Lake Inez

. a new-ish dish 8 oz picanha steak yorkshire pudding bone marrow butter wild mustard & wild onion pesto yesterday on my bike ride it was winter i wore my mitts & long johns & my brakes screamed at me we’re too old & too tired for this same dumb frigid ride & i listened to a sad sad sad song like “birds” by neil young or something but it was too cold to cry cause tears can’t even bloop bloop in this weather they can’t so much as plop plop they are too sharp & they sting so badly but the sadistic cold was offset by a sweet freedom of bike lanes all to myself except for the occasional puddle & the occasional pigeon (but you don’t have to brake for the pigeon it’ll move when it’s good & ready it hasn’t made it this far in life due to ur empathy & ur kindness it has made it this far thanks to its own mettle, grit, a fire inside cause it’s a FUCKING WARRIOR BIRD unless you’re a hawk in which case buzz off) but then today on my bike ride - with no warning at all - it became spring there had been a single cloud, a monolithic saggy-assed woebegone cloud & then the cloud was gone & then the algorithm sent me “stay” by rihanna or maybe it was “riptide” by handsome guy cause when it’s finally spring in toronto u already know what happens u see everyone you’ve ever loved & everyone who’s ever loved u back & everyone who thinks you’re full of shit but frickin loves u anyway & u start peeling off layers layers of cotton & wool & grime & inertia & you let that life-giving sun kiss ur long-neglected skin & U don’t give a flying fuck what U look like prancing down that sidewalk like a bozo not thinkin abt ur age climbing up up not thinkin abt ur body creaking ee ee not thinkin abt that brick wall of debt grrr it’s spring which means it’ll be summer soon which means quit ur job drive to the coast fall asleep in a field prolly drunk don’t call your ex or do call em but hang up real quick ha ha adopt a puppy take real good care of her name her something normy & sweet like “stan” or “howard” eat a steak don’t eat a steak spend ur savings harmlessly vandalize something “owned” by the government & figure it all out again later in like november or some shit

. 𝕄𝔸𝕊ℍ𝔼𝔻 ℙ𝕆𝕋𝔸𝕋𝕆𝔼𝕊 𝔸𝔽𝕋𝔼ℝ 𝔻𝔸ℝ𝕂 (we’re open tonight for great friday)

. ok you jabronis i know i know i know you didn’t “like” my last post cause the chalamet stuff was too fresh and you have an online image to maintain and i know i know i know “likes” aren’t even the currency of the people anymore baby it’s all about whatever it’s all about now, baby and maybe you didn’t even see it cause you were out in nature or reading a book or going to the opera or ballet (jk) or maybe chalamet was shadowbanned by the manisphere for not having the right kind of goatee or maybe just maybe my therapist is onto something when she says my writing has “veered severely but the earth is a sphere so there’s nothing keeping it from swinging back around” regardless, we’re still turning these mushrooms every fucking day. and because of this they look like circus tents. and we can all agree: that’s psychedelic and cool. and cass and kristen and lyla took that motif and brought it to life. and life, itself, is fragile & scary & sad but we wouldn’t know how to articulate any of those sensations if it weren’t also sometimes really good and we wouldn’t know how to move through any of the deep loneliness if weren’t also sometimes really full of love so stop worrying so much about your online image and have a bowl of mashed potatoes with your buds

. new dish! yukon gold mashed potatoes, very good butter, cream of mushroom soup,roasted & pickled cremini and beech mushrooms, sansho peppercorn, sourdough breadcrumb persillade, ‘Portrait of a Wistful Timothee Chalamet at the Met Gala’ purchased from facebook marketplace (he tunes out the paparazzi for a sec. a learned behaviour once you’ve achieved his level of fame. when timothee was a boy who spelled his name timothy (presumably) he never dreamt he’d make it this far. not because he didn’t believe in himself the way most little kids do - unfettered, delusional, unmarred by the harsh realities life has in store for us all soon enough - but because he simply lacked the scope to dream this big. but none of this would mean squat if he had no one to share it with. impervious to the flashing bulbs and journalists screaming his name he instead gazes horizonward. he wonders if kylie is staring at the very same horizon. if she’s thinking of him. if her gratitude is a vibration of warmth like his, one that tingles from her scalp to her spine and down into her toes jammed hastily into tonight’s custom jimmy choo flats. if she too realizes the gravitas of what they share, of what binds them, and if she too feels it all in this moment, a moment just like any other moment, except that it’s not, he thinks, cause it’s this one, ya know? like in garden state, he thinks, when portman does that noise that nobody else is doing and braff is like ‘ya, bingo’. he sighs softly, and then accidentally lets out a little fart. he wonders if anyone heard it. he wonders if by dragging his choo’s on the concrete he can generate a sound close to the original fart. one just similar enough - and yet still ambiguous - to convince the paparazzi or at least make them question if maybe, just maybe, that was the sound they heard previous, too. then he thinks, ‘no, you know what? everyone farts. even those lecherous paparazzis, even me, and maybe even kylie’. he then stops, gazes toward the horizon, and wonders if maybe, just maybe, back in LA, kylie’s doing a little fart too)

