September 11th, 2011 by Dawn Becker

September is always a busy time for me with the start of conference season and the boys back to school. While most other parents are ecstatic about the return of school, I find the regimen of the school hours, making lunches and homework duties a hard adjustment for all of us. Add to this that Cole’s birthday is on September 5th and the guilt I have in knowing I can never pull it together to organize a birthday party with his friends until October can be overwhelming. The cobbler’s kids have no shoes and the event planner’s kid has belated birthday parties.

Along with having a busy schedule, my writing outlet also suffers and I’ve been finding it harder and harder to take precious moments to post here. Having read a number of blogs, it seems that most non-professional bloggers have ebbs and flows in their writing as I’m experiencing and this is normal. I still enjoy writing even though my posts are more intermittent as this is a valuable outlet.

Trust me also that my food experiences have not been reduced. In fact, we just got back from a road trip to Cleveland, Ohio, where our sole purpose was to dine at Iron Chef Michael Symon’s restaurant, Lola Bistro. We did tack on a couple of fun days at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio, which got me in the good books with the kids. And they were looking forward to our dinner at Lola Bistro as much as I was. The service at Lola Bistro was sincere and friendly. We all walked away feeling like we were kings. We ordered nearly every appetizer on the menu and split two entrees between the three of us. I would describe the food but I wonder if I can do it any justice to write about perfection. Let me just say that Cleveland is worth a visit, if only just to eat at Lola Bistro or anyone of Chef Symon’s other restaurants in the area. Plus it’s a 5 hour drive from Toronto, closer than Montreal.

Ah Montreal, another destination I enjoyed with Casey this summer. We booked last minute reservations at Chef Martin Picard’s restaurant, Au Pied de Cochon (or PDC as the insiders tell me) and got an 11PM seating. Their last of the night. Hopped into the car and drove like madness. It was a sumptuous meal and we left bloated and giddy. This is another place I would happily drive to for dinner. And I must mention that the special we had of veal bone marrow topped with sevruga caviar was mind blowing.

Today I did enjoy a few minutes of down time which I used to get into the articles in a new magazine, Lucky Peach, brain child of David Chang, chef of the famous Momofuku restaurants in New York, with two exciting new locations planned for Toronto in 2012.

This inaugural issues focuses on ramen, one of my favourite food subjects, and sadly it just rubs it in how little physical research one can do in Toronto with the severe lack of ramen restaurants that truly honour this dish. I won’t even go into how mediocre the ramen places are here having broken my ramen cherry in Tokyo so many years ago. It’s like your first taste of meat was kobe steak and then only being able to get top sirloin after that. No comparison.

Back to the topic at hand, Lucky Peach. I recommend this magazine as a must read for anyone who loves to delve into a topic. Not simple visual porn, this is more like erotica for foodies. Lucky Peach feels like an art house magazine that will surely be a keeper. Make room on your shelf because you’ll want to save this one to read again and again, or just to say you have if you’re more about collecting trophies than actually digesting the articles.

June 12th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

Before I went on my trip to Orlando, my only references to Florida were few. In one of my past jobs I used to be the Sales Promotions Manager at Tupperware Canada. Seems like a strange place to work but for a foodie and an avid home cook, it was pretty decent. It was also my first foray into the corporate side of marketing versus the agency where I came from. And the first time I was exposed to a real show stopping style of sales conference with on-stage skits for new product demos, screaming award winners running up to the stage under a follow spot and cameras shedding tears on the big screen, and herds of sales people doing line dances and sing-a-longs. Tupperware is a strange world but it works for them.

Coming from a fairly traditional Chinese family of non-touchers, it was a new experience being in this world of “huggers”, back then mostly decked out in sequins and polyester pant suits and perfectly French manicured white-tipped nails or glossy cherry red talons. I will admit I am now a fully converted hugger. It just feels good. But you can forget about the nails. These are working girl hands, made for chopping, dicing, slicing and typing.

The worldwide head office of Tupperware happens to be in Orlando, where my friend Daniel is from. It was on my wish list to do a drive-by viewing of the Tupperware fountain but it wasn’t in the cards on this trip what with the emergency hospital visit, tour of Disney World Resort, driving through half the state up to the border of Georgia and getting lost in a $100 USD taxi in Jacksonville. Scariest moment of my life which I’ll save to write about another time.

My other reference to Florida is from my former sister-in-law, Dana, who resided there. She was an extravagant person, lively, loud and what I thought was classically American. She also happened to be very funny though I think without knowing so. She used to travel the world with my ex brother-in-law as he was a huge car enthusiast, visiting the Porsche Zuffenhausen plant in Germany and one time to France, possibly to see Le Mans but I’m not sure of that. Upon returning from a whirl wind trip through Europe, the first thing she said about their vacation wasn’t how wonderful the scenery was, nor how interesting the people were, nor how fascinating the history was, nor how delicious the food tasted. Her first statement was this. “You know, you just can’t find a decent hamburger in France.” I still laugh when I think about how serious she was when she said that.

