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.

November 20th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

With the holiday gift-giving season around the corner, I thought I’d share what’s on my bookshelf. While I’m not a voracious reader like my sister, Belle, a.k.a Ms.Bookish.com, I do find myself eating up cookbooks and food-related memoirs at a fairly steady pace. I think it’s my way of becoming sated… without the calories.

A week ago, Belle and I met Nigella Lawson at the Fairmont Royal York for cocktails and dinner using dishes created from her new cookbook, Kitchen: Recipes From The Heart Of The Home.

Admittedly Belle is the sincere Nigella fan while I went more curious to see if she was in real life the luscious persona you see on TV. I was delighted to find her charming, genuine and very relatable – in between book signings she had to pause to discreetly blow her nose. And though she had a cold it didn’t deter her from engaging with everyone along the way.

Celebrity chefs are loved because of their personalities and not just for their cooking techniques. Having met Nigella in person, I am now a convert and more of her books will find a way on to my shelf, starting with Kitchen. This book is not just a collection of recipes as her voice comes through the whole book from the stories, anecdotes and tips that go with each recipe. You don’t have to be a cook to enjoy reading this and drooling over the beautiful food shots.

Pictured are the two entrees, prepared by the Fairmont Royal York kitchen. Above is the Redcurrant and Mint Lamb Cutlets, Red Leicester Mash, Seasonal Vegetables (lamb recipe found on page 67). To the left is Halloumi with Beetroot and Lime served with Cherry Tomato Couscous (halloumi recipe found on page 212-213).

I am fond of snout-to-tail cooking and I love the idea of using all parts, wasting as little as possible. Culturally speaking, the Chinese are huge proponents of this, making all sorts of unusual bits, innards and appendages taste shockingly delicious. This leads me naturally to being a fan of Anthony Bourdain and Michael Symon, both known for a no holds barred approach to food and also for being a sort of kitchen bad boy (a personal weakness). Chris Cosentino fits the bill too but I haven’t seen a book come out from him yet. Hopefully it’s in the works.

If your holiday gift shopping list includes someone with similar interests, you might want to pick up Michael Symon’s Live To Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen.

I love the “Symon Says” wisdom boxes that appear on random pages of this cookbook, like on page 99 where he states “Don’t throw pig skin away!” At his restaurant they end up as cracklings to garnish salads. I have a whole sheet of smoked pork rind in my fridge right now that I got from my butcher for FREE. There’s not much of a consumer market for it so it seems I’m the lucky duck. I’ll be sure to use Michael’s book to guide me with ideas on what to do with it today.

Having been a committed Bourdain-ian for years, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his recently released book, Medium Raw. Aptly named, the cantankerous adventure seeking eater-of-all-things-remotely-edible, whom we have faithfully followed all these years, the chef-turned-TV-celeb cynic we know and love as Anthony Bourdian, has officially gone soft. Well, not fully soft just maybe a little limp. And that’s the point. While he doesn’t exactly wear rose-coloured glasses, this book is not the raw and gritty Bourdain we couldn’t wait to read in his earlier books like Kitchen Confidential. This is a more grown-up version of Anthony Bourdain. Fear not, because he is still wonderfully opinionated yet strangely sincere. This book is not an apology for past digressions but rather a well-timed continuation demonstrating what inevitably happens to people in life. Age. And hopefully what comes with it. A little well earned wisdom.

My absolute favourite book this year has to be Born Round by Frank Bruni, acclaimed journalist and former restaurant critic for The New York Times. This is a very intimate, revealing book about a man living with his weight challenges. This book is uplifting and inspiring without trying to be. It isn’t really a food book and yet it is at the same time.

If you’ve ever struggled with your weight or body image or self-confidence due to either, then this book will really relate. I’ve struggled with my own dichotomous thoughts on fat versus thin and this book reminded me that I wasn’t alone. Frank Bruni’s ability to pull you in right from the start and engage the reader is a genuine gift. Born Round is a page turner and I couldn’t wait to see how he handled his weight issues under the pressure of eating out two meals a day, seven days a week, during his years as a restaurant food critic. It’s no easy task, made more difficult by someone who truly enjoys eating on a visceral level. I think there are a few of us out there who might understand that type of passion for eating.

June 26th, 2010 by Dawn Becker

The “economic downturn” became tangible to me last year when half of my regular clients were unable to pull together the funding and sponsorship dollars to host some of their regular annual events. I went into rethink mode about the event management company that I had been running for more than a decade, BPL Events, and I made the decision to stay true to the work I enjoy so much.

A year later, things have turned around completely. The networking and business development time I invested in the quieter part of last year has resulted in a bursting schedule of events that’s leading into 2012. And I couldn’t be happier with all of the new and returning opportunities.

During the midst of the decline last year, I decided to start BananaViews as an outlet for my secondary passions – all things food and how cultural upbringing impacts our sensibilities and behaviours.

With the idea to eventually draw more readers to my personal blog and to learn more about how larger blogging sites work, I also decided to write restaurant reviews for blogTO. It was a great learning experience and I have to say that I found Tim Shore, founder of blogTO, to be a patient, friendly guide. And it was an interesting experience to observe the miscellaneous comments from readers many of which were random, vehement, or completely off topic. This was a good opportunity to learn about making your opinions public and committing them to words and having to distance yourself afterwards, or not.

Despite these positive experiences, with the emergence of so many new and exciting event contracts, conferences and fundraisers, that I needed to put my full attention to I had to make a decision about writing reviews for blogTO – there are only so many hours in a day. I couldn’t grapple with the idea of doing a mediocre job and the pressure to keep up with a weekly review was simply stressing me out. This had nothing to do with Tim’s expectations as I found him to be understanding. Running a business myself, feeling like you’re letting someone else down really sucks. The end result, I had to drop blogTO.

After advising Tim, I was more than pleased when he invited me to come back to write for him again once my schedule settles itself out. I am thinking about it. So it’s so long but not goodbye blogTO. Here is my last blogTO review (for now) on Pearl Harbourfront. Thanks again to blogTO and Tim Shore for making me feel so welcome to the team.