feel the beauty The first 84” 4K TV from Sony
The largest, highest resolution TV from Sony brings you a truly immersive experience. At a staggering 8 million pixels, the picture is four times clearer than Full HD. And revolutionary picture enhancement technology makes every picture look stunning regardless of the source. There is even a 50W, 2-way, 10-unit speaker system built-in. The first 84” 4K* TV from Sony is here.
sony.ca/4ktv ®™Sony make.believe, BRAVIA and S-Force are registered trademarks and X-Reality Pro is a trademark of Sony Corporation. Viewable areas measured diagonally. Screen image is simulated. Features and specifications subject to change without notice. A.E. & O.E. *4K: 3,840 x 2,160 pixels
IT’S BETTER ON TOP, ALL YEAR ROUND.
550 Wellington Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2V4, (416) 640-7778 www.thompsonhotels.com
NEW FOR FALL
PERONI 12-PACK BOTTLES NOW AVAILABLE AT THE BEER STORE
Exclusively in Toronto at
1220 Yonge Street Toronto, Ontario M4T 1W1
Phone 416 961-2929 Fax 416 352-6051
www.dekla.ca
60 Yorkville Avenue
www.fourseasons.com/toronto
416.964.0411
PUBLISHER KING WEST MEDIA LTD. PRESIDENT PETER FREED EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KAREN VON HAHN CREATIVE AGENCY ARTFORM* ART DIRECTOR ALICE UNGER MANAGING EDITOR RONNILYN PUSTIL ASSISTANT ART DIRECTORS MICHAEL BOZINOVSKI VISHANA LODHIA ASSOCIATE EDITOR DIANE PETERS COPY EDITOR ERIN LAU CONTRIBUTORS ADRIAN ARMSTRONG LEANNE DELAP TERENCE DICK RICHARD DUBOIS NAOMI FINLAY MARIO FIORUCCI KATE GERTNER ROBERT GRAVELLE IVY KNIGHT JEREMY JENSEN CHRIS JOHNS KATERI LANTHIER ARASH MOALLEMI MARILISA RACCO ANNA LISA SANG RUSSELL SMITH ELI YARHI DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AJ MANJI DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MORAD REID AFFIFI DISTRIBUTION MANAGER CARL BRAY KING WEST MEDIA LTD. 552 WELLINGTON ST. W. PENTHOUSE SUITE 1500 TORONTO, ON M5V 2V5 KINGWESTMAG.CA ON THE COVER LEANNE PROCTOR SHOT BY RICHARD DUBOIS STYLIST: MARCUS TRIPP STYLIST ASSISTANT: ANA PEJIC HAIR & MAKEUP: JUKKA OUTFIT: SEE CREDITS, P. 53 SHOT ON LOCATION AT 550 WELLINGTON ST. W.
14
Editor’s Letter
16
Contributors
23-32
Proclaimer Local Talent: Niall McClelland by Terence Dick, Meet Your Meat: Talking Turkey, Micro-Trend: Donuts, The Dish: Weslodge, The List: From Patti Smith to Picasso, Mr. Smith’s Good Times Guide by Russell Smith
38
Modern Mission
42
Happy Days are Here Again
44
Man with a Plan
50
Penthouse Sweet
60
Street Style
62
Food Foragers
67
Cheers!
74
The Pour
76
Gifted
78
Problem Solved
80
Due South
91
On the Town
116
Visionary
Peter Clewes forges a new modernist Toronto by John Bentley Mays Marimekko takes you to a better place by Kateri Lanthier Power breakfast with Ryerson prez Sheldon Levy by Leanne Delap Glamour girls get dolled up for the holidays by Richard Dubois WMC Fashion Week turns King into a catwalk by Anna Lisa Sang The new trend in eating out has no reservations by Marilisa Racco 6 of the city’s hottest bartenders pour us a stiff one by Ivy Knight Value vinos by Robert Gravelle The city’s best stores deliver the goods by Kate Gertner 5 party pros on how to throw an affair to remember by Diane Peters Basilicata may be Italy’s last hidden gem by Karen von Hahn Test Drive: Hotel spas, The Playing Field by Marilisa Racco, Word on the Street: What King West needs, The Deal: Arlene Dickinson’s Den
Q&A with Nelda Rodger
(THIS PAGE) ON ALY: METALLIC KNIT DRESS, FASHION CRIMES; ON LEANNE: GIVENCHY LEATHER DRESS AT HOLT RENFREW; FAUX FUR COAT AT PINK TARTAN.
t 14
he news that King Street impresario David Mirvish has partnered with the globally revered architect Frank Gehry to create an “arts hub” on the site of the Princess of Wales Theatre that would feature two large art galleries in a landmark complex of three 85-storey condo towers took few by surprise. Like his father “Honest” Ed before him—a King West visionary if there ever was one—Mirvish is a dreamer who likes to think big. What’s more, it is clear that despite a slowing international market for development, the action around King West continues to be full steam ahead. So much so, in fact, that King West increasingly seems to be at the centre of a new and increasingly globally inspired vision for Toronto. Asian luxury hotelier Shangri-La has set up shop here, in a glam glass-and-steel custom tower that is now home to one of the city’s top spas (the Miraj Hammam at Caudalie Paris, painstakingly reviewed here along with the hood’s other hotel spas by our editors in Test Drive, p. 94) as well as a boutique collection of some of the city’s best new restaurants, with the revered chef David Chang at its helm. (Judging from the queue outside the new Momofuku Noodle Bar, the city already can’t get enough of Chang’s signature ramen.) London-based society and media hotspot Soho House (see p. 24) has chosen to install its Toronto HQ in a vintage three-story brick former hotel right next door. The IMG group, which just snapped up Toronto Fashion Week, held its controversial debut smack-dab on King at David Pecaut Square (see Street Style, p. 60). And local restaurateur Charles Khabouth, whose reading of the zeitgeist has never been less than spot on, has recently invested heavily in King West, opening not one but two new resto-clubs (Weslodge, reviewed by Chris Johns on p. 29, and the new, tapas-styled Patria) on King’s everexpanding dining strip. If food is the new fashion, then searching out insider dining adventures is its newest incarnation, as Marilisa Racco explores in “Food Foragers” (p. 62). As Leanne Delap discovers, a “power breakfast” with Sheldon Levy, the entrepreneurial, energetic president of Ryerson University, serves to redefine the popular term (p. 44). Six top movers and shakers in the city’s increasingly complex cocktail scene serve up their latest concoctions in “Cheers,” p. 67. And, as always, the party starts with bubbly in our holiday fashion story, “Penthouse Sweet,” on p. 50. All of which indicates that we have much to celebrate this holiday season over here at KingWest. And so, a toast to you, our readers: We hope you indulge in the many festive delights of the season, including great food, wine and gathering with friends and family. When the turkey and latkes are just leftovers and the crumpled wrap and bits of stray ribbon are finally gathered for the fire, sit back, relax a bit from all the wonderful bustle out there and enjoy this latest issue.
