Restaurant makeover, by ‘act of God’
Our story in this week’s magazine about the troubles in the casual dining industry may have underestimated just how worried U.S. restaurant chains are these days. Take, for instance, Brinker...
View ArticleTax Check, please
It’s been said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. While there’s little technology can do to prevent the latter, Canadian restaurants are coming under increasing scrutiny for using it...
View ArticleThe very rich poor man’s pudding
Photograph by Ian Barrett One should not confuse the Québécois confection pouding chômeur with the congealed chocolate and vanilla stuff sold in single-serving plastic pots at supermarkets. This is...
View ArticleTakeout aims for gross-out
Getty Images At Friendly’s, a U.S. restaurant chain, customers can now order a burger with grilled cheese sandwiches where the bun should be. The Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt (tipping the scales at an...
View ArticleSpring rolls with a side of doom, please
Photograph by Sandy Nicholson At first glance, diners might be forgiven for thinking Toronto’s Loving Hut is just another little vegetarian restaurant. But few other eateries are as devoted to...
View ArticleHow to eat like an economist
That is to say, how to eat the most expensive foods for the least amount of money. This piece from the New York Times, offers some useful strategy for the salad bar, where the price of a meal is based...
View ArticleFeasting on Tofino
Photographs by Brian Howell The vast and forbidding expanse of Cox Bay, near Tofino on the western coast of Vancouver Island, is circumscribed by an impressively deep beachfront of cold, wet sand, as...
View ArticlePest control for vegans. (It’s complicated.)
Getty Images/Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute Veganism is all about animal rights, but where do you draw the line if you’re a restaurant owner with a mouse problem, or a cook with cockroaches in the...
View ArticleWhy are female executive chefs so rare?
Photograph by Chris Bolin In Calgary recently, catching up with star chefs Connie DeSousa and John Jackson over some small Latin plates (chorizo, gallina, oxtail empanadas, etc.) and drinks at Ox and...
View ArticleData for dinner
Cali2Okie/Flickr Data-mining is hitting the restaurant business. Wired reports on tools like, Compeat, and Hotschedules, which provide managers with daily anaytics, breaking down what food and drink...
View ArticleHands off! Breasts are my areas of expertise
Getty Images/Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute Did you read our magazine’s recent feature on the growing popularity of “breastaurants?” It described a new generation of Hooters-like “mammary-centric...
View ArticleREVIEW: The Art of the Restaurateur
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images The world has gone mad for celebrity chefs, but one man is campaigning against the tide. “Chefs, in my opinion,” says long-time Financial Times restaurant critic...
View ArticleBurger, please, and a glass of Beaujolais
Reena Newman At a Hardee’s restaurant in Champaign, Ill., two food psychologists recently did some redecorating. Half the seating area was left as-is—the strong lights, bright colours and hard metal...
View ArticleThe restaurants that matter to politicians
Blair Gable In spite of its über-Canadian location at the corner of Rideau and Sussex, Métropolitain Brasserie’s management went for a belle époque brasserie brand, its tag line: “You’re closer to...
View ArticleIs it lunch or brunch? A continental divide over a midday meal
Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani Sunday lunch versus Sunday brunch: the difference is only a few letters, but the two are opposite approaches to the midday meal. Brunch, a North American invention, was...
View ArticleWinnipeg foodies find a place to chill
Marianne Helm Last Thursday night, Winnipeg was in the grip of a vicious cold snap that faded streets into a silent filmstrip of grit teeth and shuffling, Sorel-booted feet. As the waxy winter daylight...
View Article‘It’s not what’s cooking but what’s fermenting’
Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani In the Mission, where San Francisco’s trendiest new restaurants have been opening of late, I recently began a meal with a plate of a sort I have not yet experienced...
View ArticleThe Cactus Club Café—a prickly franchise
Desy Cheng It was spring when the brown paper labelled with the Cactus Club Café logo was first plastered over the inside of a half-block stretch of street-level windows of Toronto’s First Canadian...
View ArticleTim Hortons: The Canadian icon Canadians won’t work for
Peter Jones/Reuters Last week, the CEO of Tim Hortons laid out part of his case for why the chain needs to be able to hire temporary foreign workers. This is what Marc Caira told Bloomberg News: “If...
View ArticleTurning the tables on Instagram
Birds Eye/REX/CP Last year, American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain opened up to a tabloid about one of modern life’s most common social practices, or—depending on whom you’re talking to—one of its...
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