s Cheese Boutique.

But in the past year two options have opened for the subway-bound searchers for esoteric ingredients. Longo’s has a location in Maple Leaf Square that is quite close to Union Station and Loblaws has just opened a store in what used to be Maple Leaf Gardens a couple blocks east of College station. Continue reading →

Posted in: Food Shopping.
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Tipping in Toronto: Is 22.6% the new normal?

Jan 17th, 2012
by foodwithlegs.
8 comments

Is 22.6% the new normal tip for restaurants in Toronto?

Amy Pataki’s article in the Star “Standard tip in Toronto restaurants now 20 per cent” about the tip prompts at the Ace and the Westerly raised an issue that I think needs some more careful examination.

First the Star/toronto.com’s headline is wrong. There may be a push to make this so and some of us might consider 20% our standard but general practice in Toronto is still to tip 15% on the before tax total.

In his excellent two-part story on tipping at Inside Toronto last November (part 1, part 2) Eric Vellend set fifteen as the starting bar. In their guides to travel in Canada both Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet agree that 15% is standard. Continue reading →

Posted in: Restaurants.
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No Knead Bread in Stop Motion

Jan 13th, 2012
by foodwithlegs.
5 comments

How to make homemade no-knead bread in stop motion video.

I have a terrible video voice. When that light on the front of a camera is lit in red I sound like my grade nine gym teacher teaching us about the various rules of badminton when clearly he was just thinking about his next coffee-donut-smoke break. Why this happens is beyond me and I’m working on it but in the meanwhile I think I have a solution.

What’s the problem? Well, I know that many of you are visual learners and like to have a demonstration of techniques that you don’t have to read. Video seems weird if the presenter doesn’t opt to talk about what they’re doing. Last week a link to a very good stop-motion video demonstrating how to make yogurt crossed my Twitter stream and I knew instantly I’d have to borrow the idea for my own purposes.

The original was created by Agnes “bob” Gentili (bby_su on Twitter) and I encourage you to take a look at it on Vimeo. She makes yogurt and for my first attempt I went with Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread.  This is the pane integrale (fancy for “partly whole wheat”) recipe from his book My Bread. Continue reading →

Posted in: Baking.
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Burger’s Priest’s New Location

Jan 10th, 2012
by foodwithlegs.
3 comments

Burger's Priest's uptown location on Yonge north of Lawrence.

It isn’t easy to get to Queen and Coxwell unless you live nearby. The first time I tried visiting the Burger’s Priest it was (briefly) closed for renovations, but I’ve been back several times (rode my bike there once last summer) but am happy that I’ll no longer have to go to the middle of nowhere (apologies to friends who live in darkest Leslieville) for my next BP fix.

That’s because Shant Mardirosian has opened a second location of his popular cheeseburger joint on Yonge Street between Lawrence and York Mills. Continue reading →

Posted in: Restaurants.
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