Neapolitan-style pizza hits Kensington Market

1:20 pm

Romolo Salvati and Massimo Di Lascio, two chefs whose flour-dusted fingers lovingly sculpted some of Toronto's favourite pizza at Queen Margherita Pizza, have brought a little bit of Naples to Kensington Market with Pizzeria Via Mercanti, which has taken over the space formerly occupied by the Back Alley Woodfire BBQ and Grill.

Salvati and Di Lascio are old friends who share a Neapolitan provenance and a passion for some of the most essential Italian delights: pizza, fresh pasta and espresso. Via Mercanti, their first venture as chef-owners since emigrating from Italy, pays tribute to their original pizzeria nestled on Via dei Mercanti — the merchant's way — in coastal Salerno.

It's no fluke, then, that the new pizzeria ended up in Toronto's historic marketplace.

“I love the market,” says Salvati. “In Naples, all the best pizzerias are in the markets.”

Via Mercanti currently houses two wood-burning ovens — which Salvati hopes to replace with ovens from Naples in the near future — as well as a rotisserie (destined to yield golden, slow-cooked porchetta) and a glistening hulk of a pasta machine which, during our visit, had just churned out three tubs of fresh gigli noodles. A legendary Faema E61 espresso machine looks right at home atop the restaurant's concrete bar.

Evidence of characteristic Italian perfectionism isn't limited to the duo’s preference for top-notch machinery. Fundamental ingredients like flour and canned D.O.P. pomodoro San Marzano — yes, tomatoes that boast a terroir and the only fruit deemed suitable for real Neopolitan pizza sauce — are imported from Italy. In fitting with traditional Neapolitan rubric, pizzas are flash-baked for 60-90 seconds at around 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The menu is succinct and traditional. Pizza selection includes a classic Margherita ($10), the scarpariello ($14) topped with garlic, chilies, parmesan and black pepper, and the sauceless broccoli e salsiccia ($15), scattered with sautéed rapini, sausage and fior di latte.

Fresh pasta and bread are prepared daily, and a modest wine selection focuses on bold southern Italian reds with some Portuguese and Spanish bottles thrown in for good measure.

Via Mercanti's airy, wood-heavy interior is the ideal space in which to enjoy the rustic, gracefully executed fare.

“It's simple, like the old days, and with the best ingredients,” says Salvati. “It's the real stuff, nothing fancy.”

Via Mercanti is currently open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Sunday and plans to open seven days a week in the coming months.

Pizzeria Via Mercanti, 188 Augusta Ave., 647-343-6647

Trending in Theatre This Week: The Double, The Laramie Project, Hamlet Live, Closer, The Who's Tommy

12:49 pm

The Double

In this TheatreRUN production, two actors and a bassist collide in a schizophrenic world that combines physical theatre with live jazz bass. The multi-disciplinary production is dubbed a dark satire, but keep in mind it is adapted from the novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, so, you know, don’t expect jazz hands or anything.
Factory Theatre, Studio, 125 Bathurst Street, 416-504-9971. Feb. 3 – Feb. 19.

The Laramie Project

This powerful play, written by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, depicts the reaction to the 1998 murder of gay university student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming.
Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge Street, 1-855-985-2787. Jan. 26 – Feb. 5.

Hamlet Live

Using the pretty cool concept of mixing live-streaming with live theatre, Hamlet Live is a modern-spin on Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy. In this re-telling, Hamlet lives in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world, Terminator-style. You can watch the show in person or via your computer — just like they do in the future, of course.
Annex Theatre, 730 Bathurst Street, 416-924-2243. Jan. 26 – Feb. 11.

Closer

Patrick Marber’s Tony-nominated play has to be one of the most sexually explicit ever written in recent memory. It’s been regarded as a modern reworking of Noël Coward’s Private Lives – only dirtier. And if you’ve only seen the 2004 film adaptation, then you’re really missing out (Julia Roberts was a horrible choice for Anna).
Winchester Street Theatre, 80 Winchester Street, 647-808-4660. Feb. 2-4.

