Our resident taste test chef Mark McEwan shares his all time favourite sweet and savoury treats in Toronto. A) Best Pizza Maker Pizza, 1537 Avenue Rd., 59 Cameron St. B) Best Pancakes Fuwa Fuwa, 2471 Yonge St., 408 Bloor St. W. C) Best Spring Rolls Lime Asian Kitchen, 3243 Yonge St. D) Best Artisanal Burgers
As many of us find ourselves cooking at home instead of dining out, we’re sharing recipes from some of Toronto’s top chefs and restaurants. A staple in Italian cuisine is a classic tomato sauce. A truly simple and delicious sauce takes patience and good ingredients. It’s difficult to get really flavourful tomatoes outside the Mediterranean;
It’s been a fun year partnering up with celeb chef Mark McEwan to taste test the city’s best items from bakeries, restaurants and more. But there were three tastings that stood out this year.
It’s harvest time in Ontario, so we asked chef Mark McEwan to sample the city’s best known purveyors of Mexican street corn — or elotes. Whose kernels rule supreme? Read on to find out.
When it comes to this summer backyard favourite, McEwan says the selection is key — you want a variety of meats, a terrine or pâté en croûte, one cheese for contrast, the perfect bread and a fruit component.
Mark McEwan opted to sell a big percentage of his company, including One, North 44, Bymark, Fabbrica and his grocery stores to Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial.
For me one of the main things that makes the advent of fall easier to take — even after a lousy summer like this one — is starting to think about fall foods and the end of year harvest. Right now for me it’s about whiter meats like poultry — and nothing quite so much as rabbit. It’s such a great, underappreciated meat. Tasty, but lean, and when you braise it right, exceptionally tender.
McEwan Fine Foods has been a huge project and it will always continue to be. As you might suspect it’s not laundry detergent or cat litter brands that get me excited — it’s our food offerings, and above all else our prepared foods. This is the product category in which I always thought Torontonians were badly underserviced.
Surprisingly, it looks like gelato season has been extended until late September this year. So, with high temperatures forecasted to reach solidly into the 30s attendees at Mark McEwan’s farmers’ market this weekend will be happy to find that Death in Venice is one of the featured vendors.
Being of the superficial persuasion, I was quick to cast premature judgment on Markham’s new Spanish restaurant, Tapagria. Here is a place with a bad name, I thought; a place that is lamely tagging along with Toronto’s Spanish food trend. Here is a place that has put a lot of effort into appearing downtown-esque, with its wood, exposed brick and Edison bulbs; a place, I thought, that would probably be a style-over-substance affair.
“Most anticipated opening” is a dangerously overused phrase in restaurant coverage, so let’s say that what will probably be the only tasting-menu restaurant (Alo) to open in 2015 started taking reservations this week. Celebrity chef Mark McEwan also threw open the figurative shutters on his new downtown grocery store.
The past week in restaurants brought news that second locations for Caren’s Wine Bar, Diana’s Seafood and McEwan Foods are either open or getting close to it.
NEW FORK IN TOWN: POST CITY COLUMNIST CHRISTINE CUSHING MAKES THE MOVE FROM CHEF TO CRITIC
Celebrity Chef Mark McEwan has created a beautiful modern Italian space with Fabbrica, complete with huge, leather-appointed booth seating and rooms done in dark and light woods with gun metal blue appointments. The pizza isn’t as thin as Queen Margherita or Libretto and, at first, it makes you wonder because it doesn’t defy gravity the way pizza aficionados in Toronto are used to.
In his latest blog for PostCity.com, we asked celebrity chef Mark McEwan to dish the details on his new casual Italian restaurant, Fabbrica, set to open next month at the Shops at Don Mills.
The busiest man in the Canuck restaurant game is at it again, with the announcement that Mark McEwan has signed on as head judge for the Canadian rendition of food reality TV show Top Chef, which will air on the Food Network.
