Playwright Ravi Jain’s five books that matter

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1:52 pm

Toronto playwright, director and actor Ravi Jain penned the critically acclaimed Brimful of Asha with his mother, Asha Jain, who also acts in the play alongside her son.

It’s a classic tale of culture and generational clash between two family members about the marriage imperative and is presented in a very heartwarming and humorous manner.

Jain is the Dora Award–winning founding director of Why Not Theatre and an associate director at Soulpepper Theatre. A Brimful of Asha is being remounted this month at the Young Centre for Performing Arts and runs Nov. 1 to 12.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
I became aware of the book because of a play I saw in France, L'Homme qui, staged by the great Peter Brook. I became fascinated by the details of each story told and the incredible and incomprehensible world of the brain. It's a mystery inside us that we will never fully understand.

Sea Sick, Alanna Mitchell
An incredible story of a journalist who delves into the deep ocean discovering the immense impacts climate change is having down there. It’s so beautifully told and reveals an unlikely hero at the centre. I ended up adapting the book to stage led by Franco Boni and starring Alanna.

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
I had never read a story with a narrative that weaved history, religion and fantasy together with an incredible impact. The power of the storytelling was incredible. I felt complicit with the characters, to the point where my own faith and beliefs were questioned! I was a part of the story! Rushdie’s humour, wit and swirling narratives have long since impacted how I tell stories.

River of Colour, Raghubir Singh
I often return to this book on a regular basis. This book of photographs by Raghubir Singh captures a kind of colour and juxtaposition of India and Indian culture in a way that was so recognizable to me even though I’m a foreigner. The compositions are stunning, and he captures the beauty in the banal, the magic in the everyday that exists in the beliefs I grew up with from a distant place.

A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
These lectures forever changed my understanding of what progress is. It challenged my understanding of success, capitalism, human nature and most importantly, our survival. Seeing the negative side of progress came at a young age when I was relooking at history through the lens of Howard Zinn, all colliding as I was discovering art as a tool for social justice.

Restaurant Review: A pedigreed chef dishes out dull and confusing Canadiana at Montgomery’s

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Andrew Mannsbach

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12:33 pm

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When restaurants charge for bread, I get irritated. I’ve learned to handle my emotions as this act of un-hospitality becomes more common. But butter? Guy Rawlings’ new restaurant, Montgomery’s, charges $2 for a small breadbasket and $4 for their snazzier butter.

If it were great butter, I might have been mollified. But I, a lifelong lover of butterfat and dare I say a connoisseur of the beloved fat, find this $4 butter meh.

I want to adore this restaurant. Guy Rawlings’ pedigree is sterling. Most recently he was operations manager at the esteemed Bar Isabel and Bar Raval, and long before that he was sous chef at Il Mulino on Eglinton, when it was great, and pastry chef at Celestin when it was great.

Rawlings first came to my attention in 2010 when he was chef at Brockton General, where his cooking was superlative. Breathtaking. Inventive and controlled.

So when Rawlings went out on his own and back into the kitchen with his wife Kim in the front, I started to salivate. Late this past summer they opened Montgomery’s. The open kitchen at the front is all energy and pop, and the two rooms, both front and back, are simple and yet charmingly renovated by the husband and wife team. Their menu is Canadiana locavore.

As for the execution, methinks Mr. Rawlings may have been too long absent from the kitchen.

Raw salmon with cucumber and special vinegar is small chunks of unadorned salmon with cucumber, not-very special vinegar, and smaller chunks of something white and unexciting.

We ask the server what it is and she says it’s pressed cucumber seeds. Ho-hum. Cooked lettuce in broth. Sounds good. The server says it’s great. She says it’s beef, pork and chicken broth. We find some cooked and some not-cooked romaine lettuce on it. The broth is in desperate need of salt, but once salted it remains charmless.

The tapas-style menu also offers steamed artichoke with verjus butter. The artichokes, which are indeed very fresh, have been undercooked, so that they’re well nigh impossible to eat. Dragging one’s teeth along the leaves produces little flesh.

Chef also steams new potatoes with cured roe and Brie de Meaux. While the artichokes were edible, this item is appalling. A largish pile of potatoes sits under pale beige glop so bland as to be unpleasant.