In that moment that statement established firmly in my mind what people from Florida were like. Although I don’t think that much differently now that I’ve actually been through half of the state, I do know that it’s hard to find a decent meal in Florida. Even the multi-starred Azurea Restaurant in the tourist trap called One Ocean Resort (entrance pictured above) in Jacksonville, failed to impress me. The service was mediocre, the food was over-sauced and the desserts were cloying. Below, a badly lit shot of the lobster and mushroom risotto I shared with Daniel. You can see two weird strips of melted cheese and the claw that looks like it was dumped on the top of the gummy risotto like an after thought. But of course, the company saved the day and it was there that we had laughs amongst friends that I will never forget. 

In Daytona, we went to a quaint place called Our Deck Down Under. It’s one of those places that you feel is a find because it’s tucked away under the Port Orange Bridge. The atmosphere is slightly rowdy and it has a shack-by-the-sea look to it. Unfortunately, the food didn’t live up to the ambience. The raw oysters on the half-shell were sickly – bad Florida oyster experience number two (you think I would learn) – the crab legs on the steamed platter tasted bland and now that I think of it were probably previously frozen (go figure “snow” crab prefer cold waters like those off Newfoundland so I’d be more likely to get tastier crab legs here in the T-dot). The spice on the shrimp, while pleasantly zingy, wasn’t marinated long enough to impart any flavours to the shrimp meat. The servers did remove the charge for the raw oysters since we only ate one. They were a really wacky bunch, gracious and perfect for this watering hole.

We also went to another kitschy spot called Joe’s Crab Shack. Yes, it seemed a touristy kind of place where they make the servers dance and sing in a line. What’s up with everyone dancing in a line in the south? The food had a lot of potential and from what I remember it was a worthy spot. Sadly, it was also a night of debauchery where our adult friends (Larry and Nicole) left the three child-like friends (that would include Daniel, Ronald and myself) alone with a six-pack of Corona’s and a full bottle of tequila. ‘Nuff said.  It looks like we ordered the Bean Town Bake on the menu which is a steam pot with 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, 6 shrimp, sausage, corn and potatoes. I’m very sad now looking back at the menu online to see that they also served crawfish which was high up on my must eat in Florida list. Very sad. Needless to say I didn’t get to eat any crawfish, also known as crayfish, mud bugs or craw dads.

And despite my memory of throwing a Krystal’s burger at Daniel at the end of the night, my regrets are few. I suppose it’s all about the story at the end. And here is not the place to tell it all. But stay tuned. There’s more to come on my trip to Florida.

May 30th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

Living in Toronto for the last 25 years I’ve never made the Snowbird’s trip down to Florida. Florida is a popular haven for Canadians, especially those in Toronto who suffer from the harsh winter months and depressing lack of vitamin D, needing to regenerate and rejuvenate. But I’m allergic (not literally) to bland, generic food, buffets of any sort, watered down drinks and large flying insects like Palmetto bugs. I had much reason not to be interested in Florida.

Florida happens to be the home state of my friend and colleague, Daniel Chimento. He was born and raised in Orlando, the home of the mouse, that being Mickey and Disney World. My version of how Daniel got me to book is shortened as this:

Daniel: “We should go to Florida together. It would be fun.”

Me: Sipping on my third glass of straight Grey Goose on the rocks. “Sure.”

Daniel, a few minutes later: “Can I have your credit card?”

Me: “Sure. Can I have another drink?”

Daniel: “Sure.”

Next day, I check my email and see BMO has sent me a message saying that I’ve activated my online security code. I called them rather indignant and insisted that I did not do any such thing. “Perhaps, ma’am you booked a trip on-line?”. Hmm?

And that’s how I ended up here in Florida, and in Orlando of all places. To me, as an entrepreneur, vacations are like having children. There’s never a good time so you just have to do it. Everyone deserves to recharge their batteries. Unfortunately for me, Daniel (pictured below) booked us two weeks out from my next event, the PROFIT 100 CEO Summit, so this has become a working vacation. Fine. With wifi access in most places plus my trusty BlackBerry, I’m all set to stay connected on the beach. My main concerns right now are whether I’ll get too much sand in my netbook and will my cabana boy remember to refill my margarita glass?

There is an upside to visiting a place where your friend knows the local scene and still has friends and family there. You get to meet a lot of people, like my new friend Ronald pictured below! Plus you can stay with family gratis, saving valuable hotel dollars.

