The Steak Tasting of Steak Tastings

What made this purveyors steak tasting so exceptional was that some of Toronto's finest beef purveyors were primed well in advance, to not only select the best beef for this event, but to dry age the beef truly well. We had our serious amateurs (there were 5) and our serious experts, selected from the "Beef Boys" such as myself, the ever witty food and resto writer, Jacob Richler and Nota Bene chef David Lee, a chef whom I consider one of the most perceptive and organized of his profession, a person with a most highly discriminating palate.

For this tasting, we selected 3 purveyors of the finest premium beef in the GTA, Cumbrae's Meats, Olliffe's and Mcewan foods. Rib steaks were ordered, all cut near the shoulder to incorporate the best section of the deckle. Olliffe's supplied us with angus cross, grass fed, prime beef from PEI and Ontario angus prime; Mcewan Foods supplied us with Australian wagyu, U.S. prime and Canadian angus prime; Cumbrae's supplied us with their own angus prime and their own wagyu angus cross. All steaks were professionally cooked to perfection by chef Lee on a big green egg BBQ. All beef was finished dry aged. Beef sides that were delivered shrink wrapped and initially wet aged, were finished dry aged no less than 4 weeks. All other beef was dry aged right from the start.

This tasting was a double blind assessment for all except myself. All wrappings for each steak were plain with no markings and were delivered in plain white plastic bags. The chef had no prior knowledge of any steak and the tasters had no prior knowledge of any steak. No one knew what companies supplied the steaks nor the varieties of steaks supplied. Noone knew what beef breeds were selected, the time for aging or the style of aging. 


Olliffe's angus cross from PEI (PEI blue ribbon), wet aged 5 weeks then dry aged 4 weeks.

Olliffe's Middlesex County, Ontario raised, angus, dry aged 9 weeks.

Cumbrae's Ontario raised, angus prime, dry aged 8 weeks.

Mcewans's U.S. prime, dry aged 9 weeks. This is the beef that Mark Mcewan serves at his restaurant, North 44. A good looking rib steak.

Cumbae's own Ontario raised wagyu angus cross, dry aged 9 weeks.

Mcewan's Australian wagyu, shipped wet (shrink wrapped) then dry aged, a total aging of "14" weeks (!!). The marbling of this steak presented beautifully. It was also a perfect cut.

Mcewan's Ontario raised, angus "prime", dry aged 9 weeks.

The cooked steaks.

Chef Lee cutting and portioning the steaks.

Flight #1, 4 test pieces, placed like the hours of the clock at 12;3;6;and 9. Steaks are rated (poor to great: 1 to 10) in 3 major categories: taste; texture and juiciness.

The cumulative scores for taste texture and juiciness were added together. The top 3 winners were: 1ST: MCEWAN AUST WAGYU SCORE 214.5; 2ND: CUMBRAE'S WAGYU SCORE 210; 3RD: CUMBRAE'S ONT PRIME, SCORE 200.5. The winning steak (highest score) for TASTE was Cumbrae's Ontario raised wagyu.

It seems that superb marbling (the intramuscular fat between the muscle fibers) and the long dry aging adds complexity to the flavour dimensions of the beef and fat. 

Leslieville Pumps BBQ, Toronto

What convenience! Get gas, easy parking and good grub available night and day: BBQ during the day and later, at night, Indian food. I was there for the BBQ.

A very good corn muffin, one of the best I have enjoyed anywhere. Good corn flavour, crispy at the edges, soft interior, with a very pleasing coarse texture.

BBQ corn salad with a nice Asian style dressing. Good flavours, but, seasonal corn would have been better tasting and sweeter (I am still catching up as I was here early july).

Very good corn fritters, with a crunchy skin.

A standout experience for this city. Fried, breaded pickles. Could not stop eating these, crispy on the outside, crunchy, sour interior and the sour pickle flavour makes for an interesting and appealing contrast. Guaranteed, you wont be able to eat just one!

Very good house made BBQ baked beans with a very thick, consistency. The rich, smokey flavour helps to set these beans apart and was a major attraction for me.

Slow hickory smoked (14 hours) in an Oklahoma smoker, pulled pork, house made bbq sauce and cole slaw. A good sandwich, but, I would have preferred a slightly stronger smoky flavour. Making meat absorb the smoke and then, after cooking, keeping the smoky flavour, is part of the trick.

Hickory smoked chicken thighs with grilled tomato, arugula and sweet chilli aioli. A very tasty sandwich overall with nice complementary flavours. This was my favourite sandwich.