The Who’s Tommy

In light of pinball fast becoming Toronto’s hottest trend (don’t say I didn’t warn you), how fitting that we get to see a remount of the rock musical about a young, troubled boy who’s got a talent for pinball.
Hart House Theatre, 7 Hart House Circle, 416-978-8849. Feb. 2-11.

Balzac’s Coffee Roasters opening two new locations

9:47 am

In 2002, before high-quality espresso had made serious inroads into Toronto, Balzac’s Coffee Roasters opened in the Distillery District as one of the first artisanal coffee shops in the city. Four years later, a new location opened in Liberty Village, and now founder Diana Olsen is set to open two new ventures in Toronto.

Both cafés are set to open in April: one at Ryerson’s School of Image Arts and another at the Toronto Reference Library. Olsen says both locations will be around 2,000 square feet and seat around 50 people. In terms of ambience, the new places will offer the standard Balzac’s experience — which means, essentially, that Balzac himself would have approved — despite their more modern surroundings.

Why the sudden expansion? Olsen recently had a bit of success on Dragon’s Den, with Bruce Croxon and Arlene Dickinson having stepped on as partners.

As for concerns that Balzac’s could be heading the way of Starbucks, not to worry. The Balzac’s philosophy specifically repudiates the notion of having a location on every corner of every street.

These things are infallible, right?

La Palette gets back on the horse

12:56 pm

Last summer, we reported that Queen West’s La Palette had pulled horse from its menu after a Toronto Star article shed some light on the shadier aspects of the horse slaughter industry. Well, after months of deliberation, La Palette is bringing the controversial delicacy back.

In 2006, a US bill defunded the inspection of meat processing plants that slaughtered horses. Since meat that isn’t inspected can’t be sold, the horsemeat industry in the US effectively collapsed. The result was that American horses were sent north (and south) to be slaughtered, but, as the Star revealed, that was bad news for horse eaters.

Horses aren’t generally raised for human consumption, and Canada’s differing inspection standards, which weren’t equipped to deal with the influx of American stock, led to fears that consumers were being exposed to phenylbutazone (PBZ), an anti-inflammatory drug used in horses but banned for human use.

But a bill passed by the Obama administration last fall has opened up the possibility for inspections in the US again, and La Palette will be bringing back equine delights as of Feb. 2.

“In light of the information that came out over the summer, we took horse off of the menu; we played it safe to make sure our customers were taken care of,” says La Palette co-owner Shamez Amlani. “But we’ve spoken at length with officials here in Ontario who do the testing, and … we’ve spent the past six months doing as much research as we can. We’re very certain that we’ll be serving our customers high-quality meat.”

Amlani is confident that, with inspections taking place in the United States again, American horses will no longer be mixed in with Canadian horses. And as always, he remains steadfast in his decision to sell horsemeat.

“If you need to point the finger at someone — I mean, to all of the animal activists out there, just look at McDonalds.”

Now, for the connoisseurs: La Palette will be serving both light horsemeat, which is firmer (Amlani calls it “Italian style”) and darker meat, which is softer, based on availability. They’ll be letting their customers know what they have in stock on a day-to-day basis.

Toronto Fashion Week gets a brand new name (one that still sucks)

11:30 am

Last week, a smattering of Hogtown’s most fashionable trotted out to overhear the Fashion Design Council of Canada’s latest announcement: fashion week has a brand spankin’ new moniker. While the city’s biggest fashion event is unsurprisingly known as Toronto Fashion Week, it has now been re-branded to World Mastercard Fashion Week, or, ahem, FSHN WK, to use the logo’s spelling.

Seeing as few (if any) actually cared to use the week’s previous official name, LG Fashion Week, we highly doubt we’ll be lip-reading the new one on front row pouts — though we remain excited for the collections themselves.

Theatre Review: Penny Plain

11:10 am

For those of you who have seen any of the wildly daring, stunningly delicate, profoundly memorable shows written, performed, “acted” and presented by Western Canadian-born-and-raised Ronnie Burkett, who creates, designs and brings to life the most astonishing puppets you have ever seen, he is back with a new show, Penny Plain. I treasure his regular appearances in Toronto, his chosen city for over a decade now. His productions are very adult in design, language and theme, quickly driving any Punch and Judy or Muppets memories out of your head.

