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While we prepare a couple articles, here’s photos from a few holiday parties. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Media Profile at Burroughes
iYellow Wine Club Holiday Jam at Burroughes
House of Vintage Holiday Party
Click for more photos.
Vice XMess party at Parts & Labour
In case you didn’t notice our announcement last month, the Jack Astor’s restaurant chain is now featuring a “Winter Fling” fest, encouraging customers to stray from their usual beers and have a “fling” with craft beers. You can enjoy a selection of craft beers from now until January 19th at all Jack Astor’s locations. The list of beers available in Ontario locations include Mill Street Organic Lager, Tankhouse Ale, Muskoka Cream Ale, Flying Monkey Hoptical Illusion Pale Ale, Granville Island Lions Winter Ale.
While I always enjoy Flying Monkey Hoptical Illusion Pale Ale and one of my go-to beers is Mill St Tankhouse Ale, the only one I hadn’t tried until last night was the Granville Island Lions Winter Ale. It’s worth a try if you enjoy dark beers. It’s a premium malt with aromatic specialty hops and a smooth vanilla finish while some would describe it as having a chocolate or caramel taste to it.
For pairing with these fine craft beers, Jack Astor’s serves up Cluckin’ Chicken Dippers ($9.82). These tender chicken pieces are served with unique salts and sauces to sprinkle, dip, mix and match to create chicken dipper combinations you can call your own.
Cluckin’ Chicken Dippers served with unique salts and dipping sauces
Pairing my Cluckin’ Chicken Dippers with Granville Island Lions Winter Ale
The Winter Fling Festival menu also includes a creamy Asiago Shrimp & Smoked Mozza Ravioli ($16.74) and a hearty Holiday Brie Chicken dish served with Jack’s mashed potatoes and sweet onion gravy ($17.97). I really enjoyed the brie chicken with honey dijon sauce and generous amounts of pecans, almonds, and dried cranberries. Not to mention the two slices of brie melted on top of the chicken breast.
Holiday Brie Chicken dish with honey dijon, pecans, almonds and dried cranberries served with a side of Jack’s mashed potatoes and sweet onion gravy
For dessert, the rich and decadent Cherry On Top Chocolate Trifle is a divine steal at $3.97.
Cherry on Top Chocolate Trifle
I’m looking forward to visiting again soon and you should act fast as well before this Winter Fling craft beer fest ends January 19th!
I think this campaign is a good thing and I hope it sticks because the more awareness that’s spread of craft beers (or at the very least better beers in general), the less I will have to run into the unfortunate situations where “bars” only serve Coors Light and Molson Canadian… in bottles (aka a bad situation goes worse). So please let that never happen again. We’re not Americans who are known for drinking watered-down beer. So do me a favour and drink beer like a real Canadian, please!
For more info visit www.jackastors.com/craftbeer.aspx
Speaking of their craft beer offerings, Jack Astor’s on Front Street is having a “Mill Street Organic & Tankhouse Party” on Thursday, January 16th. RSVP to Vivian at vto@sircorp.com
Chefs Challenge 2014 is exactly one month away on February 8, 2014 at the Toronto Congress Centre! Back in October we announced the exciting news that Giada de Laurentiis was going to headline and now we have the rest of the celebrities involved this year. The last event was an epic and exciting culinary battle and this year will be even better!
Here are your Chefs Challenge team leaders:
They will be judged by the following
The top 50 fundraisers who raise a minimum of $2,500 will get to participate in this epic chef showdown for charity. So get out there and start donating to be part of the action! Visit www.chefschallengeforacure.com for more details. Hope to see you there!
Check out the video from the last Chefs Challenge in support of Mount Sinai Hospital Auxiliary.
Proceeds from Chefs Challenge support life-saving work in care and research in women’s cancers at Mount Sinai Hospital.
ABOUT MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL
Mount Sinai Hospital is an internationally-recognized 442-bed acute care academic health sciences centre affiliated with the University of Toronto that is dedicated to delivering the best medicine and patient experience. It is focused on excellence in patient and family-centered care, innovative education and leading-edge research. Clinical strengths include women’s and infants’ health, chronic disease management, specialized cancer, emergency medicine, and geriatrics. Mount Sinai’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute ranks in the top ten biomedical research institutes in the world. www.mountsinai.on.ca
RELATED ARTICLES Recap of Chefs Challenge 2012 with Guy Fieri
UPDATE: Click here to register for the first round of auditions this Saturday, February 1st.
Madonna is scheduled to appear for the official grand opening of her Hard Candy fitness club on February 11, 2014.
Not only is she going to make an appearance but she will also be leading her signature Addicted to Sweat cardio-based dance class with the Hard Candy Fitness Performance Team. In addition to being joined by a selected group of Toronto members, auditions will be held to send Hard Candy Fitness members from around the world to fly to Toronto. For Toronto members the auditions will take place on January 30th and February 1st with final cut auditions on February 10th.