Similarly unfortunate is lakefish with beurre blanc and dill. Putting a piece of white fish on a white plate with white sauce and three small sprigs of dill is not a good visual choice. It looks blah and tastes it too.

The only glimpse of the star who cooked at Brockton General is in the marinated mussels with purslane — a green herb, both sour and salty, it gives the mussels a complex depth which combines brilliantly with the sharp marinade that flavours them. This is the old Guy Rawlings coming through!

But what to make of the rest of it? Where is the artiste who knocked it out of the park night after night at Brockton General?

Note: After this review went to press for our October print issue, Montgomery’s has moved from lunch and dinner service to dinner service only.

Montgomery’s, 996 Queen St. W., $80 dinner for two

Parent to Parent: Does algebra loom large in your future?

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Andrew Mannsbach

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1:28 pm

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How’s Grade 4 math treating you? Funny about those times tables, they never change.… And how about long division? Are you ready for that? Don’t even think about algebra and geometry, but they too loom large in your future. Oh, wait a minute, you’re still making flour-and-water maps of the world? Don’t worry, you have a while to go before the hard stuff starts. They’re breaking you in easy.

Think of papier mâché as the gateway drug to much tougher homework. Sounds crazy, right?

But it’s how you start off with a very particular attitude about your children’s homework. Somehow, as if by magic, homework quickly becomes our homework. Not theirs, but ours. How do we demonstrate this ownership to our children and to ourselves? By sharing homework with them.

I get how easy it is to do this. When my first child was born, I felt as if I’d grown a third leg, a leg that hurt as much as the other two when wounded but over which I did not have control. This was a terrifying thought, which did not lessen when I had a second child. More legs!

My response to these feelings was to spring into 24/7 protective action. Mama bear had nothing on me.

Then I got really lucky. Soon after my son turned eight, all four of us were in the office of a very smart family therapist. My son and I were fighting a lot about homework at the time. The therapist asked him who should be in charge of his homework.

He: “I should.”

Me: “That’s ridiculous. He’s eight.”

Therapist: “It’s his homework, so he should be in charge of it.”

Me: “You’re crazy.”

She didn’t charge us extra for that, but nor did she relent. We left that day with an eight-year-old in charge of his homework. I only agreed because we were paying her so much money.

Hands-off is not my style. As a certified control freak and borderline perfectionist, I don’t do laissez-faire.

But I follow orders well, so I did what she said, and guess who learned to take responsibility for his homework? The bumps along the way were his bumps, the victories his too. I continued to annoy his teachers, who, I now understand, saw lots of parents like me. Every year at Parent Teacher Night I’d ask the French teacher why Max’s French was so appalling and she’d say Max was doing well enough. Same with the English teacher, the history teacher and the head of extracurriculars. My mantra was that he should do more, he had so much potential blah blah blah, and theirs was that he did enough and was good enough.

I understand now — and did not see then — that the teachers wanted the student, not his mother, to be in charge of his education. I am a slow learner, but now I finally get it.

What I learned is that the greatest challenge of school, except for children with special needs, is not for the children but for the parents. This challenge is called separation. Our hardest job, after nonstop caregiving and protection for their first six years, is to separate from them with respect to their school life. To let it be theirs, so that they own it 100 per cent. No shared ownership, because that muddies the waters, which lets them off the responsibility hook.

And if they only learn one lesson from school, it should be to take responsibility. Long after a child has forgotten when the War of 1812 took place, he’ll do fine in life if he can take responsibility.

When we take responsibility for our kids’ homework, when we nag them to do it or participate in it significantly, we send our kids two problematic messages: First, we’re silently communicating: “I don’t trust you to get your homework done.” And second, we’re messaging: “I don’t have confidence that you can do it.”

These aren’t the kinds of messages kids need, even when they’re unstated. They need the opposite messages. They need us to believe in their ability, to have confidence in them, to trust that they’ll learn to make good choices and that they will learn from their stumbles.

This is much harder for us than for them — which is why it gives us terrible separation anxiety. Not a good feeling. Luckily there’s a cure: pour yourself a glass of wine, hit the couch and relax. This will be a challenge the first few times, but you too can learn new skills.