When I met this extraordinary talent many years ago, interviewing him for Post City Magazines, I was overwhelmed by his brilliance, his talent, his seriousness and his comic genius. Perhaps it is too much to ask that such an artist should be as gifted in his script writing as he is in his puppetry. But his themes are certainly noteworthy and challenging, and no one can deny that he is always eager to ask the big questions about life (and sometimes answer them).

Penny Plain is his latest work, and it is not his best, even though his themes — the apocalypse, an entire world filled with riots and bloodshed — are often (although not always) as serious and as meaningful as Samuel Beckett’s.

The title character is an elderly blind woman who, as the play begins, listens to radio and TV with her beloved dog Geoffrey. Loud, cacophonous music blares as we hear different voices off-stage announce calamity after calamity: “panic continues;” “the virus has claimed millions of lives in China alone ” and “Iceland has sunk beneath the waves.” (Some theatre-goers will be most upset to hear about the three million kangaroos attacking men, women and children across Australia.)

This is a fine way to begin a play, and my wife and I were quickly caught up with Burkett's three dozen-plus awesome puppets as he yanked and pulled their strings from high above on his multi-leveled stage; the movements of most of them so delicate that one gets the feeling that each puppet could perform intricate, microscopic surgery if put to the task.

You have not lived until you've seen an elderly puppet push her tiny walker across the stage, or the faces — some of which are reminiscent of Picasso in his blue period — that this genius has molded and sculpted. Burkett is truly that good.

The brilliant puppeteer, admired and even worshipped around the world for his skills, also gives us a giant dog eager to leave the confines of the rooming house run by his blind mistress; a murderous editor who loves to dig red pencils into the bodies of enemies (a great, if nasty jab at cruel critics like myself) and then the rather vulgar female puppet from a right-wing, sex-obsessed, religiously-fanatical American couple, who is so incredibly buxom that if she caught a chest cold, she would die.

Burkett is capable of images and one-liners that can tear at your heart, such as when a childless female puppet confronts Geppetto — yes, he of Pinocchio fame — and begs him, “make me a puppet baby,” or when a character cries out in the final moments of this 90-minute, no intermission evening that “apple-filled Eden became a Hell.” And the last sentence — “Nature is changing!” — delivered by the dog of the ancient Penny Plain, is actually horrific, if I were willing to spoil the power of the context of those words.

Am I glad I saw Burkett's latest, masterful puppet production? Yes. Am I still in awe of his dozens of voices and puppets? How can I not be? Do I wish that he could write scripts and create characters as well as he can create puppet shows? That might be too much to ask for in this flawed, dying world.

Penny Plain, Factory Theatre, 416-504-4473. Runs until Feb. 26.

The Cupcake Girls are taking over a streetcar tomorrow to give away free cupcakes (did we mention free cupcakes?)

2:44 pm

For the few who don’t tune in to W Network (i.e. straight dudes), Heather White and Lori Joyce are Gemini-award-winning, Dragon’s-Den-triumphing, Canadian reality TV royalty right now. Their “docu-soap,” The Cupcake Girls, is the story of how the best friends build their B.C. cupcake franchise, Cupcakes by Heather and Lori. Put simply, the show rocks. But how good are the cupcakes? Torontonians will soon find out, because the girls are taking over a streetcar this Saturday. Starting at 5 p.m., the pair will give out cupcakes to unsuspecting TTCers in a totally unique pop-up.

What we know is this: the outside of the streetcar will look normal, and will stop at normal stops. But there is no set route. The plan is to drive anywhere the tracks will take them and take on unsuspecting TTC riders at each stop.

The inside of the car is a different story. It will be decorated to look like a Cupcakes by Heather and Lori shop, with a TV crew, organized Toronto fans, Heather and Lori and of course, cupcakes, inside.

“We wanted something different, especially having competition in the city,” Joyce says. “We’re going to have our classics, and a special cake that will tie in with Toronto.”

