November 27th, 2009
Event Guide: Edible City panel + discussion
By Shawn Micallef // No Comments
WHAT: Edible City Book Launch, Panel Presentations and Discussion conversation between three key contributors of The Edible City hosted by the Sustainability Network.
WHEN: Wednesday, December 2nd, 5:30pmâ€7:00pm
WHERE: 1st Floor Boardroom, 215 Spadina Avenue, Toronto (between Queen and Dundas)
HOW MUCH: $15 in advance/$20 at the door. RSVP on the Facebook event but buy tickets/resister here.
WHO:
Wayne Roberts - Contributor, NOW Magazine and Coordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council
Lorraine Johnson, Author of over 10 environmental and gardening books
Shawn Micallef, Senior Editor of Spacing, coâ€founder of [murmur] and OCAD instructor
Alternatives Executive Editor Nicola Ross will moderate the discussion.
Two weeks ago Coach House Press launched their latest edition in the uTOpia series: The Edible City. It's full of essays on food in Toronto that will make the urban foodie happy. For those of you, like me, who think food is a bit of bore, there are also essays in the book about things peripheral to food. I wrote about restaurant design, and how they are the stages upon which urban life is often played out. I also dug into restaurant review archives and found they are treasure chests of collateral information on the state of Toronto at a given time. Reviewers don't just write about the food, they write about its context, so you get oblique views of the city while reading about how well something was cooked. The Globe's Joanne Kates wrote some of my crazy-favorite pieces. Here's an excerpt from a 1988 review of the Bamboo on Queen West at the peak of the art scene on that stretch of Queen West:
"Welcome to BamBoo. It is the relentlessly low-tech club-cum-restaurant that rebukes glitz-crazed Toronto, with a smile up its sleeve. I confess to having avoided BamBoo since it opened five years ago. People who are pushing 40 and sometimes forget to wear at least three items of black clothing (preferably somewhat tattered) can be forgiven for avoiding Queen Street."
And another from 1980 and her view of a very Studio 54 seeming restaurant called Kosta's on Avenue Road in Yorkville:
"Beautiful young men with perfect hairdo's hang off the mezzanine; maitre d' is tall and slim & her crimson dress is slit to the navel. People who are young, elegant (yes, and skinny too) are table hopping ferociously, beautifully. Several are actors, preening perfectly. This is a Greek restaurant? A gorgeous man with a pot belly and a cigar drifts by our table, spots a lull in the conversation and makes a valiant attempt to "make friends" with women along together. Beautiful things are scattered about the place: old Neptune's head, capitals on fat beams, in the bar a goddess's head on a big ceramic plate, a wooden model of an old schooner."
All this and more in Edible City.
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