PHOTO: MANGO STUDIOS
EDITOR’S LETTER
MARILISA RACCO
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
KingWest columnist Marilisa Racco dines and tells for this issue’s “Food Foragers” feature. A freelance writer who covers deeply important matters concerning long-wear lipstick, coloured mascara and nail art, she also travels the globe reporting on stories as varied as the whisky industry in Scotland and the food crisis in Mali. She pens the weekly Test Counter column in The Globe and Mail and contributes to FLARE, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and TheAesthete.com. Holiday hopes: Peace, love and happiness for all. And Chanel boots for herself.
John Bentley Mays is an awardwinning Toronto writer on art and architecture and a regular columnist on residential building design for The Globe and Mail. For this issue of KingWest, Mays expertly profiles architectsAlliance’s Peter Clewes. Holiday hopes: that his wife remembers to put the new DVD of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal in his stocking.
RICHARD DUBOIS Photographer Richard Dubois, who shot “Penthouse Sweet” for this issue, is a contributor for ELLE Canada, Zink, Contra and other magazines. His work has also appeared on Fashion Television and Project Runway. Holiday hopes: to sleep when he’s not skiing. He’d obviously also like lots of snow.
16
KATE GERTNER Style sweetheart and market editor Kate Gertner, who compiled “Gifted” for this issue, leaves no stone unturned when she is on the hunt for the perfect find. Be it fashion, home décor or the glam gadget you didn’t even know you needed, this gal’s got the eagle eye. Holiday hopes: to spend time with her family and loved ones, a diptyque Feu de Bois candle and a vintage pie lifter.
ELI YARHI
Toronto-bred freelance writer Eli Yarhi hit the streets for this issue to find out what King Westers really want. His work has appeared in both MEN’S FASHION and FASHION, Toronto Standard and The Globe and Mail. He thinks writers should be photographed in front of bookshelves. Holiday hopes: He’s a DIY guy and this extends to cooking. He may or may not be searching for Larousse Gastronomique.
PHOTOS: (DUBOIS) KIRA BUCCA, (MAYS) LORNE WOLK-BAD, (GERTNER) RACHEL SINGER, (RACCO) IAN WORANG, (YARHI) STEFANIA YARHI
CONTRIBUTORS
MOVE ON UP! COMING 2013
For more info contact listing agent:
DANIEL PUSTIL artform.com | info@artform.com | 416.535.7837
416.483.4337 dpustil@trebnet.com
LOGO + TAG
More Style, Less Stress
MINIMAL USAGE
PICO SIDE TABLES $79 each
GENOVA SECTIONAL from $2,299
Helping you personalize your space. Book your private consultation. 416.360.0600 | info@freedhome.ca 600 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1M3
freedhome.ca
LOGO + TAG
MINIMAL USAGE
JANA SIDE TABLE $259
LEPORE BED from $2,999
VERVE MODULES $639 each
GLACIA BENCH $549
LABELLE CHAIR from $759
DAYE STOOL $199
Helping you personalize your space. Book your private consultation. 416.360.0600 | info@freedhome.ca 600 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1M3
freedhome.ca
Life. In a New Light. Introducing Toronto’s most highly anticipated residential project. Each home at Lighthaus is constructed around a column of light, and is designed to promote health, wellbeing, and exceptional living. 20 SPACIOUS LUXURY TOWNHOMES WEST QUEEN WEST UP TO 3386 SQ. FT. FROM $1.15 MILLION
LIGHTHAUS.CA
Prices, sizes and specifications subject to change without notice. E. & O.E. Illustration is artist’s impression. Exclusive Listing Agent: Paul Johnston, Right at Home Realty Inc Brokerage
THEY STILL WON’T SELL US THE COVER. 401 KING STREET WEST DINING
6PM - 10PM | THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY RSVP@BLOKEAND4TH.COM 416 477 1490
GUESTLIST | BOTTLE SERVICE TUESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY | 10PM INFO@BLOKEAND4TH.COM 416 477 1490
PROCLAIMER 2
1
3 4
5
6
8
PHOTOS 2, 3, 7, 9: ADRIAN ARMSTRONG, (RUNWAY) BRIAN ACH
7
BEET IT THE HUMBLE ROOT VEG HAS ITS FASHION MOMENT 1 Calfskin bag > Totally tote it with this two-toned number from Hermès. $4,950. hermes.com 2 Macarons > Say oui to this season’s sweet obsession in blackberry chocolate. $25/dozen. nadege-patisserie.com 3 Trans Siberian Semi Matte lipstick > NARS pretties up your pout. $30. narscosmetics.ca 4 Pebbles vase > Kate Hume’s creation is like a beet in glass. $595. avenue-road.com 5 Vespa LX 50 > Leave them in a daringplum-hued dust. From $3,695. vespa-canada.ca 6 Yigal Azrouël, fall/winter 2012 > A symphony in oxblood to warm a winter night. Prices and availability at yigalazrouel.com 7 Leading Lady by Essie > Nail it in this beet-stained shade. $8. essie.com 8 Artisan Stand Mixer > Mix it up with KitchenAid’s latest. $549. kitchenaid.ca 9 St. Jude ceramic owl > Extra smart in this “hoooo.” $15. westelm.com.