Classics include the Blue Hawaii, which is coconut cake with blue butter cream and sprinkled with coconut, and the Sweet 16, a vanilla cake with pink vanilla butter cream topped with pastel sprinkles.

The Toronto-themed cake, White and Joyce later admit to us, is shaped like the CN Tower.

Not surprisingly, Joyce and White want to bring one of their cupcake stores to Toronto. It’s the plotline for the season finale they’re taping right now.

“Finding the right location and the right franchisee is hard,” White says.

Which ties-in to the mysterious location where we met White and Joyce, who were on break from taping the episode. We’d like to reveal where it was, but we’re sworn to secrecy (hint: it was the last place we’d expect to find them, and it definitely won’t be where Toronto shop turns up).

But, have patience. Season three begins this spring.

The Cupcake Girls Streetcar Pop-up, Jan. 28

Coming Soon: Lil’ Baci Taverna, a new outpost of a popular east-end restaurant

12:57 pm

Toronto’s midtown received some healthy culinary injections in the last year with the likes of Cuisine of India, an institution that relocated from North York, and the critically acclaimed Falasca SPQR. Now, Leslieville’s popular Lil’ Baci has chosen the neighbourhood for its second outpost.

When Mark Bacci and his team opened the first Lil’ Baci in 2007, there were a couple of setbacks. Size and budget concerns meant that the cozy Italian haunt would never have a proper kitchen aside from a pizza oven and two induction burners. But Bacci’s ambitions are sky-high for Lil’ Baci Taverna, which is set to open up near Yonge and Davisville this spring.

“This is going to be the place that we’ve always wanted to do,” he says.

That means a restaurant where everything is made in-house, including bread; where whole animals are butchered on site and where the expansive Italian menu will feature 35-plus items of sharing plates.

Bacci and his executive chef, Larry Santos (who recently stepped on as a partner) have been hard at work on the menu, which is divided into around 10 sections: pickled, cured, formaggio, insalata, crostino, pasta and polenta, meat and poultry, pizza and the like. The idea is to create a custom-built, mix-and-match experience.

One could pair an order of pan-roasted chicken breast, say, with a manageable portion of pappardelle pasta complete with rabbit ragu, savoy cabbage and mascarpone cheese. Not enough? Add a plate of slow-cooked white beans with a poached duck egg and bottarga. Most items will cost between $6-$12.

Come October, owners are planning to convert the upstairs space into a crudo bar, featuring a selection of local, sustainable seafood. Bacci says other projects are on the horizon, too: an Italian sandwich shop and specialty store for 2013, and then the mother lode, a “working man’s steak house” for 2014.

In the meantime, Lil’ Baci Taverna is gunning for an April opening.

Lil’ Baci Taverna, 2013 Yonge St.

Nine highlights from Interior Design Show 2012

10:42 am

We had a chance to check out the Interior Design Show and were overwhelmed by the creativity and innovation we encountered. Housed in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the mammoth space was host to seemingly endless presentations, ranging from Contact Voyaging Co. canoe paddles to Tahir Mahmood’s candle holder/dinner bell to complete installations from Miehe (which included a glassed-in room, an acted-out scene and, oh, popcorn for those watching). Below, a few of our favourites from the show.

Mason Studio

Now Magazine’s cover kids — Stanley Sun and Ashley Rumsey — of Toronto-based Mason Studio morphed half of a shipping container into a room that questions the way a space can be lived in. The installation (pictured above) was built around a trough-slash-table that featured various vignettes, but also acted as a route for water to traverse, running from a faucet into a garden.

RAW

The entrance installation from this architecture firm featured a felt strip curtain of sorts suspended from the ceiling. Digital images were projected onto the piece, drawing viewers into the main exhibition space.

Designer chairs

Each year, various designers whip up a chair to be auctioned off to raise money for the show's Cherish fundraiser. This year’s designers included Donna Karan, Debbie Travis and David Dixon. We enjoyed Bruce Mau’s diorama of the great outdoors, complete with waterfalls, a tiny cabin and some deer.

