I’ve been working, since November, on an enormous Toronto restaurants project. It’s coming out soon. But at some point between now and then, I’ve got to write an intro that captures the ambition and awesomeness and excitement of this project, and writing great intros is hard.
Which is what took me down to the basement just now, to the bins of magazines I’ve been collecting since the mid-1990s, that I just can’t ever find the heart to dump. They’re from another time, definitely, when huge, ambitious food and restaurants packages were commonplace. And yes it’s easy, in hindsight, to spot their cringy assumptions and too-narrow perspectives, to wonder why they’re not as evolved and as modern as we hope to be today. But also: they were gorgeous and brilliant, smartly edited (bar a few big asterisks) and ridiculously ambitious, with mastheads so accomplished—and expense accounts so vast—that reading them today you almost want to weep.
There’s plenty of incredible food journalism still. In a lot of ways it’s smarter and broader-minded and more reader-focused than much of what got produced in the past. But for their complete, glossy package—for their writing, editing, photography, design, for their boundless ambition and resourcing and unstoppable deliciousness, and yes, for their compulsively readable intros—these are my big guns. What made them great is inspiring even now, some two long decades on.
Now that all officialdom is tut-tutting abuse at Noma, is it maybe a little strange that a chef who has made the open and gleeful abuse and denigration of subordinates absolutely central to his brand still has not one but three TV shows on Canada’s (other) national broadcaster, and that chefs in this country still welcome him into their kitchens (and post the hero pics on instagram) as if it’s the honour of their life? Seems strange to me at least.
Timely piece in the Star today about Ontario’s disastrous Provincial Parks reservations system. In my experience, that system makes cheating just about the ONLY way to pre-book a prime campsite in high season.
Here’s how people do it.
Officially, you’re not allowed to book a campsite until five months before your arrival. What many people (i.e. new campers) don’t know is that once you’ve booked that first night, you can keep on booking your trip—in some cases an additional three weeks of campsites. That way you get access to sites well before the five-month mark.
So people book a week or two of disposable reservations before they actually plan to camp, just so they can add the sites they really want at the end. Then, if they get around to it, they cancel those disposable nights (or just no-show; the number of empty campsites in the last few years has been astonishing), and keep the ones they actually want.
It hands an enormous booking advantage to people who can afford to pay hefty cancellation fees or eat the cost of no-shows. And in tying up sites that nobody has any intention of using, it makes getting parks reservations even harder. It’s gross.
The fix isn’t high tech or difficult. It could happen literally overnight, with two basic policy changes. • Once a reservation’s made, zero “adjustments” allowed. If you want to cancel a few nights of your reservation (i.e. all those disposable campsites) you must cancel the entire reservation. • If you no-show for the first day of your reservation, the entire booking gets cancelled.
Yes, that’s strict. But firm bookings are the norm in other leisure-based industries, i.e. restaurants, hotels, vacation rentals, airlines. Making these changes would make Ontario parks bookings actually fair.
In the meantime, if you know someone who was “lucky” enough to get that prime Killarney or Massasauga or Bon Echo site for, oh, say, the Canada Day weekend, maybe temper the congratulations. They probably got it by fraud.
Happy camping!
This book is an absolute masterpiece, hands-down the best non-fiction Canadian food book I’ve read.
The reporting is as deep and intelligent—and to me, at least, as eye-popping—as any you’ll find, and Kuitenbrouwer’s storytelling, informed by a maple syrup fascination first stoked when he was a child growing up in Quebec’s sugarbush, is just bloody glorious.
Among the highlights: superb archival reporting on the Indigenous origins of maple syrup making, and how the Canadian and Ontario governments systematically stripped them of their forests; the little-told story of the US maple syrup baron who built an early chokehold on Quebec’s industry; the cultural and religious factors that helped Quebec eventually rule the industry; the rise of the maple syrup cartel, and with it Big Maple (waaaay bigger, and more private-equity industrial than I would ever have guessed); and most of all, how those same big business forces pay the least for the tastiest syrup, and are trying to “re-educate” Canadians to love the thin, light, barely-better-than-corn-syrup stuff, because it’s far easier to produce at industrial scale.
I don’t know Kuitenbrouwer at all, and don’t owe anybody involved any favours. I was just wowed and enchanted (and if we’re honest here, insanely jealous) with every page. This thing should be on every single food-loving Canadian’s shelf.
This summer I got a little propane pizza oven and was blown away by the quality of the pizza it could make—without the cost or hassles of a wood-fired one. So I wrote a how-to guide, with recipes, for @globeandmail
Link in bio!
📸 @christievuong
Styling: @eshunmott
It’s so easy to default to US megabrands when you’re shopping for outdoors gear. So this spring, I went looking for a few better designed, better quality pieces closer to home. Featuring: killer cook wear, the world’s coolest (and lightest) two person tent, terrific gear haulers, superb instant pour over camp coffee, and a forest tuxedo for the ages. Link in bio
Nora Gray, Montreal. Love this place. No hype here, no trends, just honest, crazy delicious cooking. I’m struggling to recall a single other plate of pasta, anywhere, that left me as dumbstruck as the ones they do here. Basic spaghetti alla chitarra with bottarga and pangrattato has the sort of texture I dream of: gorgeous chew in the noodles, so much silky richness and depth in the sauce, warm, oil-kissed crunch from the breadcrumbs. So good we ordered a second plate before we’d even finished it. And then, the maltagliati with chicken liver sauce arrived and we lost our minds for that, too—all handmade taste and feel, totally transportive. Or the basic plate of fennel salami that somehow was the best cured meat I’ve had in an age. Or the piece of trout with the texture and richness of butterscotch pudding, but that was still delicate, mild, just gorgeous, in a beurre blanc -like sauce made with wine and reduced milk. The desserts: a dream. A standout, the amaretti cookies that tasted baked-to-order, soft in their middles like fresh meringue. Or the torta di risi—rice cake, sort of—that was like a cross between rice pudding and creme caramel. Lovely, patient service, fantastic wine list, understated room, I’d give anything to live closer to here. @noragrayresto