9
23
PROCLAIMER
theCLUBHOUSE
SOHO HOUSE TORONTO
The hotly anticipated September opening of Toronto’s own Soho House, which announced its arrival during TIFF with the neon-lit likes of Kristen Stewart, Bradley Cooper, Emma Watson and Dustin Hoffman, had the city’s A-list sitting by the mail slot all summer awaiting a coveted cream invitation. Since then, the private members’ club (housed in a restored three-storey brick building on Bishop’s Block, at the corner of Simcoe and Adelaide) has become a networking hotspot for the likes of fashionista Jeanne Beker, producer Martin Katz, art dealer Judith Tatar and DJ Diego Armand. Since its founding in London in 1995, Soho House has upped the cool quotient in select cities from Miami to Berlin, thanks to a unique vibe that’s at once casual and star-studded. The Toronto outpost feels like a cross between a hunter’s lodge and the Algonquin Hotel (the library is in dark DecoWood and the bar is framed with vintage stools and a cozy fireplace). By day, you’ll find modern-day Mad Men types and creative class-A personalities engaged in impromptu brainstorming sessions over lunch. The Sunday brunch crowd is comprised of wellheeled 20-somethings repenting the previous night’s debauchery and caffeine-addled parents taking advantage of the club’s onsite nanny services. Once the sun goes down, expect to find a gaggle of editors, designers, DJs and the like sipping on cocktails at one of the venue’s three bars (including the Pretzel Bell Bar, named after the tavern that originally occupied the building), dining next to drop-ins like Jamie Oliver at Club Restaurant and networking like mad in an oh-so-subtle way. —Shawna Cohen
theOUTFITTER J.CREW MENSWEAR
Eaton Centre / 416.977.0941 / jcrew.com When sartorially smart J.Crew, known for its iconic catalogues and border-hop shopping, landed north of the border at Yorkdale in August 2011, the boys were left hanging. This October, the persistently preppy label finally delivered. The splashy new Eaton Centre store is nearly 9,000 square feet and offers a complete ladies’ line. But it’s the men’s half—with separate entrance—that’s generating the buzz. What men can expect is the casual vibe and ivy cool that J.Crew has now rendered classic: Abingdon canvas bags, pressed-wool skiff jackets and myriad patterned oxford shirts vie for attention among manly hardwood shelving, vintage ephemera and pre-rumpled workwear in this well-lit space. Curated brand collaborations with the likes of Barbour, Wallace & Barnes and Lee are also in prominent rotation. Meanwhile, suit junkies can peruse the in-house Ludlow line in a dedicated room that is host to slim-cut Harris Tweed blazers and Italian worsted-wool suits. “Once he steps into our store, it’s our job to make a guy’s life as easy as possible,” says Frank Muytjens, head of men’s design at J.Crew. To make life even easier, the store offers a complimentary personal-stylist service. Book an appointment or, better yet, write your own page out of this line’s collection of classics. —Eli Yarhi
24
PHOTOS: (SOHO HOUSE, FROM TOP) MICHAEL GRAYDON, MARK SEELEN, (J.CREW) COURTESY OF J.CREW
192 Adelaide St. W. / 416.599.7646 / sohohousetoronto.com
theCRAFTSMAN BOZ BOARDS
PHOTOS: (BOARD) COURTESY OF BOZ BOARDS, (DANCER) ANDREW CLOUTIER
bozboards.com
Best described as “rideable art,” Mike (aka Boz) Bozinovski’s custom-crafted BOZ BOARDS are a meticulous meld of form and function. Built to surf the pavement, these longboards— layers of maple veneer pressed together for strength, inlaid and dressed for curb appeal—equally double as wall hangings. “It’s the perfect vehicle to use my hands in a medium I love,” Boz says. “But it also gives me a large canvas to lay graphics over.” Which is something he’s been doing for the past six years. As the first custom longboardsman in the city, Boz may have learned his trade in a vacuum, but his combined passions for design (note that he is KW’s own assistant art director), the sport of longboarding and craftsmanship fuse to form these vacuum-molded planks of maple, cherry, walnut and rose woods. Following the elegant grains these veneers inspire, Boz carefully arranges complementary designs atop layers of lacquer. Surf and Hawaiian motifs—flowing florals and popping colours— morph over the woods’ own patterns, moving as smoothly as the boards themselves. From custom order to finished deck, Boz will handcraft a mold to any specification (pintail, freeride and more) in three to five weeks. From $165 for an original design factorybuilt deck to $600 for a lovingly handmade model. —Eli Yarhi
theSKINNY HIT THE BARRE
The barre—as in ballet barre—fitness trend has hit KW. This barefoot workout (legwarmers optional) features multiple mirrors, an actual barre plus sculpting moves for a dancer’s bod. Here are two new boutique studios that raise it up a notch.
BARREWORKS
UNION
KW debut: May 2012 Décor: High ceilings, glossy tiles, calming blue walls. Fantastic locker room with crisp, white towels in abundance. Tunes: Blasted dance mixes of Adele and Rihanna. Lots of Rihanna. Class: Mixed Level—a one-hour workout that looks and feels like aerobics on high volume with lots of weights, balls and resistance bands; the barre is there for stability. Instructor Lina keeps us going with bootcamp-style “you can do it!” shouts. Appeal: Longtime runners are getting hooked, wanting to lengthen and avert injury. Burn: While the intense interval-training parts of the workout are exhausting, the band work is pretty intense too. Expect sore muscles. Also on the menu: Spin and yoga classes with some barre tossed in. Mega hit: The bAAAre, also known as the “Triple A” (abs, arms and ass). Celeb quotient: Tanya Kim shows up, all shimmering hair and formfitting yoga pants, for her regular dose of Triple A. Price point: $21 + HST for single class, $170 for 10.