Piero Lissoni

Lissoni was the show’s international guest of honour, and he has worked with countless well-known brands such as Kartell, Alessi, and Cassina. Currently working on a number of projects, including a design hotel in Amsterdam, much of Lissoni’s exhibition space was done using a palette of creams, taupes and off-whites. We loved how he transformed a bookshelf into an object of quiet beauty by showcasing the pages of books, rather than their spines.

Uufie

The fan-like chairs from up-and-comers Eiri Ota and Irene Gardpoit Chan were absolutely stunning, appearing to have been plucked from some fanciful land. We loved the pale mint one, envisioning it as a subtle highlight of colour in an all-white room.

Palette Industries

These candy-coloured vases mimicking the shape of a pylon were a playful take on the construction zone staple and would be an amusing addition to any dinner table.

Brent Comber

Built from wood, Comber’s spheres spilled light from within, showcasing the energy of the wood and simultaneously managing to look both calm and chaotic.

Sinclaire

We were charmed by Leslie Sinclaire’s take on the tiffin lunch kit. Using thin-walled ceramics for the bowls and cork for the lid, the design student (at Emily Carr University) has created a lunch box that is both practical and stylish.

Earth Inc.

Hidden in a semi-enclosed cube, this installation from the landscape design company brought the outdoors in. The clean yet inviting space exemplified the company’s work, featuring moss-covered walls, simple benches and was dotted with trees.

New burger joint confirms what we already knew: hamburgers are the opiate of Toronto’s masses

1:50 pm

Ask Ronen Shnaider why he got into burgers, and the answer is simple, if a little unexpected: “I got religious.” Burgers, apparently, are ideal fare for a strictly kosher restaurant. With that notion in mind, Shnaider opened Burgy’s Goldburger Burger Bar in Thornhill a few months ago.

In Toronto, burgers are becoming the new opiate of the masses. Consider The Burger’s Priest, opened by a zealous former seminary school student, or Holy Chuck Burgers, which also toys with the theme of reverence (or rather, irreverence). Add the far-from-secular Burgy’s to the mix, and it becomes clear: something about a good burger makes people think about the bigger picture.

Shnaider says he wasn’t trying to jump on any bandwagon. He just wants to serve a good kosher burger. Actually, he’s taken things a step further: he uses beef that is glatt kosher, which has an extra set of restrictions. After a cow is slaughtered according to kosher standards, its lungs are inspected. Only if the lungs are perfectly smooth will the meat be deemed glatt kosher.

“If the lungs are smooth, you know that cow has never sneezed,” Shnaider quips. “It’s the cleanest, best meat you can get.”

Only five to eight out of every 100 cows pass the test, he adds.

Shnaider grinds that meat himself — for quality control — using only the best chuck. Six-ounce patties are formed by hand and cooked on a flat top grill. They are also smashed, like the patties at The Burger’s Priest and The Stockyards.

Adhering to kosher standards isn’t always easy. Supervisors from COR, the largest kosher certification agency in Canada, go through Burgy’s fridges on a regular basis to ensure compliance. They even go through receipts. In practical terms, that means don’t ask for a cheeseburger. Or worse yet, bacon.

The menu stalwart is a simple Goldburger ($6.99): one patty, with toppings, inside a challah bun that’s custom made by My Zaidy’s Bakery. Most toppings are free, including the 16 house-made sauces like spicy mayonnaise or chimichurri. Add fries and a drink for $3.

In addition to burgers, the menu offers a schnitzel sandwich, made with free-range chicken, or a steak sandwich, featuring a six-ounce AAA rib eye steak ($9.99).

If the lack of bacon becomes too much to bear, Shnaider has a suggestion: fried salami (add it to any burger for $2, or go for the zalmy salami burger, $7.99).

Burgy’s Goldburger Burger Bar, 7000 Bathurst St., 905-597-3444

Grab of the Week: a delectable tote bag from local designer Avril Loreti

9:16 am

The donut: once a beloved friend during childhood, it is now considered to be the arch nemesis of an adult diet. That’s not to say that we don’t look back on those days together fondly. We decided to rekindle the relationship when we came across this delectable tote bag by local designer Avril Loreti.

We must say, the sprinkled donut has never looked better, and even if we give into its temptation, there can’t be that many calories in a cotton bag.