Taste Test: Nadège Nourian helps us pick the best pumpkin pie in Toronto

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Andrew Mannsbach

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2:31 pm

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Toronto’s first lady of French pastry, chef Nadège Nourian, took on the task of tasting the city’s most popular Thanksgiving dessert, pumpkin pies. With fork in hand, she mulled over the cream and crust before picking the best of the bunch.

Winner: a custard delight
Dufflet, 2638 Yonge St., $19
“That’s interesting, I can really taste that it’s a custard,” says chef Nourian. “There’s a nice touch on the cream. It’s a bit less traditional, but there’s a good balance with the pumpkin flavour, and it’s still spicy but not overly.”

Topped with seeds
Phipps Bakery, 420 Eglinton Ave. W., $19.99
“This one is way more sweet. I think the pumpkin seeds are a good idea because I love them personally,” says Nourian. The spiced seeds atop this pie are also sold separately at the bakery.

Creamy consistency
Dessert Lady, 12 Cumberland St., $18
“The dough and crust is nice, but the mixture is different. It tastes like they put a different spice into the mixture. The texture is a bit more creamy, so it is a bit more runny,” says Nourian.

Cookie with a crunch
Yummy Stuff, 1660 Queen St. W., $18
“This one is more spicy as well, and the crust has a nice crunch to it and so does the cookie,” says Nourian. This pie had the best-tasting cookie topping according to the chef and is made with pure pumpkin.

A hit of spice
Ginger’s Desserts, 10220 Yonge St., $22
“It has very nice texture and is pretty spicy, which is nice if people like spice. It’s very smooth too,” says Nourian of this pie that ended up being her runner-up. “It’s a nice little decoration with the cookies, and it’s more dense in a good way. It holds together.”

Hints of honey
Mabel’s Bakery, 746 St. Clair Ave. W., $16.50
“It has a very strong honey flavour, so they have honey in the recipe, and there’s a cream, almost like a sour cream or a crème fraîche, inside. I almost feel they didn’t use any sugar, but just the honey, which is nice,” says Nourian.

A nod to nutmeg
Wanda’s Pie in the Sky, 287 Augusta Ave., $23.95
“The pie has a very soft filling. They put in a lot of nutmeg, so it’s more spicy because the nutmeg is really strong. It’s a little bit sweeter but not overly sweet, and the texture is softer,” says Nourian.

Tender loving pie
Flaky Tart, 711 Mt. Pleasant Rd., $18.50
“This one is very spicy, and the mix is a bit runny as well. The spice isn’t as strong as one of the other ones, and this one has a little bit more of a tender filling compared to some of the others,” says Nourian.

Picking the right activities for your kids

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Andrew Mannsbach

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11:01 am

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When my four kids were all engaged in after-school activities, we had a rule that no one kid could have something to get to more than twice a week. The logistics (and the budgeting) just didn’t work. So, if you were enrolled in hockey, that was it, as most teams require at least one practice and one game a week.

We also had a rule that, if you started an activity, you had to see it through to the end of the session.

We let our children pick their activities, with the exception of swimming lessons, as we felt this was a basic life skill that we wanted our kids to have, as, like many Canadian families, we are by the water quite a bit.

So how do you know which activities your children will be interested in and which ones they’ll carry forward? How do you motivate them to take the activities you (secretly) want them to pursue and still balance a normal family life?

1. Start kids off with a multi-sports or multi-activity program or camp to see where their natural interests and abilities lie. Many community centres offer this type of programming, so kids can try out a variety of things without you investing too much money in equipment or supplies.

2. Don’t force your kids to be interested in the same sports. Although it’s certainly easier to have all of your kids interested in the same activity, it doesn’t always happen that way, and it’s painful for both you and the child to push it. Out of four kids, two of mine love hockey. One didn’t even try out, and the other only lasted a season. We were more than fine with this; we were relieved.

3. Let them take a program they genuinely enjoy, not one where you’re already counting the payback from future contracts. Don’t tell your seven-year-old: “But this is a great university sport!” or, “Professionals get paid a lot of money to do this!” It’s too much pressure, and kids can’t fathom what doing an activity professionally would even look like.

4. It’s OK if your child doesn’t play the same sports you did. It’s great to share stories with the child about what you used to do “back in the day,” but if none of your children aspires to excel in your activity of choice, let it drop. We all have our own talents. Let your child discover for himself or herself if he or she likes a sport much as you did. Also, don’t criticize the way kids are learning now, or try to override the coach’s advice.