Slow hickory smoked (14 hour) beef brisket with house made bbq sauce, grainy mustard and crispy fried onions. Again, I would have preferred a slightly stronger smoky flavour, but it was a good sandwich.

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My only reflection was that the flavour of the bbq sauce, although it had a lot of interesting ingredients, although ok, just did not appeal to me.

LESLIEVILLE PUMPS BBQ
929 Queen St. East,(at Carlaw) Toronto
416-465-1313

 

Chef David Hawksworth and Chef Victor Barry Collaborate for a Splendid Dinner at Splendido Restaurant, Toronto

I have long been a fan of Splendido's chef Victor Barry. Last september, I visited Vancouver and enjoyed eating at chef David Hawksworth's eponymous restaurant. I was looking forward to experiencing this collaboration.

Two apps, "fish and chips", salmon skin crackling topped with a bit of malted vinegar powder, good texture, but a bit bland; "blini and bacon", a delicious combination of house made pancetta topped with simple syrup and thyme.

Wonderful, sweet, chilled corn soup. The glass was rimmed with a powdered combination of cumin, coriander, salt and pepper, a fantastic accent of contrasting flavours that pop with the flavours of the sweet corn soup.

Smoked oyster with potato foam and chopped  chives. Lovely!

B.C. dungeness crab with Vickies Veggies heirloom tomatoes, small balls of creme fraiche, smoked beurre monte, heirloom tomato water and fresh dill. Here again, a refreshing, delightful combination of a range of complementary flavours. The combined crunchy texture and flavour of the fleur de sel, make a good counterpoint to the sweet flavours of the tomatoes.

Fois gras snow, a fois gras parfait with cherries, madeira, brown butter and walnuts.

Georges Bank scallops. Perfectly cooked and carmelised scallops wonderfully complemented by crunchy skinned, tempura fried cauliflower that had been tossed in a sauce made of garlic, green onion, soy, brown sugar, mirin and 
korean chili paste.

Orange glazed, miso caramelized sable fish with yuzu marinated shiitake, pea tips, roasted carrot strip chips. A lovely range of sweet and the sour flavours.

Agnolotti punched by wonderfully intense, Perigourd truffle-like, Australian black truffles with black butter and fontina cheese.

Perfectly cooked Peking duck had a very tender texture and wonderful flavour. The sides were a cannelloni filled with pulled duck meat and the very complementary flavour of a piece of charred apricot.

Picobello cheese, an unripened sheep's milk cheese from the Netherlands, peaches, pistachio and olive oil toast (no photo).

Hazelnut cereal, shredded hazelnuts, compressed strawberries and tre leche foam made from condensed milk.

OMG, chocolate lovers were united on this dish, chocolate sphere filled with ice cream, peanut crumble, caramel and sea salt and sided with a wonderful dark chocolate sauce (so good, I also had everyone's leftovers).

Macaroons with chocolate and passion fruit (top); incredible home made honeydew mellon marshmallows (!!) (middle); remarkable truffled chocolate truffles (!!) (bottom).

Chef Claudio Aprile and Guest Chef, Curtis Duffy of Grace, Chicago, at Toronto's Colbourne Lane Restaurant

This special dinner event, at Chef Claudio Aprile's Colbourne Lane restaurant, was a blend of the cooking philosophies of 2 very prominent north american chefs who are cooking at the leading edge of current gastronomy. Chef Curtis Duffy, who formerly worked at Charlie trotter's, was a long time sous at Chicago's Alinea and was exec chef at Avenues in the Chicago Peninsula Hotel where he garnered many rave reviews. He is now about to open his own resto, Grace, in Chicago.

Tonight, my eating partner was the always delightful and perceptive free lance food writer/scientist, Renee Suen.(http://www.flickr.com/photos/sifu_renka/sets/72157630771230310/). I was lucky to be eating with her as my photo capture device (my trusty Blackberry) battery went dead!

We began with housemade pretzels topped with grainy mustard, olive oil and butter. Very tasty pretzel bread knots appeased our immediate appetites.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Lemon grass pudding with broken milk emulsion infused with kafir lime, lemon grass, galangal, finger limes and pureed, poached aloe. A refreshing beginning, but the ingredients were a bit too subtle to achieve any wow of flavour or texture for me.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Sweet corn soup surrounded a frozen, white hemispheric shell that had incorporated coriander blooms and was covered with recado nero (black burnt pepper paste, in this case more of an ash). The shell, made of coconut milk and ginger (the shell, somewhat reminiscent of a recent experience that I had at El Bulli) covered some cherries and a very tasty pieces of torn corn bread, raw and freeze dried corn. This was not only a work of art, it was a gustatory tour de force, with highly pleasing, lingering flavours, the most prominent being the wonderfully intense coriander which was the perfect complement for the very rich, sweet tasting corn soup.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Tomato salad. Reading such a simple description hardly prepared me for the blend of exquisitely enhanced, intense flavours of the poached and pealed, green and red cherry tomatoes, accompanied by a basil gel that captured all of the pungent flavour elements of that makes basil such a perfect complement for tomatoes. The crunchy texture of the toasted black quinoa combined with creme fraiche, black olive meringue, all dressed with a frozen vinaigrette brought this dish to even higher heights and was another major culinary highlight.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