. a new dish! salmon gravlax cured in toasted hay, juniper, & dill with creme fraiche, yuzu, preseved bergamot, pickled rutabaga, poached quince, & @jupiterbakehouse toasted rye loaf this is a true story: when we were opening lake inez i was dating a wacky & brilliant newf who introduced me to the works of christopher & mary pratt. i was super entranced by the way their styles juxtaposed. and then also, like, how did that juxtaposition express itself in their love? or in their home? i couldn’t imagine there’d be a living room aesthetic they agreed upon. his paintings so sweet n serene and expansive. so much quietude and a world full of tender possibilities. her paintings so acute and harsh and borderline grotesque (in a hot way) and how she’d transformation minutiae into universality. and him (presumably) being like ‘no, babe, the muse will reveal herself to us only after gazing at the horizon over the course of one million sunsets’ and her being like, ‘i don’t have time for horizon-gazing as i’m one of a million women who are catching, butchering, and then cooking a glistening salmon so we don’t starve to death while chasing sunsets’ and how like, in his paintings the sun melts into a single colour and how that one colour can nourish a considerable part of you. and how like, in her paintings of jars of preserves and freshly butchered fish and just-peeled citrus an entirely new part of you is nourished. and how - somewhere, in some living room in newfoundland - both sensations are happening in harmony. anyway….. back in 2016 when i was building the website for lake inez i emailed christopher pratt (lol to be young) and asked permission to use one of his paintings for the landing page. the gallery then showing the painting replied on his behalf. christopher said i could use the painting in exchange for a free meal if he ever made it back to toronto. mary passed away in ’18 and he in ’22 and to my knowledge neither made it back here to cash in on that meal. so i owe them a salmon dish. and you owe someone an email. anyway, it never hurts to try

. just cause u feeling broken doesn’t make you any less qualified to be their rock and if they need u tonight maybe all u got to do is just show up baby just show up

Lake Inez is Located at 1471 Gerrard St E in The Gerrard India Bazaar neighbourhood and is considered by many to be one of Toronto’s best restaurants. I shot my photos on a quiet, slushy, grey and rainy Sunday morning. But there is a beauty to the goth look. Like Morrissey said Everyday is like Sunday Everyday is silent and grey

. a new dish! housemade andouille w/ scallop, shrimp, sassafras, scallop-shaped puffed pastry new orleans, NYE, ‘04 crawdads were the cheapest thing we could buy so we subsisted on them the best we could. they’d come in gigantic paper bags dampened by residual steam you’d get a soup container’s worth of neon red hot sauce for dunking they were delicious but a lot of work thankfully we had nothing really to do with our time a sacred ritual: pop off head, slurp juices, gnaw any meat available from claws & tail, spit out shells, sip on now-warm tall can of shitty beer seb was tired of me by then. he was tired of crawfish, of being broke, of long days of driving, of the cds we had in the car, & tired of my stories he said being a storyteller meant living in the past & he was ready to to make new stories & barrel into the future i kinda knew what he meant & i kinda deep down agreed but i wasn’t in a hurry to grow up plus i was afraid i didn’t have enough to offer & afraid applying myself may result in rejection or worse just like becoming boring it really hurt me when he said he didn’t think i contributed as much to our friendship as he did. mainly cause i knew he was right but also cause i never thought of our friendship as a transaction but he 𝒘𝒂𝒔 right: he had cooler friends, deeper thoughts, better music, broader prospects. so he decided to fly out jan 1 & return to his Adult Life in portland. i spent my last $115 check on scallops, skinny cigarettes, & some very lousy cocaine i fired up our camp stove in the shitty hotel room & grievously overcooked the scallops while he nuked a stick of butter in a styrofoam soup container. we blew a huge line & talked about our fears, regrets, earliest memories, & the type of dads we’d want to be should that day ever come we didn’t leave the hotel room that night and when the sun rose all ambered over the vast parking lot i mumbled that its reflection dappled on the asphalt looked more like a bayou than a motel 6 he said he’s gonna remember it that way that’ll be the story he tells and he hopped in a cab and sped away i saw recently one of his tweets about capitalism went viral. i’m glad he’s doing well

