With the rise of social media and almost every element of travel experiences being shared, travelers are expecting more from their vacations. At times, Air BnB offers the ability to travel like a local, gleaming intelligence from hosts. So, it’s no surprise hotels are also stepping up their game, and now offer unique events for guests (or locals alike).

TOCA, located in the Toronto’s Ritz Carlton, has begun to curate a Tastemaker’s event series where culinary delights await guests. Their May Pio Cesare and Chef Oliver Glowig dinner ($195) has already sold out with just word-of-mouth promotion as diners are treated to a 5-course meal concocted by the Michelin starred chef with rare wine pairings from Pio Cesare’s family cellar.

Having had a glass of the Pio Cesare Barbera D’Alba DOC, I can see how the rich but smooth red can hold up against the acidity of tomatoes. It went wonderfully with TOCA’s signature ravioli capresi, which holds a golf ball sized sphere of soft chewy cacciota cheese in each pasta.

If you’re disappointed about the May dinner, Chef Glowig will be returning for five days at the start of November for TOCA’s alba white truffle week. Diners will have an option between a black and white truffle dinner ($150) or if you want to splurge and sit at the chef’s table in the kitchen, there’s a limited white truffle only menu ($300).

If the menu’s anything like the media preview, expect a bit of whimsy. An hour glass beaker-like apparatus is brought table side for the soup course. As the roasted chicken consommé is heated, it flows through to the top of the glassware to get infused by lemon, ginger, celery, and mushrooms becoming even more aromatic.

Afterwards, the consommé is finished off with plump agnolotti stuffed with ricotta and truffles (wow these were good) and black truffle shavings over top! Oh yes, it’s a fragrant soup that lingers on your tongue.

What really sounds interesting to me is the offsite picnics that TOCA partnered with Culinary Adventure Tours to run.

Every Thursday during the summer, guests will paddle to the Toronto Islands on a huge 18-person canoe ($150 regularly with a special Canada Day edition for $195). The trip from the downtown core to the islands should take 20-minutes and then there will be another 20-minute tour around the islands, including viewing the bird sanctuary.

After working up an appetite, diners head ashore for a locally sourced outside picnic. Think cheese and charcuterie boards, terrines, chicken roll-ups, bread, salad, and more.  Make sure to get a piece of the smoked cooked salmon – it’s such a great combination of a slight candied crust and smokiness.

On October 14^th, you can join the restaurant as they bring guests around the Don Valley to forage their own wild mushrooms and edible plants ($85). Upon returning to TOCA, you’ll learn pick through them and ensure they’re suitable for consumption before the ingredients are transformed into a meal.

Who knows what you’ll find. But, if you happen to get a medley of mushrooms, hopefully the chef will sautée them with butter and combine them with a crisp crostini topped with shaved parmesan. It’s simple but delicious.  

The crack of a shell, whiff of sea salt, and the briny sweet juices... these are things I envision with seafood. The vibrant red lobster, glistening oyster, or pale pink scallops - how does food look so beautiful?

This Victoria Day weekend, Lobster Clam Jam is pulling up at the Cabana Pool Bar and hulling  a bounty of seafood for all ages. The outdoor food festival prides itself with being family-friendly with children activities (think bouncy castles and face painting) along with adult pleasing libations.


Although Lobster Clam Jam is making its Toronto debut in 2017, it’s been held in Montreal for the past four years and even proclaimed by Food Network Canada as “one of the top Canadian food festivals to visit this summer”.

Guests will sample seafood creations from restaurants in Toronto and Montreal. Having dined at Patria, Weslodge, Blowfish, Buonanotte and the O&B restaurants, they certainly have a lot of shellfish dishes. Other participants include Jae Anthony of Seasoned Dreams, Notre Dame Gourmet, Queue de Cheval Steakhouse and Raw Bar, Buster’s Sea Cove, The Food Dudes, Bac Ky Pho and more.  

To wash down all the seafood, aside from beer and wine, they will also be selling signature mojitos and bloody Caesares. When you need a break, dance to music spun by DJ Eddie Lewis and DJ Chris Laroque. 

Interesting in going? Here are the details:

• May 20 & 21, 2017  
• $25 for an admission ticket, but free for children 12 years of age and under
• Clam tokens can be purchased for $3 each and redeemed for food dishes (between $6-$12) or drinks ($6)
• Portion of proceeds will be donated to the Starlight Children's Foundation and Sick Kids

Entries will be accepted until May 15, 2017 at 12:00 AM. Sometime the following day, I will contact winners through email with further details. Accordingly, please make sure you enter a valid email address in Rafflecopter contest site. Good luck!

