Make room for the latest munchies to hit downtown’s affordable food hub, because vegan takeout joint Hot Beans is opening in Kensington Market next week. The collective vision of chef Scott McCannell, Ross Corder and Madeleine Foote, the upcoming spot at 160 Baldwin will serve up a compact, approachable menu of Latin-inspired vegan delights.
Toronto may soon forget Gatorade as a post-workout elixir if a non-alcoholic beer from Germany catches on here. Erdinger Brewery, best known in Ontario for its wheat beer, is marketing its Erdinger Alkoholfrei as a healthy athlete’s brew. Impossible as it may seem, it turns out that beer may be even more useful than we thought.
Harbord Street’s popular pizza joint Pizza Gigi has been shut down after police found a plethora of drugs there, including $1-million worth of marijuana, the Star reports.
By early March, Dundas West will see the opening of a new café that has all of the necessary trappings of indie-ness. Cool name? Check: The Primal Grind. Top notch espresso machine? Check: a Nuova Simonelli. Great roaster? Check: Intelligentsia. But something to make it stand out? Also check: The Primal Grind’s coffee will be solely espresso-based, and there will be no signs of dairy, grains or processed sugar.
When looking for a great wine that’s worth every penny, Chilean wine is a good way to go. Our wine columnist, Tony Aspler, selects five Chilean wines that offer great bang for the buck.
These bottles offer bang for buck
Toronto just got shot down hard by BlackBook, an arts and culture rag from New York. In a new post today, BlackBook accuses Toronto chefs of “biting New York’s style.” To support its thesis, the magazine lists a whopping two examples: Porchetta & Co., which quite openly emulates NYC’s Porchetta, and The Burger’s Priest, because apparently making burgers out of fresh, never-frozen ground beef constitutes plagiarizing the Big Apple.
The last Oh Boy burger is being flipped this Sunday at Oh Boy Burger Market on Queen West, with the resto-bar shutting its doors for good. But the news isn’t all bad: by this spring, a new European inspired gastropub with a more varied menu – including burgers – will take its place.
What happens when two lounge lizards with an unerring eye for club culture get together to open a restaurant? Intrigued Toronto diners will find out on Feb. 18, when Charles Khabouth (INK Entertainment) and Toufik Sarwa (Amber) open Italian trattoria Briscola.
For most of its decades-long history, Rolling Rock beer hasn’t been available in Canada. Anyone in Toronto who wanted a taste of the American lager – which has garnered a bit of a cult following – would have had to head to Buffalo. That was until recently, when Labatt Breweries surreptitiously brought Rolling Rock to Ontario.
Drinking local, mico-brewed beer is all the rage in Toronto these days, but how about beer injected with pure Canadiana? (And no, we don’t mean poutine.) According to The Star, a Danish beer that arrived on LCBO shelves last week is infused with Ontario maple syrup.
We’ve long wondered why beer is considered an ideal batter ingredient, and the discerning eye of science has finally come to our rescue. Scientific American has done a thorough breakdown of what makes beer batter better, which is a good thing, because properly done fish and chips should never be taken for granted. Below, our breakdown of Scientific American’s breakdown.