5. Make sure your child is interested in the sport personally, not just because a pal is in the program. What’s great about sports is that it brings kids from different schools, backgrounds and even ages together in a joint pursuit. It’s terrific if a child has a best friend that’s also interested in the same sport, and it’s ideal for carpooling purposes. But don’t let that be your prime motivator.

6. Find the right balance for your family and for your child. Committing to an activity can mean giving up other things. If one child’s activity is taking up all of the family’s free time on evenings and weekends, it can feel unfair and upsetting to the child (or children) who are left at home or constantly being forced to be in the stands for their sibling. Parents should try to take turns being the primary supporter of each child’s activity and find ways to interact with the kids who aren’t involved in that activity, to avoid feelings of favouritism.

56 townhomes proposed for Thornhill

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1:10 pm

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New plans for a 56-townhouse development on the site of 7803 and 7815 Dufferin St. in Thornhill, submitted by Weston Consulting to Vaughan City Council in June, have some residents hoping it could help keep highrise projects in the area at bay.

With the vivaNext rapidway being built just south of the proposed project, the Dufferin Street and Centre Street area is poised for high-density development.

“Most important to the residents in the area, though, is the fact that, if the townhomes are approved, the risk of more intense development is reduced,” said Josh Martow, president of Beverly Glen Ratepayers Association.

For Alan Shefman, councillor for Ward 5, the project has both pros and cons that need to be considered.

“This development, if it should be allowed to go forward will restrict that sort of expansive development at that corner,” he said

“I’m not saying I’m for or against it, but my preference is that [the developer] holds off until we’ve completed our secondary plan to see how that fits into the overall vision for that intersection area,” said Shefman.

Weston Consulting held an open house in June for residents, local businesses and other stakeholders to offer their input about the project.

Joe Greco, owner of the nearby Concord Food Centre, is encouraged by the proposed plan’s potential impact on the area and particularily his own business.

“VivaNext is building a rapidway down the middle of Centre Street, which will create a situation where … no one going east on Centre Street will be able to turn in to our property, and leaving the store they will only be able to go westbound,” said Greco.

“This townhouse development would provide some additional customers to our store and plaza as they could walk there,” said Greco.

Weston Consulting was unavailable for comment at press time.

Artist insider: Samara Shuter and her five fave Toronto spots for all things artistic

By

Andrew Mannsbach

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3:39 pm

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Samara Shuter is one of the top emerging artists in the city of Toronto. She is known for her vibrant (and kinda large) paintings of male bodies sans heads decked out in fashionable attire as well as the occasional guitar or muscle car. She has been profiled in magazines such as GQ and Esquire amongst others (including a rather splendid piece from yours truly you can find right here). The artist recently put her immeasurable talents to good use as part of a fundraiser for the Jays Care Foundation in addition to her participation in Baycrest Health Science’s groundbreaking Brain Project. Here, Shuter talks about her five Toronto faves for all her artistic essentials.

Gwartzman’s Art Supplies

This is a family run business with a great track record. I love spending extra time in here discovering new products and materials, as well as catching up with the crew. They’re incredibly warm and helpful. And their quality and prices are some of the best.

KLAUS By Nienkamper on King East

Another handsome family business, you can find Klaus, both the store and the real guy (named after his father, the founder and of the same name). I can sit in this space for hours. It’s a mini mecca of modern furniture that speaks to my love for great design and architecture. There are so many wonderful elements that make up this showroom, and its loft was once home to a personal favourite Toronto artist of mine, Thrush Holmes.

Angell Gallery

I really enjoy the roster of artists at Angell Gallery. This gallery used to be right at Queen and Ossington, but has recently moved up town to Dupont Street. I find the work Jamie curates and collects feels nouveau Canadian. A lot of cool landscapes and nature scenes from the likes of Steve Driscoll and Kim Dorland, but they’re unique as they feel sort of punk and modern with a lot of neons and contemporary subject matter.

Toronto Dominion Centre Courtyard (Bay and Wellington)

I love to walk through this courtyard en route to meet (most often a collector). Here you’ll find a special public art installation by Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard called The Pasture”. These 7 life-sized bronze-sculpted works are so cool. They add an element of “chill” to what is otherwise a bustling environment. Also, I happen to love big buildings and big business. So a visit to this space ignites inspiration from every angle.