A single, perfectly cooked scallop, poached at 118 degrees and seared on one side, accompanied by sambuca saturated tapioca pearls, hoja santa (a leaf found in middle America which has slight peppery and liquorice like flavours), puree of toasted goat's milk, root beer greens (which had a very mild fennel like flavour), shaved fennel bulb stock and fronds and a puffed, crispy tapioca cracker, all surrounded by a mildy tart hibiscus sauce. A beautifully presented, interesting dish with intriguing flavours and textures.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Braised and caramelized maitake mushroom, cocoa pudding, strawberries poached under pressure in strawberry liquid, sheep sorrel with African, South African and purple varieties, all covered in fried potato "strings". The strawberries had a wonderfully intense, lingering flavour that I felt somewhat overwhelmed the taste of the mushroom.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Tea smoked and cured arctic char that was perfectly "cooked", with thai flavours,  a delicious mango ketchup, tamarind puree, curled thin cucumber ribbons and puffed prawn crackers.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Rib eye steak with pressed, dehydrated and fried welsh onions, rye oats, black garlic puree, smoked parsnip puree, charred mustard greens and beef demi-glace. The flavours of the beef and it's accompanyments were thought provoking and delicious. Regarding the steak experience itself, the steak was properly rare but rated on the "beef boys" scale of 1-10 (10 being best) for taste/texture/juiciness, 7/5/6.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Berries: dulce de leche, crystallized wild flowers with frozen fruits: pomegranite seeds; blackberries; currants; kalamanci lime and crystallized wild flowers.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Carmelized sudachi (a citrus fruit related to the mandarin orange) with shaved cucumber ribbons, cucumber juice, crunchy peanut brittle, a baby cucumber with it's flower attached and African blue basil, a lovely still life all in it's own glass enclosed world. This was a very refreshing, creative dessert which I really loved. That was me that Renee captured in the background.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

La Societie Bistro, Toronto

Well, I finally made it to this resto that many friends and acquaintances were talking about, but fewer are today. I have no real excuse. It is well located in the city's main shopping district close to Bay and Bloor Streets. The decor (something I never get into into in my blogs, because as I always say, one can't eat atmosphere) of this bistro brings back memories of some of the grand bistros of Paris. My daughter, who has been to enough restos with me and has a sense of good food, went with friends, had great fun and loved what she ate, although that may have been less important than her good time. If the food was unacceptable, she would have said so.

But, my eating experience was different. It was not bad. It was just that there was no excitement in what I ate. It was frankly pedestrian.

The petit tower had bland shrimps with poor texture and lacked the bright flavour of very fresh shrimp (even fresh frozen). Oysters were fresh but the most common type. The marinated octopus okay, but uninteresting. The spicy tuna tartar was fine.

The condiment selection offered for the tower, was plentiful, good and well varied: cornichons, fresh horseradish with a very good bight, hot sauce, very good cocktail sauce and mignonette.

The texture of the fillet of sole was a bit mealy. Frankly, this fish experience was disappointing.

Good tasting creamed spinach, but the sauce a bit too watery for my taste.

Very good, tasty, crispy frites.

The desserts were very pleasing and classically well executed. The chocolate ice cream was perfect and creamy. One could come here for the desserts.

The cheese cake was fine.

From my perspective, this resto has huge potential. It has a great location and a spirited design. But first, especially in this part of the city, one must begin with great ingredients. Just like the adage "retail is detail", this very much applies to a good bistro. If the elements of the food can't be the best, don't buy them; don't offer them. It is my belief that things should be kept simple and executed well. Even the bread was disappointing. A great bistro has to have great bread and great butter, elements so good that one might make a meal of them. 

Toronto could use a great bistro in this part of the city; a bistro that draws on the greater metropolitan area that can bring people back to this unique standout mid-town Toronto shopping area to experience the wonderful city life. The Bloor Street renovations had that intention. Perhaps all of this will inspire La Societie.

La Societie Bistro

131 Bloor St. West, Toronto

416-551-9929