Edible Tulip

The Host - Fine Indian Food

Tucked away down a few steps on Prince Arthur Boulevard in the Annex/Yorkville neighbourhood of Toronto is one of the city's best restaurants. Voted #1 Indian Food restaurant by NOW magazine and others, The Host is a sophisticated and elegant venue with totally delicious food. The atmosphere is mellow but proper: there are white table cloths, dark wood, a mahogany bar, several separate eating rooms, decorative Indian relics like over-sized copper camels, and a sense of privacy at each table. I work around the corner so we often frequent the Friday $10 buffet lunch.

The past couple of weeks has been a bit retro. I've reacquainted with girls I went to highschool with in grade 9 - that would be eek 17 years ago. We partied on the weekend and refreshingly they were as fun and pretention-free as I remember. Same laughs. Same kooky mannerisms. Same crunched eye smiles. We got bombed on red wine and champagne while sharing stories and adventures. And today I took my little brother's old girlfriend from high school to lunch. A quirky fun chick with many of the same passions as I have despite a 6 year age difference and we laughed and howled over a long Indian buffet. I had no idea my life over the past decade could induce such hysterics. It was definitely full of drama, most of which I found at the time to be unbearably mis-timed and rather tragic, but in retrospective in full narrative is pretty hilarious - islands of inbreds, vans traversing the country with furniture only to return back, rural living nightmares, foreign city nightmares, robbings, sociopath ex-boyfriends, Chechnyan bandits, stolen identities, on and on... a life well lived obviously translates into a life well told I guess. She too had stories galore as a journalist graduate - newsroom horrors, interesting internships, and a brand new adventure awaiting her as a reporter in one of the most scenic spots in Ontario. I envied her next move, getting out of Dodge (Toronto) and moving to a very character driven unique progessive intellectual and rural/urban spots. These are the spots where characters live on every corner. I've been there. It's a glorious way to live especially for a writer. Cities get congested with corporate desires (take the subway and see the advertising), an awful amount of pretension, rampant consumerism, trendy styles rammed down your throat, a constant bevvy of new and desirable exhibits/movies/shows to see, and a lot of expensive restaurants that serve so-so food. I love cities. And I do love Toronto. But I miss the groundedness that comes from living in a more secluded hub.

The food? We worked our way through the buffet. There were several salads and pickles and tamarind sauces on table one. You then move on to vegetable samosas, Saag, Malai Mattar Paneer, Dal Makhni, Aloo Gobhi, Navrattan Curry, Tandoori Chicken, Basmati Rice, Khumani Steak, and Butter Chicken. You get served Naan bread and your meal is followed by stewed lychees or plums or prunes (not sure) and fresh fruit like watermelon. Odd, but cleanses the garlicky and oniony palate. A really good deal!

Photography Show

I used to spend many a winter working a temp job at BCE place at the corner of Front and Bay. There were a few perks to the job - an excess amount of cool office-y supplies (notebooks, glue sticks, markers, roller ball pens), free food (pringles, granola bars, cookies, licorice, yogurt, etc), the proximity to St. Lawrence Market, and a lot of free time to read and do my own writing. There were a lot of drawbacks - lifer secretaries who eyeballed you up and down with their thickly clad mascara eyes; lifer secretaries who shrunk in terror of the big boss (oh yes sir, whatever you say sir) and I just called him Bob or George or Hank, whatever; lifer secretaries with their employee of the month plaque from 1989 as their only redemption to treating you like a minion; and, working with both lifer secretaries and investment banking men: one group has no confidence and the other rolls around like a pig in mud in it. For a few months each year I got to wear stiletto boots and fishnet stockings and revel in the fact that Bay and King is just so chockfull of testosterone YOWCH you can't help but feel like all woman. I can only handle playing off that sex kitten feminine mystique bull shit for a short while anyway.

The other great thing about BCE place is that it hosts the World Press Photo every year. This is a spectacular, vibrant, moving exhibition of the award winning photographs taken by members of the world press. It's also a way to celebrate or mourn the events of the past year through pictures.

It's open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Admission is FREE. It runs from Oct 3rd to Oct 23rd.

Ethiopian Spice Store

Tucked behind large glass doors on Baldwin Street in the main hub of Kensington Market is a room so full of colour and scent you could be picking over wares in a market in Addis Ababa. The colourful handwoven baskets are used as combination plate-table. The rounded out hollow part is covered in enjera and then various Ethiopian dishes are served on top of the flat bread. People sit at these baskets on low lying wooden stools and use their hands to scoop up the food.

Masks, folk art, animal sculptures and basketry take up the entranceway and then once you are down the stairs you have to manoeuvre between bags of bulk food (couscous, beans, licorice root, etc) View this photo and make your way over to a tall shelving unit that has plastic tupperware containers full of blended spices imported from Ethiopia. Turmeric takes on various hues proof of the authenticity of the spices - they are blends so none can be exactly the same. The curries and the chili spice blends are incredible. They add a profound depth of flavour to dishes. I used them all last fall and winter and I went back yesterday to re-stock. View this photo

The Ethiopian Spice Store is located at 160 Baldwin Street in Kensington Market. Go out on a Sunday and enjoy a car free experience.

Roncesvalles Avenue

There is no better way to get to know a city than to move to a new neighbourhood and walk it on foot - stopping into the hardware store and chatting and then the local butcher and chatting and then getting a coffee and chatting, picking up some flowers next door, browsing in the used bookstore, getting more cash at the local bank and then buying bread on the way home. I've been lucky enough during my time Toronto to have lived in at least 7 different neighbourhoods, the latest being on the cusp of both Roncesvalles Village and High Park. An entrance to the large park was only a block away (the smell riding your bike down Parkside Drive in the rain was a combination of sweet and swampy) and the main drag of Roncesvalles was a few blocks in the other direction.

Roncesvalles is historically a Polish neighbourhood and it's evident by the number of Polish hair salons, delis, bakeries and products available at the local drugstore, that there is still a large Polish influence. Roncesvalles is also home to probably the highest number per capita of double income families with children under 5. Every second house has a stroller on its front porch and you can count on daily visits from neighbouring children to both Scooter Girl for music classes and the Film Buff for ice cream.

The neighbourhood boasts a slew of restaurants from a Thai/Fish and Chips place at the top of Roncey all the way down to Queen Street west of Sorouran where Mitzi's Sister lives and breathes a pub-like vibe. I tried a few restaurants and had a mixed reaction - BoHo was hardly bohemian (the menu was pretentious and plain weird - trout served with french fried yams in the heat wave of July? - and my father almost smacked our server he was so annoying), The Local had a waitress who told us about rapid turnover in kitchen staff and not to order the hamburgers b/c the new chef made them like sloppy joes (anyone who works in a kitchen and can't make a decent hamburger patty scares me), and the Freshwood Grill's tiny patio doesn't have a liquor licence past 9:00 p.m. I ended up at the lovely treed patio out back of Loons - a pub that served excellent burgers and fish and chips - more than I cared to simply because on a hot summer night the other options weren't as appealing.

In the few weeks I lived there, I didn't get the chance to eat at Silver Spoon or River or Shala-Mar or try the recommonded local pizza joint or have a glass of wine at the new wine bar but I did get the unique opportunity to have a pint at the Inter Steer around 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night where a bunch of guys were headbanging to ACDC and the oddly librarian-ish Polish bartender sat on her stool reading a book.