After three ridiculous days working from morning till midnight prior to leaving, making sure that I’ve got all of my clients covered, Daniel and I get a ride to the airport from our friend, Jay Deakin. Jay (pictured below) is one of the most down to earth, relaxed, easy going, gracious and charming Brits you’ll ever meet… except when he’s driving and then he turns into a rage-infused homicidal manic. When he’s pumping gas, he’s annoyed. When he’s changing lanes, he’s annoyed. When he’s passing cars, he’s annoyed. When he’s tailgating, he’s annoyed. I’m sure you get the picture. And by no means does this mean that I am not grateful for the ride. But I am even happier that Jay lives another day to drive again.

We arrive in Orlando an hour late, tired, and slightly tipsy from Bloody Caesers, knowing that we won’t be putting our lips to Clamato juice as easily in the U.S. Clamato is the main ingredient in a Caesar, a Canadian anomaly, versus the popular Bloody Mary’s that you’ll find throughout the States. Their loss.End up eating at some chain place, the Ale House, by the airport. First mistake? Ordering oysters. When asked what kind of oysters they have, the server says, “Raw or steamed”. I meant what variety, what kind of oysters are they? “No variety just raw or steamed.” I ate one and immediately felt queasy. I have a delicate stomach. Delicate when it comes to crap. We had $3.50 pints that tasted like watered down pee. Snow crab legs, clam chowder, and prime rib down the hatch. Our total bill $50 plus tip.

Later, on our journey to Jen’s house, Daniel’s unrelated sister of sorts, which will be the first stop for accommodations he’s set up, I have to ask Daniel to pull over. I have the pleasure of advising you that I left my mark or rather the oyster’s mark on a side road in Florida.

Oh, but the revelry doesn’t stop there. We finally arrive at Jen’s house a little after 1AM. After greetings, Steve, her husband shows us the guest room. Daniel showers. I lie down and start coughing. I instantly know where this is going. Those cute little dogs and that cat hiding under the chair are getting to me. I haven’t been around animals in ages, unless you count Daniel, but I’m not allergic to him. I start to wheeze and tell Daniel I’m going to sleep in the car. Orlando is humid my friends. And it’s humid in the car, normally my respite when the indoors, like mouldy cottages, get bad. I’m short enough to find comfort sleeping in the front seat but not today. I am wheezing like a banshee and I text message Daniel that we have to go to emerg. He just took a sleeping pill but we take the risk and drive 15 minutes down to the Saint Cloud hospital.

Did you know there is no medical coverage in the US? And thinking that I’m healthy and we’ll be staying with family doing nothing riskier than beach hopping I decline the $40 medical coverage. One asthma treatment and $220 later – I consider that a small price to pay to breathe – and a prescription for a week’s worth of prednisone, a heavy duty steroid that allows me to not die the rest of this week, I walk out of the ER around 6AM. We can’t go back to the cat house. Which the nurse advised me means a brothel or house of sin in Florida. But I’m not allergic to whores either so that would actually have been better for me.

And worse, Daniel, the fab event planner that he is, has our schedule jam packed including getting free passes to Disney World the next day to hang out with his mom, Wanda and twin brother, David. We need to be at Wanda’s house by 8:45AM to meet the free pass guy. And if you’ve ever been to Disney World, you’ll realize that an all park pass for four can run you about $800. There was no missing this meeting.

Exhausted, we decide to go to Daniel’s mom’s. She has two dogs too and it’s 6AM. Too early to wake her. So we park in the driveway to sleep for an hour. Apparently during that time Daniel’s mom, Wanda, woke up to walk the dogs, saw the car, poked a flashlight in and I’m only guessing here but I think she would probably have said WTF? Anyways, that was more or less Day One. Well the first 9 hours anyways. Stay tuned for more highlights from Florida.

February 27th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

This summer Julian, Cole and I went to my cousin Albert’s wedding in New York accompanied by Casey and Ozana. I drove us. The whole 9 plus hours solo. And no one had a melt-down, meaning me.

Flushing is a neighbourhood in Queens and home to one of the largest Chinatowns in the New York area. It’s close to Laguardia Airport and has a large influx of Korean shops as well. Imagine suburban Chinatown North in Markham/Richmond Hill and North York’s Koreatown colliding somewhere in Mississauga with the backdrop noise of airplanes flying closely overhead towards Pearson. That’ll give you a sense of Flushing. Pictured below a view of a standard street in Flushing… visual chaos is the norm.One of the best parts of the trip was seeing how much the boys enjoyed the variety of flavours and food choices that New York had to offer. Places like this kiosk in Flushing that sold Peking Duck in a fluffy version of this Chinese pancake – the most scrumptious street food I’ve had to date. And yes, sports fans, that says a dollar a piece above in the sign. But who can stop at just one??