KW debut: September 2012 Décor: Converted ’70s warehouse boasts 3 compact workout studios cleanly updated with white walls and pale hardwood. Rows of lockers in the lobby complete with keys are a major cool point. Tunes: Clubbier-sounding workout mixes of Sia and Adele, played at a subdued volume on a killer-looking sound system (see musical connection below). Class: Union Barre 60—an hour-long workout where you will hear terms like “plié” and “second position.” Think “swan arms” even for jumping jacks. Appeal: The yoga and pilates crowd is keen to put some cardio into their workouts. Burn: Arms. Can’t quite keep up with those graceful reps. Also on the menu: TRX (a bizarre suspension training system developed by the Navy Seals), spin, gravity training, yoga and more. Celeb quotient: This is Our Lady Peace’s old rehearsal space—they bought the building back when Wellington was the boonies. Band members Raine Maida, Jeremy Taggart and Duncan Coutts co-own the studio along with instructor Christie Ness and investor John Kawaja. Price point: $25 (HST included) for single class, $190 for 10. —Diane Peters
625 Queen St. W. / 416.362.2773 / barreworks.ca
571 Wellington St. W. / 416.850.0843 / unionstudio.ca
25
PROCLAIMER
For a local artist who has garnered impressive commercial and critical attention in a short span of time, Niall McClelland’s methods remain unconventional. His dyed bed sheets are repeatedly frozen and thawed through winter weather to become aged shrouds. He folds and refolds monochrome photocopies to create shattered maps of the night sky. And he helps leaking ink jet cartridges give birth to multicoloured Rorschach tapestries. When asked to explain the anarchic character of his offhand creations, McClelland appeals to a previous generation. “My parents are from Belfast and they have this self-deprecating sense of humour that I’ve inherited,” he says. “I put it in the work by playing with failure.” Combined with this Irish heritage, his years spent skateboarding and making flyers for friends’ punk-rock bands help explain his spare practice. “I tend to work with fairly impoverished materials because I’ve never really had a lot of money.” This hasn’t stopped him from presenting two well-received shows at Clint Roenisch Gallery and exhibiting in major centres across Canada and the U.S. McClelland first defined his style by consciously turning away from the graphic design he studied at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. “I used to do a lot of work that was based in graphic elements, even using colour in a really graphic way, but there came a point where I needed to distill things back to something more focused,” he says. “I stripped all the colour away for a bunch of years. From 2005 to about 2009, I wanted to focus on some core elements of the work.” A similar economy of means led to the folded pieces he has become best known for. “I was showing those initially in Vancouver and San Francisco, and since they could be folded easily, the shipping costs were minimal. That was part of my concern with making the work,” McClelland says. “I used to make things that needed to be framed, and shipping was a fortune and unreliable. Eventually I just started making work that could be battered around in transit and was small enough for me to afford.”
26
The DIY grittiness of the work is balanced by a formal rigour that is one part restraint, one part subtle guidance and one part dumb luck. The latter element came to the fore when he eventually returned to colour. “The colour was an accident,” he says. “I had a piece of paper in my pocket but didn’t have a pen to write down the number of the ink cartridge I needed to replace, so I wrapped the cartridge up in a paper towel. When I got to the store and pulled out the paper, I saw what the leaky cartridge had created and thought, ‘This is amazing. A piece of trash just created this thing.’” The unpredictable combination of the three primary colours in the cartridge made for delightfully expressive patterns that unintentionally evoked a psychedelic experience. “I lived in Vancouver a long time and took a lot away from an older punk-hippie ethos that is prevalent out there,” McClelland says. “So when these came out and that was a connotation, I could own that as well.” But for McClelland, the work takes him once again back to his ancestors overseas. “The colours ended up reminding me of stained glass windows. A large influence on me is medieval architecture. When I was younger I went to Ireland a lot to visit relatives. We would visit these old cathedrals and I became fascinated with them.” Despite this link to tradition, McClelland remains something of an outsider. Asked whether he considers his Xeroxes to be drawings or his ink jet pieces paintings, he admits they fluctuate between standard artistic categories. And while he’s fine with not fitting in, this peculiarity remains an obstacle for some. “I’ve been thinking of applying to the RBC Painting Competition for the past couple years,” he says, “but I keep having trouble finding work that meets their definition of a painting.”
Writer Terence Dick is the Toronto correspondent and editor of the visual art blog akimbo.ca.
PHOTOS: (MCCLELLAND) JEREMY JANSEN
LOCAL TALENT theRISK TAKER NIALL McCLELLAND
meet MEAT your
Definitely worth lining up for TALKING TURKEY
Mario Fiorucci is the proprietor of The Healthy Butcher. 565 Queen St. W. and 298 Eglinton Ave. W. thehealthybutcher.com
28
RAMEN @ MOMOFUKU 190 University Ave. / 647.253.8000 / momofuku.com
news for
FOODIES
There’s never been a better time to eat in Toronto and the hits just keep coming. Two of the biggest names in dining—Daniel Boulud and David Chang—opened a total of six local venues between them: Café Boulud and the more casual dbar where his Firehouse burger (a beef patty topped with pulled pork) is already gaining devotees in the new Four Seasons; and, as for Chang, Nikai, the bar concept, Noodle Bar, home to the chef’s famous ramen, Daishō, where you and 10 friends can have the epic Bossam (a whole pork shoulder with a pile of fixings) and the adventurous Shōtō, all in the Shangri-La hotel…. Our own global chef brand, Susur Lee, brought his whole family together to open the new Asian-fusion seafood-heavy Bent. His sons Levi and Kai Bent-Lee run the front of the house that was designed by their mother, Brenda Bent-Lee…. Last year’s Top Chef Canada winner, Carl Heinrich, recently launched Richmond Station, which brings farm-to-table cooking to the Entertainment District. His business partner, Ryan Donovan, also serves as the in-house-butcher, the latest must-have restaurant accessory.... Brothers Guy and Michael Rubino have abandoned the fussy, upscale molecular Asian fusion they pioneered at Rain and Ame for the hearty comfort food of Italy at their new restaurant/espresso bar Strada 241 on Spadina. —Chris Johns
PHOTO: (RAMEN) COURTESY OF MOMOFUKU
R