Fabric Stores along Queen West

I love to pop in and out of a variety of textile suppliers in this area. I’m often inspired by a collection of pattern designs, and even textures. A part of this I really enjoy, too, is knowing the various distributors the garments are coming from around the world, what’s trending and the quality of the material. Much of this colour inspiration finds its way into my own artwork.

Meet the three young stars who bring Matilda to life in Toronto’s hit musical

By

Andrew Mannsbach

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9:53 am

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The Mirvish production of Matilda is one of the finest family shows to hit the city in some time. Both my daughter and I loved the clever lead character who unspools a mystery and stands up to bullies of all shapes and sizes.

For this production, three actors — Toronto’s Hannah Levinson as well as Jaime MacLean and Jenna Weir — share the role of Matilda and rotate performances throughout the week. The show also stars a number of local actors, including Dan Chameroy as the evil Miss Trunchbull and Paula Brancati as Miss Honey.

We decided to get to know the Matilda girls a bit better and set up a time to chat about the show.

How would you describe the character of Matilda?
Hannah: Matilda is a very powerful human being who is not afraid to put things right. She knows the consequences that could happen, but she’s just so powerful and has this brilliant mind and she’s very feisty.

Jenna: I would describe Matilda as a bold, strong, brilliant character with an amazing mind who is not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.

Jaime: I would describe Matilda as very determined. She is not afraid to put it right. When she wants to, she’ll do it, she’s very determined and not scared.

Do you ever get nervous before a performance?
Jenna: I do get nervous a lot before every show, but what I do is take lots of deep breaths and I also have brave thoughts. That means if I have a worry thought and I know what I’m worried about, then I would say my worry thought in my head once, and then I would have three or four brave thoughts and say them to myself over and over again, and they go into my head, and it makes me not scared and helps me get onstage.

What’s an example of a brave thought?
Jenna: Like, I have already done 13 shows already and nothing bad happened so why would anything bad happen now?

Jaime: If I’m getting nervous before a show, I take my nervous thoughts and push them down to make positive energy in a way. I use my nerves to make energy, and it helps me be more feisty and strong.

What’s your favourite scene?
Hannah: I really like “Naughty” because it gets me into the character as Matilda because it brings out her mischievous side. People think she’s more of a serious girl who is all about academics, so it’s fun to show people what plans she has up her sleeve.

Jenna: I like “Quiet” near the end of Act 2, maybe in the middle, I think because in Act 2 everything unfolds, and it gets really intense and crazy, and with “Quiet” you get to stand there, breathe and calm down completely and just feel the happiness of being onstage and doing what we love, and knowing that you’re standing there is just an amazing feeling. Sometimes the theatre is so dark I can’t even see the audience. I don’t even try to look. I just close my eyes and go to my quiet spot. We all have our own quiet spot, something that represents us, where we love to be, and it just calms us down.

Jaime: My favourite scene is called “Honey House,” when Matilda goes to Miss Honey’s house and they have a talk. And it’s at a point in the play where it goes from something small to like finding out a huge part in the play where everything unfolds. It’s very emotional that scene, too, for Ms. honey, Matilda not so much. She gets so emotional, and the song is beautiful too. I love that song.

What is Ms. Trunchbull like offstage?
Jaime: Dan is literally a fluffy bunny inside. He’s so sweet and funny and the complete opposite of Miss Trunchbull. Literally, Miss Trunchbull onstage and then Dan, it’s like a before and after — it kind of blows my mind sometimes. Like how do you do that? I’m almost opposite to Matilda because I’m very smiley and giggly. But someone like Dan, he has to go from a man to a woman, but a very manly woman.

What do you hope the audience takes away from seeing Matilda?
Hannah: I hope that they take away a belief in themselves. A lot of young girls don’t have faith in themselves, and that’s a really important thing to always believe in yourself and always be strong and stand up for people no mater what.

Jenna: One of our music teachers once said there will be at least one person, somebody in the audience, who is dealing with something in their life, at the moment, that they are afraid of. Like, their boss or in school or a bully, someone they are too afraid to stand up to, but coming to the show, I think people will learn that Matilda is so little but also so big. She is strong, and she can put things right, and I hope people leave and say, “You know what, I’m going to stand up to this person.”