$25. Available at Shopgirls, 1342 Queen St. W., 416-534-7467

Grace Carroll is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in ELLE UK, ELLEcanada.com, Plaid magazine and FILLER magazine. Keep up with her daily blog at www.graciecarroll.com.

Theatre Review: Avenue Q

6:53 am

Are you a recent college grad? Unemployed? Single? Or perhaps you’re still looking for your purpose in life? Then you belong on Avenue Q. There you’ll find confused-yet-hopeful fleshy and furry characters spontaneously bursting into song about their dreams, concerns and, uh, porn. But unfortunately, Avenue Q isn’t a real place. It’s actually a Tony Award-winning musical that opened at the Lower Ossington Theatre last week.

I was lucky enough to catch the new Toronto run, but I first saw Avenue Q in 2006 when it was still on Broadway. Fresh out of university with a Dramatic Literature degree and living in New York City, I too had been struggling to find my purpose in life. I went to the musical with my mom, who was visiting me at the time. Throughout the show, she’d poke at me and say: “See? That’s you. That’s you!” You know you’re watching a special kind of show when you can seamlessly relate your life to a group of misfit puppets.

Princeton, a recent college grad that happens to be a puppet (not that there’s anything wrong with that), moves into a shabby apartment on Avenue Q, a grownup version of Sesame Street where people, puppets, monsters and even Gary Coleman live together in harmony. The ‘hood’s eccentric inhabitants are all looking for something more — a job, a date, a little self-respect — and Princeton is no exception. Wondering “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” when he first arrives on the block, Princeton soon realizes that he has yet to find his purpose in life. In a voice shining with the hope that only living in the post-secondary school bubble can bring, he sings: “Something’s coming, something good.”

For a while, Princeton’s “something” turns out to be an on-and-off romance with his neighbour, Kate Monster. He is, after all, just a young puppet filled with raging puppet hormones. In fact, the inhabitants of Avenue Q are a horny bunch in general, with Lucy the Slut, the local lounge singer, trying to make everyone feel “Special,” and Trekkie Monster reminding us that “The Internet is For Porn.” With such riotous and raunchy songs, we’re definitely not on Sesame Street anymore — and just in case you weren’t sure, the hilarious puppet-on-monster sex scene definitely seals it.

The main appeal of Avenue Q lies in its quirky I-can’t-believe-they-just-said-that lyrics. From “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” to “Schadenfreude,” the songs are funny because, well, let’s admit it: they’re true. The vocal performances (except for some minor technical issues) were nearly perfect, and much deserved props must be given to Adam Proulx (Princeton/Rod) and Kira Hall (Kate Monster/Lucy), who each voiced not one but two puppets for the entire show without skipping a beat.

It can be hard to ignore the talented puppeteers on stage, but they conveyed so much genuine emotion that I didn’t mind if my eyes jumped from puppet to person. I did find it a bit distracting when puppeteers switched puppets mid-scene (i.e. when both of Proulx’s and Hall’s characters were onstage), but Seanna Kennedy’s smooth direction made the transitions almost flawless.

There are also three puppet-free performers — the human characters, that is — who more than hold their own against their furry counterparts: Mark Willett is a perfect fit as an out-of-work stand-up comedian; Amelia Hironaka, as his fiancée Christmas Eve, steals every scene she’s in (and doubles as the production’s choreographer); and Jazz Testolini’s Gary Coleman is a feisty interpretation of the Diff’rent Strokes star. (You’ll have to suspend your disbelief, since Coleman has passed away in real life — though given that you’ll be watching a bunch of puppets get drunk and have sex, realism probably won’t be the first thing on your mind.)

It’s the conclusion of the play that’s most reminiscent of Sesame Street: a happy ending of sorts, reminding us all that whatever you’re struggling with, no matter where you are in life, it’s only just “For Now.” It’s the kind of pick-me-up song you wish could last forever, and I felt the same way about this production of Avenue Q.

Avenue Q, Lower Ossington Theatre,100A Ossington Ave., 416-915-6747. Runs Jan. 18 – Feb. 5.

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