oasting the perfect turkey is the easy part of holiday entertaining. It’s all the other stuff—hors d’oeuvres, sides, aperitifs—that need your attention. Just follow these steps to turkey perfection and your main course will wow even the most discerning guest. Start with a quality organic turkey. Yes, they are more expensive. But the reality is, spending 75 bucks on a bird that feeds a dozen people with leftovers yields a price per person of six dollars and change— about the same as serving a Big Mac and fries. Brine the turkey the night before. This is key. Brine is essentially a salt and sugar solution. By submerging the bird in a salt-water solution, the process of “diffusion” will seek to equalize the amount of salt on the outside of the turkey with the amount of salt on the inside. Ultimately, the brine will increase the succulence of poultry tenfold. You can add other ingredients to the brine—spices, herbs, citrus— that will also get drawn into the meat. Season the bird and insert butter under the skin. Slide your finger or a small rubber spatula between the skin and the breast meat to separate them, being careful not to tear the skin. Use the spatula or your fingertips to spread butter evenly over the whole breast area. Rub a little more butter all over the outside of the bird (in all, you’ll be using about a stick of butter). For a flavourful aromatic alternative, use a flavoured butter that you can make by mixing softened butter with fresh parsley, garlic, shallot, olive oil and lemon juice. Season the outside and inside of the cavity with salt and pepper, and throw two quartered onions into the cavity. Now for a confession: I’m not much of a fan of stuffing the turkey. If you stuff the bird, you have to wait for the internal temperature of the stuffing to reach 165°F (more details below), which puts you at major risk of overcooking the bird. I know, everyone enjoys stuffing, but nothing stops you from making a stuffing on the side and using stock as a flavouring base. Finally, place your turkey in a preheated 325°F oven. Higher temperatures may toughen protein and cause shrinkage. Although not essential, a cup or two of stock added to the bottom of the roasting pan increases moistness. A thermometer is essential for accuracy in cooking a large turkey. Roast the turkey, breast-side up, until a thermometer inserted into the thigh reads 165ºF (74ºC) for an unstuffed turkey. For larger birds (15 lbs and up), cover the entire pan with a loose tent of aluminum foil for the first 1½ hours, then remove to allow the turkey to brown. Basting the turkey is always a good idea, but limit the number of times you open and close your oven, as it can alter the length of cooking time (once an hour is sufficient). Remove the turkey when cooking is completed and let stand at least 20 minutes to allow the juices to set. A Sauvignon Blanc or a medium-bodied Zinfandel should pair well with the turkey, cranberry sauce and other traditional side dishes. Enjoy the leftovers as much as the dinner! —Mario Fiorucci
PROCLAIMER
theDISH WESLODGE
PHOTO: COURTESY OF WESLODGE
480 King St. W. / 416.367.0505 / weslodge.com The server approaches my table with a confident swagger and based on his leather gear—a cross between a shoulder holster and some sort of bondage wrap—I’m not sure if he’s here to flog me or engage me in a duel. Fortunately, he just wants to take my drink order. The strappy getups are just one sign that Weslodge—the latest buzzy and perpetually packed offering from Charles Khabouth (La Société, Patria) and Hanif Harji (Icon Legacy Hospitality)—takes its role as a “modern saloon” very seriously. This is still King West, however, so the elegant design by Alessandro Munge (Trattoria Mercatto, La Société) results in a room that is more royal hunting lodge than biker bar. Leather banquettes back up against dark walls, eclectic reproductions of antique paintings reside in elaborate frames and the long, tall bar heaves with colourful liquor bottles. The bottles are more than mere decoration, however, and the restaurant’s cocktail program is one of its best attributes. Bartender Elan Marks has invested heavily in exceptionally good barware—heavy, cut crystal glasses and big block ice—and has crafted a clever list of mostly classic cocktails. Some, like the rich, well-balanced and potent barrel-aged Negroni, the orange-spiced Old Fashioned and the tobacco-infused Manhattan, are available by the glass or the bottle. Such fine drinking comes at a price, though; you won’t see much change from a $20 for most of the drinks and some will cost you more than that. It’s tempting to think that the enormous bison head above the bar is a reference to the buffalo tartare: soft and gently gamey, enhanced with tart pickled mustard seeds, rich foie gras and toasted sourdough bread. Better not to imagine, though, that the fine deer head on one wall is in any way related to the rare seared venison chop on a swoosh of pine-nut
hummus. Of course, not all of the creatures on the restaurant’s meatinclined menu are represented in taxidermy form. Chef Stuart Cameron, who most recently manned the stoves at Nyood, works in semi-public from behind the tall windows that look into the kitchen. There you’ll see him frying fat nuggets of cornish hen that he’ll balance atop a bright, loose scoop of sweet creamed corn. The corn is reminiscent of the canned version we all loved as kids, but the hen lacks the full, complex flavour of the best fried bird. One night, the braised veal cheeks are replaced with seared tenderloin—I expect maintaining a steady supply of veal cheeks is a challenge and wouldn’t be surprised to see that change stick—and paired with creamy puréed lingot beans, tender escarole studded with bacon and a few slices of date. It’s a brash, almost aggressively flavourful dish and it just might be the best thing the kitchen produces. It would be nice if the same care and attention was shown to the list of sides. Roasted carrots with yogurt and harissa (a Tunisian hot sauce) should be a smash, but the undercooked carrots are overwhelmed by the spice and the yogurt just becomes an afterthought. Similarly, the charred Brussels sprouts are as dull and gassy as an old grey mare. The lacklustre sides are a rare misstep but not the only one. That strange, sour foam draped across the lemon parfait tastes like a cleaning product and nearly destroys an otherwise well-judged dessert. Fancy foams and delicate desserts don’t seem right in a saloon, anyway, not even one as aspirational as Weslodge. —Chris Johns
Chris Johns is an award-winning food and travel writer.
OF COURSE, NOT ALL OF THE CREATURES ON THE RESTAURANT’S MEAT-INCLINED MENU ARE REPRESENTED IN TAXIDERMY FORM.
Inside its industrial exterior, Gusto 101 is buzzing. 29
PROCLAIMER
microTREND
The donut is the new cupcake No longer content with its place as police-joke punch line, the humble donut has moved beyond the coffee counter and the drive-thru. As three local bakers take the Canadian food staple to the next level, donuts are hogging the spotlight as the next big sweet thing.
1596 Queen St. W. / 647.352.4848 gloryholedoughnuts.com
DOUGH BY RACHELLE
Beast / 96 Tecumseth St. 647.352.6000 / @doughtoronto
LITTLE NICKY’S COFFEE
If the name doesn’t grab you, the tasty treats offered up at Ashley Jacot de Boinod’s super-friendly donut shop certainly will. Her supremely light and airy confections practically fly out of the Parkdale storefront. “Lemon Meringue” and “Sweet Potato Pie” redefine the traditional “jelly” with alternative velvety centres. Topped sky-high with subtly sweet meringue or whipped cream and pecans, they’re a serious challenge to devour without a trip to the dry cleaner. Bestseller “The Elvis” is a peanut-buttery yeast donut topped with cream cheese frosting, banana chips, peanuts, bacon and a house-made marshmallow. “Bread & Butter,” the ex-Buca pastry chef’s personal fave, is not just for breakfast. All freshly hand-baked with no preservatives, these babies really are the stuff that creams are made of.
