Chef Michael Stadtlander with his wife Nobuyo and their son Hermann in the kitchen at Haisai
Serendipity sometimes happens.
It was on a Saturday evening in November when we drove on dark country roads from the Blue Mountains in Collingwood to the little village of Singhampton about two hours north of Toronto. The small restaurant Haisai was our destination. Read more…
John Catucci is my morning meditation.
During the pandemic, he gave me hope. He’s a comedian and he is funny – in a low-key way. He is endearing. The two TV shows he hosts — You Gotta Eat Here and Big Food Bucket List — are entertaining and educational. They are life-affirming. They are two of my favourite TV food shows. Read more…
This appeared in the Toronto Star in 1993 when “The Mafia Cookbook” was published by Simon & Schuster. Former U.S. mobster Joe “Dogs” Iannuzzi wrote the book and phoned me from parts unknown when he was under the Witness Protection Program after he was an FBI informant. He died in Texas in 2015. Read more…
From North America to the United Kingdom, these are my favourite food memoirs
A few days ago, I was craving a Walnut Whip. I bought three of them.
Why did I have a longing for an iconic British candy first made by Duncan’s of Edinburgh in 1910? Why did a milk chocolate cone with a whipped vanilla filling and a walnut on top urgently beckon to me? The answer: I was recently researching this blog post by re-reading the compelling memoir “Toast” by Nigel Slater and watching the brilliant BBC film by the same name. Read more…
This appeared as a longer feature article in the Toronto Star food section on January 26, 2000, after I discovered Jamie Oliver’s fledgling show “The Naked Chef” on TVO. I spoke to Jamie in the flesh a few months later when he was consulting at a London restaurant – the Toronto Star article appears below this one. Twenty years later, he’s had his ups and downs, and I am still a fan.
Jamie Oliver must have supernatural powers. He can make a person leap out of her comfy chair, run downstairs, fling open the freezer and act on an overpowering urge to roast a leg of lamb. I should know. It happened to me. Under slightly different circumstances, it also happened to Jody Read, acquisitions programmer for TVO. Read more…
Croquetas are a breaded and fried snack food with various fillings that are extremely popular in Miami
Carlos Frias, the food editor at the Miami Herald, is my buddy and guide to all things delicious in his Florida home. Read more…
Ingredients: A hunger for knowledge; boundless energy and enthusiasm; a love of architecture and design; a passion for cooking and for good food. Read more…
Dutch Babies are a crepe-like dish that can be filled with a variety of goodies
Read more…
Country Greek from “The Last Schmaltz” is a Salad Comprised of
the Usual Ingredients Plus the Welcome Addition of Chickpeas
What is a nice Jewish boy from North York doing with a mini-empire of quirky restaurants in a gritty neighbourhood of downtown Toronto? Doing pretty well is the short answer. Read more…
“The table could sometimes breed violence and it could be the backdrop to the proscribed and the forbidden and the perverse … But feeding people made them happy; it made me happy, and grounded me.” From “Treyf” by Elissa Altman
From left to right in the photo above, here are my favourite food memoirs. All of them are beautifully written (in varying degrees) and all evoke the way food played a part in the author’s life. Some contain a bonus: recipes. Read more…