“We are very excited to share news of Madonna’s visit to our club and proud to host Hard Candy Fitness members from around the world at the grand opening,” said Leonard Schlemm, co-owner of Hard Candy Fitness Toronto.
I worked out at Hard Candy when it opened back in October and it is indeed a luxury fitness facility with the latest equipment with rows and rows of state of the art cardio and strength training equipment. There are also over 60 group fitness classes to choose from including Madonna’s Addicted to Sweat cardio-based dance class.
Being the only Hard Candy Fitness club in Canada and the United States so far, it is located in the Aura building (Canada’s tallest condo tower) at College Park (382 Yonge St) on the 4th floor above Marshall’s.
Madonna’s motto is “No sweat, no candy!” You should definitely check it out!
For more information about the Toronto club, exclusive membership opportunities, and how to enter the auditions, call 416.979.1645, visit www.hardcandyfitnesstoronto.com, or email info@hardcandyfitnesstoronto.com.
A few quick facts about Hard Candy Fitness Toronto:
ABOUT HARD CANDY FITNESS
Hard Candy Fitness is a global luxury fitness brand with a distinctive footprint. Clubs are focused on innovative group fitness programming and personalized fitness training. The brand was created in 2010 by Madonna, the world’s leading female pop-icon and well-known fitness enthusiast, and New Evolution Ventures, the world’s leading expert in fitness club development and operations. Hard Candy Fitness currently has club locations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Santiago, Sydney, Mexico City, Rome, and Berlin. For more information, please visit www.hardcandyfitness.com.
Hard Candy Fitness in Toronto is a large 42,000 square feet with rows and rows of the latest equipment
Check out the quick tour by Alex Simpson of Channel 12 News
Located in trendy Queen West just a block west of Bathurst (right next to the Raq n’ Waq pool hall), Destingo Kitchen + Bar is a comfortable, cozy and casual Italian restaurant. The word “Destingo” is a playful abbreviation for “destined to go“. In the winter season, it’s a very intimate space and in warmer weather it’s sure to be a trendy hot spot having a large terrace equipped with patio umbrellas and outdoor heaters as needed. Large doors on either side of the entrance swing wide open, bringing the outdoors right inside. Relatively new, it opened in the fall of 2013, taking over the furniture store, Pavilion.
After visiting for a grand opening event and then also for a brunch, my third experience at Destingo was for dinner and it was quite a memorable one at that complete with attentive service and a great selection of wine by the glass (more about that later). Owner Monika Vacca is the former co-owner of Vaticano restaurant in Yorkville with former husband/executive chef Felice Vacca.
I heard a few good things about the prosciutto di buffala (proscuitto and buffalo mozzarella) but I didn’t get a chance to try it myself due to being busy with other amazing antipasti such as the grilled calamari and sautéed wild shrimp. You can’t go wrong with a lot of the dishes given the care and attention to detail into each and every serving. At the reasonable price points, the quality and value you get might just exceed your expectations. You can also choose to order the pasta dishes as gluten free, if you so desire.
All desserts are made in-house including their signature tiramisu and boy, that’s how you end a meal: great dessert and aromatic drip coffee.
While the food and service take centre stage, another interesting attraction is the enomatic wine system behind the bar. This is where bottles of wine are kept freshly sealed in a wine dispensing system so that you can try premium wines by the glass without having to pay for the whole bottle.
So, in staying true to authentic Italian fare while not being afraid to modernize with an enomatic wine system, you can really taste and appreciate all the effort that goes into the entire experience even down to the house-made desserts conveniently near all the action in Queen West. I’m looking forward to revisiting in the summer for patio season! Check out our photos below.
For breakfast options, they’re open 7 days a week starting at 7am including smoothies and other healthy options and free drip coffee or tea with every breakfast entree.
For brunch service, they’re conveniently open on Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 3pm. Check out this starter I had:
WINTERLICIOUS
Available for this season’s Winterlicious, check out their lunch and dinner prix fixe menu.
By the way, if you’re interested in enomatic wine systems, I’m told by a representative at Bevtech that the largest commercial enomatic wine system in the GTA is at the Touro Brazilian steakhouse. And even bigger ones are in Montreal. The only home version dubbed “Enoliving” that I saw featured at the Delicious Food Show is not available in Canada yet but hopefully soon!
Destingo is located at
741 Queen St. West
Toronto, Ontario
M6J 1G1
(647) 748-3113
For more info visit www.destingo.ca
Check out their video of the making of Destingo restaurant.
SEE ALSO
Touro Brazilian Steakhouse offers a premium dining experience worth repeat visits
Eclectic Chic: The Guild Restaurant
The taste of Pukka
The Tastes from What’s in the Table 2013 in support of The Stop CFC
The 6 course chocolate dinner with Eyal Lieberman