Double Chocolate Glaze. Apple Fritter Pumpkin Pie. These are fighting words, getting local foodies out of bed and onto the sidewalk in front of Beast Restaurant on Thursday mornings. By the time the back door is flung open at 8 am, the queue is already 10-deep, as fans of the homemade yeasty treats line up to snag $3 donuts, like “The Homer” (blackcurrant icing with sprinkles) or bestseller Maple Bacon. Beast co-owner and artisanal pastry chef Rachelle Caldwell is known to pull all-nighters, usually baking 25 dozen donuts—sans mixes and robots—and posting flavour and inventory updates on Twitter. The pop-up shop stays open until the goods are gone, which is often by midmorning. If you miss them at Beast, you can venture out of the hood to Sam James Coffee Bar in the PATH or Sanagan’s Meat Locker in Kensington Market. It’s worth the trip!
Entering Little Nicky’s, you’d never guess the adorable coffee spot is home to some seriously special donuts, until the oldschool donut-robot starts to whirl and the tiny treats are cranked out one by one. Reminiscent of The Ex’s once-exclusive Tiny Tom Donuts, these mini delights are deepfried to order and helpfully served up in a grease-absorbing paper baggie. Renee Bonise, co-owner with her brother Frank, meticulously guides the tasty rings as they swim and flip through the retro machine before diving into a bowl of icing sugar. A quick dusting of cinnamon sugar, and they’re ready to be devoured. Even Nikita, the café’s namesake chihuahua, chomps at the bit for them. And who wouldn’t? Perfectly textured and served piping hot, they go great with a coffee. Or not! —Carolyn Drebin
30
375 Queen St. W. / 416.260.0500 @LittleNickys
PHOTOS: ADRIAN ARMSTRONG
GLORY HOLE DOUGHNUTS
PROCLAIMER
theREAD
Type’s Joanne Saul shares her top 3 holiday reading picks This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz (Riverhead) This is the follow-up to Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It’s a short story collection that’s all about love—every kind of love imaginable—and it’s a powerful and poetic examination of the human heart.
theLIST
Heads-up on what not to miss
DEC 4 Matisse: In Search of True Painting – MAR 17 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York JAN 16 London Art Fair – JAN 20 Islington, UK
Silent House by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf Canada) Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s new novel tells the saga of a Turkish family set before the impending military coup of 1980. Atmospheric, lyrical and intensely political, this is vintage Pamuk.
JAN 24 Interior Design Show – JAN 27 Metro Toronto Convention Centre JAN 29 Tristan und Isolde – FEB 23 Four Seasons Centre, Toronto FEB 1 Quebec Winter Carnival – FEB 17 Quebec City FEB 3
Super Bowl XLVII Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans
PHOTO: (SMITH) STEVEN SEBRING
FEB 9 Patti Smith: Camera Solo – MAY 19 AGO, Toronto
Dear Life by Alice Munro (Douglas Gibson Books) Nobody can write short stories like Alice Munro. In her latest collection, she demonstrates yet again her ability to uncover the miraculous in the absolutely mundane. Set mostly in small-town Ontario, Munro uncannily unpacks the depths of human relationships.
The Tragically Hip FEB 14 Air Canada Centre, Toronto FEB 20 Picasso and Chicago – MAY 12 Art Institute of Chicago
Joanne Saul is co-owner of Type Books. 883 Queen St. W. and 427 Spadina Rd. / typebooks.ca
FEB 26 Paris Fashion Week – MAR 6 Paris, France 31
PROCLAIMER
MR. SMITH’S
GOOD TIMES GUIDE Five things making me happy right now HAPA IZAKAYA
MARTIN AMIS’ NOVEL LIONEL ASBO Tired of being told to read sad and serious Canadian novels by the CBC? Read funny British ones instead! The most recent one by the master of nasty, Martin Amis, about a dangerous thug who wins the lottery and becomes a tabloid hero, is a day-glo satire of contemporary media and a hilariously cruel depiction of the British working classes. Actually, it’s not exactly contemporary—more like an acceleration of the contemporary, as if set in the near future, a place where everything has got just a little bit worse than it already is (more hysterical pit bulls, more celebrity obsession, more ruthless PR firms). It’s a broad, silly, hyperbolical, even sentimental book, but there is a Dickensian story in there about young lovers who must escape the violent revenge of the bad man, and that makes it all satisfyingly scary.
FOOTWORK BAR You have by now probably heard of The Hoxton—perhaps the most sophisticated addition to King West’s club scene—a modern dance space that attracts just slightly more guys with glasses than muscle-heads. Its music also isn’t always the electrified big-stadium pop that draws the Red-Bull-and-vodka crowd to the Richmond Street halls. And that’s great. But before you just accept the word of every plaid-shirted guy who tells you it’s the only club you can visit downtown, let me remind you about the long-standing existence of Footwork, the only place in the city that consistently brings in—on Saturday nights only—European techno and electronica DJs with a grownup sound. This is one of the last remaining dark, after-hours, crazyedge rave-y places. I have seen here, among others, Adam Beyer, Marco Carola, Green Velvet and Paco Osuna. It’s not fashionable and the sound can be scarily pulverizing. But once you’ve gone over to dark underground music, every other club feels like a big children’s birthday party. (The address is technically 425 Adelaide Street West, but the entrance is actually in an alley off Brant Street. Don’t go on Fridays.) footworkbar.com
Russell Smith writes novels set in Toronto. His latest is Girl Crazy. He also writes two weekly columns for The Globe and Mail, one on style and one on culture, and is one of the founders of the online men’s magazine DailyXY.com.