A scroll through Oretta’s Instagram tags and you’ll see it’s a beautiful restaurant with a lavish dining room. Sure, it’s gorgeous, but there’s also something eerily familiar about it. Looking around, there’s the airy high ceilings and blush pink colour scheme of Figo, the art deco brass accents from La Banane, and in the centre of the room, a huge round bar that also sits in Lena. 

Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with having elements similar to other restaurants, but the sense of déjà vu kept sneaking in as I sipped on the tasty a la nonna ($13), a spiced pear puree and Prosecco cocktail, that could replace a mimosa any day. 

As I thought about the meal, I couldn’t help but see how the experience followed the popular “hamburger method” of providing feedback – start positive, give the hard meaty truth, then end positive. To begin, the fried parsnip polenta ($5) was fantastic with the ultra-crispy golden crust, creamy interior, and sprinkles of thyme and honey. A small slip may be how the cook sprinkles on salt, likely after the sticks are intricately stacked, as I found the ones on the bottom didn’t have quite enough seasoning leaving the last bite not nearly as good as the first.

Torontonians are spoiled with the quality of Italian establishments in the city. All the sudden, serving freshly made pasta is just table stakes for most restaurants. Oretta’s tagliatelle ($19) arrives as a large mound of pasta tossed in Nonna Lea’s ragu and a generous sprinkling of parmigiano. All in all, it’s a pasta Nonna Lea can likely stand behind, the red sauce was really hearty and meaty. If only there was more of the tasty ragu, as I did find it a tad sticky and difficult to untangle the long strands of pasta.

In lieu of the traditional creamy liquid rice dish, the risotto al salto ($22) pan fries a squash risotto pancake to create crispy exterior. With plenty of castelmagno fonduta incorporated into the rice, the dish is fairly cheesy, so it almost tastes like deep fried mac ‘n’ cheese balls with a creamy plump mushroom sauce over top. Overall, it’s a good dish, but works better as a shared appetizer. As a main, it’s a bit heavy and not quite satisfying on its own. 

From the moment the spalla d'agnello ($28) arrived I knew the lamb shoulder was overcooked … looking like slices of thick pork chop, there wasn’t an ounce of fat, let alone pinkness in the meat. One bite into the lamb confirmed my suspicions, it was tough and the well seared crust so hard it was scratchy on the way down. Even the medley of creamy baby potato pieces, salty lamb bacon, and crunchy cauliflower didn’t help. Sure, these would have been good as a side, but not nearly saucy enough to save the terribly dry lamb.

Thankfully, the chef’s selection of sweets in the assaggi dolci ($16) saved the meal from a dreadful ending. It included the freshest cannoli I’ve ever tasted - the shell presumably freshly fried as it was still extremely crispy and distinct from the creamy ricotta filling. Even the pistachios were left in larger chunks, so there was an intense crunchiness to the cannoli, which finished much too quickly.

Make sure you dig into the rich dark chocolate cake while it’s still hot and gives off a lovely cocoa aroma. Although the ice cold vanilla gelato would pair with the cake, it’s equally enjoyable on its own since it arrives on a bed of chocolate cookie crumbs, which when mixed into the ice cream gave it a lovely cookies and cream taste. What a great selection of desserts including wonderfully thin and nutty peanut brittle dipped in dark and white chocolate, sweet stick-to-your-teeth honeycomb candy (the honey toffee inside a Crunchie bar), and moist squares of almond cake.

All in all, another decent, but not excellent Italian restaurant has joined the fold. My parting thoughts of the restaurant: a pretty but dry hamburger.

If you’ve read anything about Brother’s Food and Wine, you’ll likely know about their prominent location above Bay Station (complete with rumbling subway underneath) or the notable lineage of Chris White and Jon Nicolaou, the chefs and owners at the restaurant. Hence, I’ll leave you to pursue other publications for further details and focus on the restaurant’s cooking instead.

By no means is Brothers shabby, the seating is snug, but still comfortable in a minimalist sort of way. Yet, it’s not fancy either. The plates are your average round white cafeteria versions and there isn’t a wasted garnish in sight – everything on the plate is meant to be eaten. In essence, the restaurant does “home-style” cooking really well. In terms of taste, some diners may find the chefs a little heavy handed with the salt and pepper, but it’s perfect for me. Even the slices of sourdough and butter we nibbled on incorporated bits of salt in the mixture.   