. happy 9th bday to us :) to commemorate: a 𝓭𝓸𝓾𝓫𝓵𝓮 giveaway ! we’ll choose two winners! #1. dinner for two with pairings on our mystery patio tasting menu in ‘26 #2. dinner for two in our a la carte dining room with cocktails and wine (or NA stuff!) to enter: in the comments please @ a GTA restaurant that you love and tell us why you love it in 10 words or less! —-𝓬𝓪𝓷 𝓫𝓮: earnest, literal, abstract, romantic as fuck —-𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓫𝓮: lake inez, the wren, the wood owl, or belle isle (we love nepotism but it can take the day off!) there are so many wonderful places to dine in this town. sometimes it’s cause you just gotta eat. sometimes you may long for a sliver of escapism. sometimes you need to fill your cup by spending an evening with the people you love most over a table full of food. whatever your reason, thank you for occasionally sharing it with us these last 9 years. it’s been fun amendment: winners will be selected monday dec 22

**EDIT: THANKS TO ALL WHO ORDERED! WE”RE AT OUR CAPACITY XOXOXO** howdy all! gonna run a little print sale of our Sappy East End Nostalgia Series 100% of the proceeds will go to @nourisheastend food bank that takes place weekly at glen rhodes united church across the street link to the form is in the bio :) prints are $45 apiece (approx $38 of every sale will go to the food bank) they’ll be available for pickup at lake inez this friday and saturday, 2pm-4pm …we can potentially figure out shipping too except it’ll cost more and can’t make any ETA guarantees :/ could be a decent gift for that super sappy hyper local east ender in your life idk 1. “mango diamond slush” 8x10” 2. “lil india lil scoundrel” 8x10” 3. “ur young until ur not” 10x10” 4. “co(caine) laun(chpad)” 8x10” 5. “lucky fish” 10x10” 6. “lakiness” 10x10” 7. “too sus restaurant” 10x10”

. frick. last night for this dish. one of my all-time faves: juicy heirloom tomatoes from @broadforkproduce , shrimpy laksa emulsion, smoked scottish trout, jammy egg, sesame it wasn’t until my fourth acupuncture visit that i asked about the ethereal red glow on the ceiling in the north room. laying there, perforated with needles re-directing blood to my busted knees and neurosis-obscured heart, all vulnerable & supine. i thought maybe nobody else could see it or i thought maybe it was emitting from me. but every time i looked at it too closely - the way it’d flicker and snake across the stucco’d ceiling’s topography - i’d drift into the shallow end of my unconscious realm. it was crimson like the jacket of the first edition Camus my grandma knew i took from her library shortly before she died. i don’t think either of us wanted it to end up with my cousins or uncles (though i didn’t bother to ask). but that which is known doesn’t need to be said. it was scarlet like those burning bushes that line the leslie spit. the ones that retain their colour deep deep into fall when most leaves have given up. the ones that provide berries for the pigeons long after most other birds have fucked off. it was tomato red. like the tomatoes we grew on our tiny balcony in our garret apartment we rented for $750/month with pitched ceilings and vinyl tiles inside a ramshackle annex house. the tomatoes weren’t particularly good - they were nowhere near what we’ve tasted since - but they were ours. we made them. we walked down to the convenience store and bought seeds from the exhausted & jaded portuguese lady and we planted them and nurtured them and made them. i doubt they were organic and i’m sure they never became fully grown. but there, on our world’s tiniest patio, with our cat then just a kitten sleeping underneath in the sun, were the tomatoes we made. like the pothos we grew that cascaded from the shitty plywood ledges we hung. like the bread we baked in our lousy, uncalibrated oven. {{part 1/2 contn’d in comments}}

. today, as the septembered sun slants toward and then away from us suddenly and as the waves inch closer then recede skittishly may we all squint to see the romance in everything to the TTC driver who flipped me the bird: you have a difficult job, i love you to the gal who asked for change and when i said i have none but will buy you a coffee to which you replied ‘i don’t drink coffee you hippie {redacted}’: you seem down on your luck, i love you and finally, to the 20ish year old lacrosse boy i rode past last night on queen east (with the identical haircut to all the other 20ish year old boys on queen street. but to this one, specifically, the one) who yelled to me, ‘nice helmet you {redacted}!’: you can go fuck yourself. but keep it romantic