32
A Toronto branch of the bustling, inventive Vancouver sake/tapas bar—finally! An izakaya in Japan is akin to a pub with finger food, and this Canadian incarnation is just as casual and rowdy as its Asian inspirations—with tightly clad waitresses shouting welcomes in Japanese at startled newcomers—but its focus is actually on serious, international food. Small plates range from kimchi to halibut tacos—fusion up the ying-yang—but the overall flavours are recognizably Asian, big on salt and umami with prickly hints of fire. The raw mackerel slices are seared at the table with a blowtorch; the result is lip-smackingly fishy and barely crispy. A nice celebratory atmosphere in here, too. The only thing that should go is the big TV screens showing sports—this is Toronto; nobody’s watching them. 602 College St., hapaizakaya.com
CANON BLANC A small boutique on Queen Street West with a lot of understated but ever-so-slightly unusual clothes for men and women—that’s not a rarity in itself. The thing that makes this one so charming is that its owners, a couple, are French, really French, so French-fromFrance French it makes you want a croissant as soon as you enter. They actually chose to move here from Paris, which should make you give your city a second look. They carry lines with long French names—Commune de Paris 1871, Petit Bateau, Macon et Lesquoy—subtle and expensive stuff that’s hard to find elsewhere on the strip, or anywhere in town. But really their accents are just as charming as the clothes. 679 Queen St. W., canon-blanc.com
ROLLING DOWN A HILL I do this at Christie Pits, where you can choose between the gentle southern slope or the black-diamond-steep northern face. I have been doing it in the muddy fall and will continue to do it in a parka as the snow begins to coat it. The reason I’m doing this so much is that I’m doing it with a three-year-old, who has just discovered the hysterical pleasure of getting dizzy. So we run up the hill together, giggling, and then roll down it, screaming. The threeyear-old provides me with an excuse but also with the realization that I could have been doing it for years. I have taught him only the classic sideways roll, for safety, but I plan to move on to dangerous somersaulting in a year or so. Injury and dizziness are two things the boy should learn now, before he starts spending time at places like Footwork.
Available at
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN COUTO
All good. All the time. THOMPSON DINER 51 BATHURST STREET (BATHURST AND WELLINGTON). TEL: 416.601.3533 WWW.THOMPSONHOTELS.COM
461 King St. West I Lower Level I 416-599-SPIN @SPiN_Toronto
ARCHITECTURE
MODERN
MISSION PETER CLEWES AND HIS ARCHITECTSALLIANCE FIGHT WITH STEEL AND GLASS TO FORGE A NEW MODERNIST TORONTO BY JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
38
ince the siren call of the glass tower bewitched Toronto about 15 years ago, no local designer of residential buildings has been busier than Peter Clewes. This outspoken, bright and feisty architect and his team at architectsAlliance have displayed, in one project after another, their talent for creating vivid, convincing modern art in a marketplace cross-pressured by aggressive bottom-line calculations, the indifference of some developers to aesthetic values, hunger for novelty, and the inclination of city planners to put roadblocks in the way of developments that challenge their small-is-beautiful ideology. Clewes has flourished in the teeth of these daunting forces while staying true to the values of the old-school, morally driven architectural modernism that budded in Europe early in the 20th century and came to fruition as a popular phenomenon in North America and Europe after World War II. So what keeps an architect doing modernism in a time when building designers are encouraged by cautious developers to make their mark on the streetscape with faux-historical dressup? “That’s how my brain operates,” Clewes shot back during a recent conversation. Modernism “is about rationalism, it’s about creating a commodious building, it’s about simplicity, timelessness, honesty. Of all the other movements in architecture we can think of in the last 400 years, it’s the one that has really stood the test of time, in terms of its basic grounding in a civilized, middle-class, collective society.” Modernism always did and still does feature a visual style that celebrates clean-lined straightforwardness and shuns historical decoration—the kind of sleek, strictly tailored formal elegance one finds in such high-rise residential projects by Clewes as Spire, which rises in the shadow of
39
postmodernism, severe minimalism, flamboyant deconstructivism. He fell for none of them and pressed on zealously with the values of modernism kept well in mind. In the early residential project called Twenty Niagara, for example, Clewes delivered on the old modernist promise to make dense urban housing that was open to sunshine and fresh air, and that said “home,” not “warehouse” or “barracks.” The units extend the width of the floor plate—thus admitting light and air from two directions—and internal corridors are eliminated by stacking the suites alongside two elevator shafts. The intention was to make the apartments seem less like standardized boxes strung along a long, empty hallway and more like single-family dwellings with recognizable front doors. Since 1999, when Twenty Niagara was completed, Torontonians have become more comfortable with living in the sky, and architectsAlliance’s attention to “amenity” has broadened to include, especially, what happens at grade and at the top. At the feet of both the graceful 18 Yorkville tower and the much higher Four Seasons structure nearby, for instance, the land freed up by going vertical has been devoted to new public parks, expertly landscaped and outfitted. But urban populations need landmarks as much as we need parks—hence the plain but emphatic crown of the soaring metropolitan-scaled Four Seasons tower, which rears up boldly against the sky like a beacon over the largely low-rise Yorkville neighbourhood. But for an architect to keep his or her mind on the questions that matter is not easy. As the inner city has rapidly become more dense, opinions and ambitions have proliferated and conflicted. Toronto is having a fraught (but interesting) time growing up from a big Canadian city into an international metropolis. “I think we could be doing a lot better,” Clewes says. “It’s not just an architectural problem. It’s a cultural problem. It’s the culture of the city, starting with the planning framework, the market proclivities, the development industry, the construction industry. I may be getting
"HOUSING REALLY IS THE FABRIC OF ALL GREAT CITIES, AND TORONTO IS NO EXCEPTION."
