There are few things I remember dreading more in life than participating in “breakfast and tell” while in kindergarten. After Suzy, in her OshKosh B’gosh overalls, finished sharing the details of drowning her Frosted Flakes in chocolate milk, it was my turn to stand up and tell the class that my mom made me some sort of soupy rice (congee) to go with an a.m. helping of wooly, dried, shredded pork (rousong), sardines in tomato sauce and pickled bok choy.
I told the truth about my breakfast spread once and only once, for reasons that anyone from a small — less than culturally diverse — town might be able to deduce. From the second day until my last in that class, the story was this: my eggs were white, not brown from a tea marinade; they came free of fetus (balut), with just ham and cheese (Whiz that is) sandwiches on the side.
Once an eight-year-old who threw her braised tongue sandwich in the school yard garbage bin, desperately attempting to air out the smell of star anise before entering the scent range of the taunting bologna and Wonderbread eaters, I can’t help but feel a tinge of resentment when I hear some tattooed foodie (their descriptor, not mine) boast about the “raddest sweetbreads” they had the night before. This is because, firstly, I’m usually not convinced that the person wouldn’t have joined the “soy sauce head” chants directed at me for the smells seeping out from my lunch bag, and secondly, I’m also persuaded to believe that they feel about their tattoos the way they felt about getting their first Chip and Pepper T-shirt, and hence doubt the earnestness of their love for nose-to-tail cuisine.
Being with Chef, I’ve noticed that there is nothing deemed to taste as exceptionally good amongst his pack as out-of-the-ordinary ethnic food, e.g. tongue tacos or chicken tail yakitori. This is particularly true of Asian foods. For chefs, there seems to be an unwritten rule that everything originating from Asia is cool. Maybe it’s the thin, light grace of a freshly sharpened Misono knife they can’t resist, or the exceptional omakase put out by Mitsuhiro Kaji that inspires their passion for yuzu and bowing over a good ol’ Western “thanks,” or perhaps it’s just the way “how about sundubu jjigae for lunch” rolls off the tongue. Whatever the root of the devotion, there is no doubt it exists.
For me, any meat wrapped in lettuce is delicious, especially meat cooked in duck fat, pan-seared and topped with kimchi and pickled daikon.
Chef displayed his own allegiance to Asia at his Boxed pop-up a few weeks ago, where humble Chinese dishes were re-imagined as modern fusion delicacies. South Pacific street vendors would be surprised to see a trio of chicken tails on a skewer, bedded upon a delicate helping of slow-cooked congee infused with the fragrant scent of dried scallops (conpoy) and finished off with a wedge of a traditional tea egg and a drizzle of the egg’s pu-erh marinade.
It’s no real surprise that Asian cuisine is the launch pad for his dinner themes as of late; we spent chunks of January and February in New York eating our way through a sizeable number of the city’s Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese joints. Favourites included Danji, a cozy Korean restaurant with welcoming staff and dishes that left Chef silent, chewing in blissful awe through dinner, and a late-night spot called Decibel, a place that’s both quintessentially New York and Japanese. With only an illuminated “on air” sign to indicate its presence, this is where people who don’t flock to the newest of the new, as indicated in Time Out New York, indulge in izakaya tapas like tako wasa and overflowing (literally, as part of a traditional gesture of graciousness) cups of sake.
The Asian tasting tour continued when we got back to Toronto, reaching a height in and around the moment Chef tasted the amuse bouche delivered to our table by the kitchen staff at Yours Truly, one of three sent out through the course of the night. An unexpected taste of compressed spinach, whipped buttermilk and rye crumble, the dish called Chef to attention with what he praised to be complex technique, read by the average diner as an inviting flavour of effortless simplicity.
Image: Riley Stewart
The rest of the dishes we ordered followed suit.
Ssam is becoming something of a staple these days, but for me, any meat wrapped in lettuce is delicious, especially meat cooked in duck fat, pan-seared and topped with kimchi and pickled daikon. The combo was like my hotdog growing up; a favourite at barbecues and large family functions where food came second to the reunion. And, like the perfect steaming hotdog on a spongy fresh bun, for me, Yours Truly’s pork ssam ($7 for three), rolled in a ssamjang (spicy onion and garlic sesame paste), smeared on a piece of bibb lettuce, was decidedly nostalgic: while chewing my final bite, I clearly remembered the last time I had tasted pork ssam. Near flawless in its preparation, according to Chef, the fat left under the meat’s crisp skin was expert in measurement, just enough to keep the meat moist without saturating it and sopping up the lettuce.
Open late (the kitchen closes at 1:30 a.m.), this dish alone has given new meaning to late-night food in the neighbourhood — even to the sober.
The inari tofu with sushi rice, toasted seaweed and salted cod ($6) came next. Not a fan of salted cod — which Chef relentlessly forces upon me, as he did that evening — I was immediately skeptical of the pungent ingredient’s place inside a mild-flavoured fried tofu pouch. Chef was eager when he ordered it and giddy when he tasted it with a dollop of spicy house-made mayo — the combination was his hotdog: the supreme savoury snack. While hating the word “fusion,” when used in culinary terms, Chef could think of no better description for the way the dish interwove chef Jeff Claudio’s unique palette and style with that of the neighbourhood’s Portuguese heritage. Once again, seemingly simple to average diners, Chef noted that each element in this course was a contemplative pop of seamless execution.
Talk of technique continued to gush upon the arrival of the trout, from the prix-fixe menu, with a brown-butter emulsion. I wasn’t about to let the droning on about preparation distract me from enjoying the delicate flake of this buttery crisped fish. As Chef studied the tender texture of the fish on his fork, trying to deduce how it was achieved (sous vide, he thinks, based on its precision, only just cooked through), then continued with a speech on the perfection of the brown butter emulsion’s sweet and savoury character, he missed me take the last bite. Chef declared it to be a humbling dish; for me, I can only say I wish its sort were less unusual, so I could eat more while a meditative Chef Sherlocks his way through the plate.
From lovely dainty fish we went to rich and hearty protein: duck breast — the meal’s finale. Cooked medium rare edge to edge (the handiwork of an immersion circulator again, suspects Chef), the soft bite of the meat was complemented by the texture contrast found in the duck’s crispy skin. A dish with more than a few garnishes — leek, carrots, onion, potato and curds — the parts never threatened to overshadow the whole. The protein is not at risk of becoming lost in the mix of flavours — a rarity, according to Chef, who says dishes boasting so many dressings often demonstrate insecurity by burying the star. This plate, on the other hand, is so much a whole, that one can imagine how the entirety of the dish might taste wrapped in a single leaf of lettuce.
Nothing is an afterthought when it comes to plates at Yours Truly. Theirs is a single, honest and consummate vision in the dimension of each flavour profile created from the amalgam of ingredients. Approachable to common folk in search of a modernist take on simple fare, while subtly laced with the sort of technique that seizes the attention of industry professionals, chef Jeff Claudio’s kitchen is a welcomed addition to Ossington’s post-Foxley hype.
Toronto-based writer Jennifer Lee is the editorial director of FILLER magazine, an online fashion and culture journal. She is also the co-editor of Hardly magazine, an arts-centric online teen publication for Canadian girls.