Other than Los Angeles, it’s hard to beat the street food in the New York area. Here, another stand selling mouth-watering skewers, Chinese-style. Julian’s on the left waiting for his $1 kebab. Yes, with $5 in your pocket you could stuff your face in Flushing, New York. Well, almost.On top of the 10 plus course traditional Chinese meal we ate at my cousin’s wedding banquet, we had a restorative Mexican menudo also known as tripe soup, periwinkle snails with basil in black bean sauce (shown below) accompanied by cold Tsingtao beer on another occasion, and savoury hand-made dumplings, all within walking distance from our hotel in Flushing. As a single mom I’m experienced at family outings (not to mention that I am an event planner!), so sprinkled in of course were some kid-oriented trips like the stop at the Intrepid Museum where we explored the very cool Essex-class aircraft carrier, USS Intrepid and USS Growler submarine. For those who know about my ever-worsening claustrophobia, no I did not crawl my way through the bowels of the submarine. The boys went without me. After the wedding we had plans to eat our way through Manhattan. At first, I had some reservations about dragging a 10 and 8 year-old through the Big Apple which is more of a grown-up playground to me than a kid destination. Did they ever surprise me. They were fascinated by each restaurant we went to approaching each with a growing sense of adventure. They couldn’t wait to eat at each place, whether we were doing four star or diner-style.

We made the longish trek to Coney Island where the carnival and overcrowded beach became a welcome reprieve from the August heat in Manhattan. Julian is pictured below taking in the beach.

But truthfully I took them to Coney Island so I could try the food stands on the boardwalk. The very popular Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand shown below.

I suffered through a heart-palpitating 40-minute subway ride to get there – I guess this reveals that nothing much stands in the way of me and food. Thankfully, most of the ride was aboveground which seems to be fine for me phobia-wise. Cole is pictured below rejoicing at finally arriving at Coney Island.To reward ourselves after cruising the boardwalk and midway, we decide to take a load off at Pio Pio Riko (NOTE: the link for Pio Pio Riko is for the branch in Queens but you’ll get the picture). Chilled cervezas and a couple orders of their house specialty rotisserie chicken with plenty of hot sauce “por favor” . A great way to beat the heat is to bring on a cool sweat with fiery hot sauce and quench it all down with Corona straight from the cooler.Remembering that you’re on a touristy strip, one needs to temper their dining expectations when eating boardwalk food. I never found out if the sign below meant the clams were cold too or just cold beer and ice cream. It was fine fine fare suitable to the place and a relaxing stop to rest up before the long trek back to the hotel (and eek! another underground journey via the metallic death tube). Since I’m writing this, you can see I did survive to eat another day. Oh the drama.

For the rest of the journey through Manhattan, we ate at many spectacular restaurants, too many to share in this single post. Traveling with the kids turned out to be easy. I realized how much they wanted to try new things too. They do enjoy great food, not just good food – no kids menu for these guys – and as long as you remember to keep it light at the right moments and let them have their fun too, you can have yours as well.

Originally this post started out being about my food savvy kids and turned into a walk down memory lane to this past summer. It’s curious when you’re writing and you get into a stream of consciousness state how this turned into a totally different post. I suppose each time I sit here to write, it’s like going on a journey in which I don’t really know where the final destination will be. On this snowy day in Toronto, I hope these sunshine shots take your mind somewhere else if only for a minute.

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An aside: In one of those kid-oriented moments, I decided to let the boys go nuts at Dave & Buster’s. The day was so hot and humid that I just couldn’t bear to walk outside any more so we ducked into the location on 42nd Street in the Theatre District. It was my chance to have an ice cold beer and read for a few minutes while the boys had their arcade fun. Getting snacky I happened to order the Philly Cheesesteak and to my surprise it was ridiculously good.

Now you’re probably thinking I’m off my rocker. So was I. I couldn’t be sure if it was just revisionist thinking or if the Philly Cheesesteak deserved to be remembered. I ended up taking my friend Daniel to the Dave & Buster’s here in nearby Concord. It’s close to Canada’s Wonderland so it’s a hike but I had to be sure.

Figuring it’s a chain store and that they probably get their ingredients shipped from the same supplier, we went for it. Daniel is from Florida and has had his fair share of Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches. He’s also an event planner like I am so he has a discerning palate and maybe even more so since he doesn’t eat all the squidgy stuff that I do. Daniel gave the Dave & Buster’s Philly Cheesesteak two thumbs-up. He agreed it was a delicious rendition of a Philly Cheesesteak. It was a tender portion of shaved beef in a soft hoagie bun topped with sauteed onions, mushrooms, green peppers and some crazy type of cheese that melted into a kind of sauce. I know. It doesn’t make any sense but it’s good. Dave & Buster’s opened another location in Niagara Falls so I think Philly Cheesesteak and I will have a date again this year.