Although it doesn’t look like much, the slices of pork jowl ($17) left me wanting more. As you bite through the crunchy exterior, a pool of melted fat covers the tongue and afterwards you’re left with tender meat and soft chewy cartilage. It’s fatty and indulgent, even the side of baby romaine is charred and slick with a garlicky and slightly spicy Cesare dressing.

You don’t want to let the Cornish hen ($25) sit too long after the initial cut as it tends to dry out (was on-point for me, but slightly dry for a friend who ate it afterwards). Once again, the kitchen doesn’t hold back with the seasoning: there’s the bite from pepper and a strong taste of thyme or tarragon. Although not exciting, the skin is crispy enough and the creamed spinach a safe but delicious pairing.

As the heavenly smelling hunk of bone-in lamb ($29) was presented, I start salivating like Pavlov's dog. Although the meat had been cooked for a long period, arriving tender, it’s likely roasted (instead of braised), as the meat stays securely on the bone and the bits of connecting tissues can ever so slightly be sliced away. It’s satisfyingly hearty and if it weren’t the for the restaurant’s public setting, I would have gnawed on the bone (once again like Pavlov’s best friend). Aside from the salty wilted black kale, there’s a thick dollop of creamed horseradish, which helps cut through the lamb’s heaviness and gives the dish a prime rib feel.

The gâteau Basque ($9) is closer to a pie than cake with its thick buttery shortbread crust. Inside is a fairly thick layer of vanilla custard, which could be sweeter as both the custard and side of whipped cream were fairly neutral. Nonetheless, the solo dessert satisfied and hit the spot. After all, does it seem like most hearty home-cooked meals always end with pie?

Sweet Lulus is the first fast casual restaurant I ventured into years ago. Once I started working in Toronto’s Financial District, I needed a lunch venue that wasn’t a food court, but we could finish a meal within an hour and under $15. Based on the advice of a co-worker, we visited Sweet Lulus and the rest, as they say, is history.

Although the vegetarian spring rolls ($5) arrive blistering hot, I wish they would have taken two minutes to properly shake off the excess oil so it wouldn’t pool on the plate and completely soak through a napkin … only to still leave a greasy coating throughout the starter. If the spring rolls were wrapped together or incorporated more filling, perhaps this would have been enough to keep all the oil out. Sadly, the poor craftsmanship and meagre cabbage, carrot and bean sprout filling made every bite an oily mess. From now on, I’ll skip the appetizers and just stick with the mains.

In reality, you likely won’t need a starter as Sweet Lulu’s portions are pretty generous. The stir fried noodles (ranging from $9.95 - $15.70) always satisfy with four noodles, four sauces, and various toppings to customize to your tastes. I find the thinner noodles, such as the rice stick and wheat, go better with soup (their Tom Yum base is decent), while thicker Hokkien ones stand up better to the flavourful sauces used in a stir-fry.

My go to combination is either the vegetarian ($9.95), chicken ($11.95), or beef ($12.45) with Hokkien noodles, hot Thai sauce, crushed garlic, and sweet basil. The hot version is still relatively tame, so if you like it really spicy add the crushed chili flakes and grab a bottle of hot sauce from the front. For me, I find it has enough heat to meld with the savoury sauce and slight refreshing sweetness of the basil. Plus, there’s always plenty of vegetables (broccoli, Shanghai bok choy, bean sprouts, carrots, and onions) tossed with the chewy noodles so there’s a bit of topping with every bite.

Although not terrible, the green curry chicken with steamed rice ($11.95) needs to be spicier and could use more coconut milk. I understand, it’s made in large batches and hence needs to be “safe” for the majority of customers. Unfortunately, the milky curry doesn’t lend itself to adding chili flakes or hot sauce into in order to make it more flavourful. Overall, let’s call this green curry for beginners.

As the prices have risen and competitors such as Thai Express have entered the fold, Sweet Lulu’s notorious lines have thankfully decreased. Nonetheless, to get a seat at one of the 40ish dine-in spots, you’ll want to arrive before 12:30. After eating at Sweet Lulus for years, it still continues to satisfy. Their model of ordering at the cash register, getting a number to bring back to your seat, and then your meal gets delivered to the table is now widely used across the city – seven years ago, it seemed like a genius idea.