Jaime: I think the same, but also to inspire kids to do musical theatre. I think it’s just amazing to inspire them.

Matilda runs until Jan. 8, 2017 at the Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St., www.mirvish.com.

Restaurant Review: The new Chantecler shines in spots, underwhelms in others

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Andrew Mannsbach

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9:23 am

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Meh.

This is how I’m feeling about the new Chantecler. And it shouldn’t have been like that, given my long-term relationship with old school French cooking. I even still adore quiche! And French onion soup! I never met a butterfat I didn’t love, and in my own kitchen if someone dares challenge the conventions of French cooking, there’s hell to pay.

So I was near to ecstasy when the ultra hipster Parkdale boîte Chantecler announced that its new chef, Jesse Mutch, was doing old school French, with nary a sign of foams or toasted rice toppings.

Chantecler’s owner, Jacob Wharton-Shukster, made reference to Montreal’s L’Express, which I always loved for its trad bistro cuisine. He had struggled with the restaurant’s future, closing weekdays for a while after the departure of his partner, chef Jonathan Poon, who opened Bar Fancy in 2014.

Chantecler 2.0 has nothing to do with the Asian fusion lettucy thingies of chef Poon, but the room is unchanged — still a small and incredibly sweet bistro with thick wooden tables, some high-top, some regulation height, white tile floors a la française and a cheerful atmosphere with friendly service.

Dinner starts off scrumptious with classic French cheese puffs — gougères. They’re tender and warm and melt-in-the-mouth. Fines herbes butter gilds the lily nicely. Then cometh a small soufflé dish of French onion soup. Too small to accommodate sufficient broth under its very good cheesy roof. A similar malfunction befalls the snails in puff pastry. There’s a reason why trad French chefs always had to apprentice for years and practice techniques over and over and over again. It’s an extremely technical cuisine, even at the bistro level. So snails in puff pastry with mushroom sherry cream sauce sounds fab, but if the pastry is tough and the cream sauce under-seasoned…

The duck and crepes main course is better, featuring perfectly pink ’n’ tender duck breast with leg and thigh blessed with crisp skin (hurrah!) and tender flesh. We love that, but why are the little chive crepes fridge-cold? And the so-called plum preserve doesn’t taste plummy. Better is the B.C. snapper with mussels. Despite the snapper being slightly overcooked it’s a fine dish thanks to perfectly cooked mussels and Pernod-scented tomato cream sauce.

Sides of frites with mayo and green beans with hollandaise and almond crumble are two of the best things on the menu. Way better than the lemon parfait dessert, whose lemon cream is denser than the citric cloud we expected. We’re counting on chef Mutch to do better soon. Much better.

Restaurant Review: Slice of Motor City at Descendant Pizza is a lesson in deliciousness

By

Andrew Mannsbach

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9:23 am

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Had you told me that I would fall head over heels in love with a form of pizza that has as much crust as topping, I’d have told you to go get your head read: Because I’m such a fan of the increasingly thin cracker-like pizza crust that’s cooked for 90 seconds at blistering heat — so that it crackles dryly in the mouth.

This new (to us) form of pizza is called Detroit-style and is on offer in an unassuming 22-seat hole-in-the-wall in Leslieville. They take res, but the place is popular, so go early or late. The small room has quite lovely paintings on the walls, sometimes big colourful hearts and flowers.

Now all it needs is some more assertive rock ’n’ roll to while away the time waiting for your pie, because this one ain’t quick — especially when Descendant Pizza is slammed with both takeout and eat-in orders. Which is usually.

After rolling out the dough, they put it on a deep steel pizza pan, with a mixture of grated brick and mozzarella on top. The sauce goes on after it comes out of the oven. The result is that when the pizza bakes — which is relatively lengthy — the cheeses, with their luscious fat, caramelize and get all golden brown and crunchy and greasy. This is the kiss of heaven for cooked dough.

I could just eat the crust and be happy. All four tall crunchy sides, ’cause these pizzas are rectangular! More corners, more crunch!

The toppings are as much fun as the crust. House favourite Truff-Ghi is ooey gooey cheeses, garlic that’s been roasted long and slow for sweetness, onion marmalade, cremini mushrooms and smoky bacon.

And the fun just keeps on coming: The Good Old Days, with marinated roasted red peppers, house-made fennel sausage, red sauce, basil aïoli, parsley and grana padano.

Their terrific house-made ranch dressing appears with ricotta salata and a pile of toasted peanuts and grapes both red and green to turn salad into an event. A very fun event. Almost as much fun as their house desserts, which change weekly.

Pray for lemon thyme posset, a small Mason jar holding super-creamy lemon mousse topped with crumbled ginger snaps. The most indulgent possible ending to a carnival of carbs.

Descendant Detroit Style Pizza, 1168 Queen St. E., $60 Dinner for two

Best things to do in uptown Toronto for 2016

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3:01 pm

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Best for fitness
The buzzy Revolution MMA goes beyond MMA, with jiu-jitsu and more. 150 Lesmill Rd.
JOEL’S PICK: BEST FOR DOG WALKS
“SUNNYBROOK PARK is a great place to take my dog for hikes when I want to feel like I’m not in the city anymore.”
1132 Leslie St.

Best for yoga
Align all of your chakras at MOKSHA YOGA and emerge centred.
100 Sheppard Ave. E., Unit 100
DARCY’S PICK: BEST FOR THE ARTS
“TORONTO CENTRE FOR THE ARTS always has fantastic theatre. There’s always a great show to check out.”
5040 Yonge St.

Best climbing
TRUE NORTH CLIMBING has a cool 15,000 square feet of climbing terrain for newbies and pros alike.
75 Carl Hall Rd., Unit 14
WILL’S PICK: BEST FOR FLICKS
“My wife and I go to EMPRESS THEATRES a lot to watch movies — typically action because it’s more impressive on the big screen.”
5095 Yonge St.

BEST DOGGIE SPAW
For the dog obsessed (like us), PUFF N PURR SPAW is just the ticket for your pooch. Groomer Jasmine has a calming presence and pets adore her. Your baby will emerge a new, well, dog.
28 Finch Ave. W., Unit 108

BEST ESCAPE ROOM
Everyone and their aunt is obsessed with escape rooms — and for good reason. MYSTERY ROOM does it up with some rather intense escape zones, including a quest to kill the devil’s son.
1140 Sheppard Ave. W., Unit 18

BEST BOWLING ALLEY
Don your very finest threads from 1975 and hit up the NEWTONBROOK BOWLERAMA for some classic fun. Best deal is to go Sunday mornings, when each game is but a toonie.
5837 Yonge St.

BEST FOR THROWING AXES
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5100 Yonge St.

Shops of Summerhill sells for $42 million to group of three developers

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12:39 pm

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The Shops of Summerhill, a strip of independent retailers on Yonge Street affectionately dubbed the “Five Thieves” by locals, has been scooped up in a deal to three developers in Toronto.

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, Tricon Capital Group Inc. and Diamond Corp. have acquired the historic real estate for $85 million from Woodcliffe Landmark Properties. The landmark property was initially built in 1892 and designated as heritage in 2003. Woodcliffe oversaw a painstaking restoration of the strip prior to the sale, which was completed in 2009.

The joint venture is made up of two separate transactions. Diamond and Tricon acquired the site south of the LCBO for $43 million. The two companies are planning a mixed-use project with residential and retail.

RioCan and Tricon acquired the Shops of Summerhill, at the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Price Street for $42 million.

The real estate consists of about 31,000 square feet of fully occupied retail space and an adjoining one-acre parcel of land, which contains two four-storey office buildings and a parking lot.

“There is no intention to redevelop the shops on Yonge Street,” said Steve Diamond, president of Diamond Corp. “In terms of the remainder of the lands, we believe there is an opportunity to produce a plan that is far more complementary to the neighborhood than what currently exists. However, in moving forward, it is our intention to meet with community representatives and work collaboratively with them before putting pen to paper.”

Diamond said the group’s plan may include demolishing the building at 8–10 Price St., currently occupied by the Beer Store.

The redevelopment plan is currently in the works and has not yet been submitted to Toronto’s city planning department.

Ward 27 councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam has encouraged the companies to consult with local residents and local businesses before they finalize any plan to bring to the city.