40
PHOTOS: DON WEBER
St. James Cathedral, and the new Four Seasons Hotel and condo complex in Yorkville. But the modern movement was always about something more important than style. It embodied a certain generous attitude toward the city that is expressed well in Clewes’ best Toronto buildings. Instead of drawing attention to themselves by being glamorous or novel, for example, such structures as District Lofts in the old garment manufacturing area on Spadina Avenue, and 550 Wellington in King West, and 18 Yorkville Uptown have a neighbourly regard for their contexts. Each of them, as circumstances require, perks up a tired streetscape, or completes and anchors a mid-rise modernist ensemble, or strengthens the architectural texture in a dilapidated swatch of downtown. This is architecture in the high modern tradition of service to city and society, which is the spiritual lineage that Clewes identifies with. He acknowledges the perennial public passion for what he calls “extraordinary buildings.” One of the key appeals of modernism for him, however, is its emphasis on “ordinary” buildings—especially the buildings that people live in. “When I think about all the great cities in the world,” Clewes says, “they have this residential fabric that is punctuated by various moments (often cultural), or public-realm moments—art galleries, public buildings, or squares or parks…. But housing really is the fabric of all great cities, and Toronto is no exception. Housing was always a principal preoccupation of the modern movement, and it’s also my own fascination. It right away starts with this notion of amenity. Strip away the idea of style! How do you create a better living condition for people? What do we need that will make us feel better about ourselves and the community we live in?” Clewes has manifested answers to these important questions ever since he finished his architectural training at the University of Waterloo in 1979. He emerged from school at a time when anti-modernist crazes were sweeping the world of building design—highly decorative
old and nostalgic, but 40 years ago it seemed there was a greater collective interest in the craft of building.... (Today) it’s fractured and deconstructed, which makes it very hard to do compelling architecture in this city.” During my interview with him, Clewes spoke often of “compelling architecture,” which is something he wants to see more of in Toronto and which he wants to generate in his office. But what does “compelling” mean? I ask him and find out it’s got more to do with good citizenship than aesthetics. “It means architecture that gives back to the public realm and city,” he tells me. “It sets itself up in a positive relationship with the block, the precinct, the neighbourhood in which it’s constructed. It becomes a precedent for other buildings to follow, a positive experience we can all learn from.” A favourite example, selected from his own portfolio, of a design “that gives back to the public realm” is the hotel/condo combination at 550 Wellington Street West. One such structure, or even the nearly 20 similar projects that Clewes has completed in downtown Toronto, of course, cannot define and direct the enormous wave of condominium development now reconfiguring the city. But the ideas of Peter Clewes, who has certainly been the most prolific architectural rider of that surge, are sound, humane and civic-minded, and they should be ingredients of the ongoing public discussion about the kind of city we want Toronto to be. Whether they will or not, however, one thing is certain: Toronto isn’t waiting around for the debate to arrive at a stately conclusion. “Whatever you think about the architectural quality of what we’re building here in the city, we are creating a vitality and energy that has previously not existed here,” Clewes says. “My formative years were in Montreal, where Toronto was the Antichrist—the banal, boring city we all just joked about. Toronto is a city that has completely changed from what it was 20 or even five years ago. It’s undergoing a tremendous transformation.”
DESIGN
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN
MARIMEKKO'S HOLISTIC DESIGN IDEA TAKES YOU TO A BETTER PLACE On a day of grey clouds and light rain in Toronto, the pop-bright colours in the Marimekko showroom within the new EQ3 furnishings store in Liberty Village glow with irresistible cheeriness. There is something irrepressible about the line’s naïf ’60s positivity that seems to add a special frisson of desirability in these dark times. Not to mention an enduringly purist Scandesign modernity. At once, the natural connections between Finland and Canada come into focus. While Marimekko’s quintessentially modern fabrics, clothing and housewares are popular around the world, the appeal of their bright hues and bold patterns might be felt all the more keenly in northern countries with long, cold and sometimes bleak winters. Lifting spirits: That intention is at the heart of the famous Finnish design company, which was founded in 1951 by Armi Ratia and her husband Viljo. After World War II, as Finland struggled to repair itself, the designer felt an impassioned wish to bring “little moments” of happiness to her country. As she observed years later, in 1976: “To be present in the everyday lives of people and make our secret dreams come true. No more, no less—that is my vision for Marimekko’s future.” There’s a playfulness to the very name Marimekko, but a straightforwardness and clarity, too, a combination that aptly sums up the company’s ethos. “Mari” is an anagram of the founder’s first name and “mekko” means dress in Finnish. It was through fashion that Marimekko first entered the design world, in a show of Ratia’s dress designs in Helsinki in 1951. They were an instant success in Finland and the designer quickly moved to market her frocks in Brussels and then in New York City and San Francisco. When First Lady and style icon Jackie Kennedy bought seven Marimekko dresses in 1960, posing in a red sleeveless one on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the American fashion press and public were enchanted by the company’s fresh designs. The clean, architectonic lines of the clothing and the air of liberated chic fit the mood of the moment. A growing stable of designers added to the company’s treasure trove of patterns. (The Marimekko archive now contains over 3,500 of them.) In 1964, Maija Isola created perhaps the best known of Marimekko’s patterns, Unikko. Ratia had tried to ban floral patterns within the company, but these distinctive overlapping blossoms, in different colourways, remain hugely popular to this day. Menswear was added to the offerings early on. Marimekko designs—stripes, solids, polka dots, folkloric patterns of deer and trees, florals, simple colour bands—continued to appeal as styles became more casual and unisex in the late ’60s. Once again, after dwindling on the dusty back shelves of Finnish product purveyors, Marimekko’s star is on the rise. The company is now led by a former banker who has rolled out ambitious new directions for the
42
brand. Flagship stores have opened in New York City, Beverly Hills and Boston, and 15 stores are being planned for China and Hong Kong— there are at present 22 stores in Japan and South Korea. And Marimekko has begun participating in New York Fashion Week. The spring/summer 2013 show presented silky scoop-necked shifts and body-skimming fulllength dresses with an easy feel, ladylike in their modesty but utterly free of frou-frou—fetchingly simple but not simplistic. Marimekko’s patterns and strong colour blocking can seem, on the surface, childlike and pop-art influenced, but they are always designforward and designed to last. The name of each design, designer and the year the design was created are printed along the selvage of every length of fabric. An almost traditional Japanese influence can be observed in patterns with spare silhouetted branches and in two-dimensional patterns that evoke floral motifs for kimonos. But, ultimately, there is something ineffably Finnish about it all—a sunny determination, positive and humane, that persists even in a dark climate—the very thing to brighten up the severe lines of contemporary architecture and furniture, which can sometimes seem like cold exercises in style. A throw cushion or two might be enough for the timid, but a modern lounge chair or sofa done completely in Marimekko fabric is quite a winning sight, a realization shared by the founder of EQ 3, the Winnipeg-based furniture company that has brought the line back into the spotlight in its newest location, a former boiler house in the middle of Liberty Village, where Marimekko has its own happy zone within the store. Hanging banners and wall canvases in irrepressible Marimekko patterns energize the store on both levels. Bolts of the much-loved printed fabrics are on display along with tableware, cushions, tote bags, oven mitts, aprons and even paper napkins—all in the bold signature prints. The fabrics can either be purchased by the metre or used by EQ 3 to cover specific pieces of furniture (prices range from $48 to $79/metre, and the fabrics are available in a range of weights and finishes). It’s a successful marriage of design approaches, which nicely augments EQ 3’s own broad range of contemporary design classics. The lengths of fabric in the high windows spur the imagination. The birch tree pattern, for example, with its graphic lines and tones of light green, and another, of a forest in silhouette, have a distinctive Finnish charm that creates a slightly dreamy fairytale mood in the urban setting—and yet somehow they look both right now and right at home. Kateri Lanthier is a Toronto-based freelance writer who specializes in art, design and architecture. Her first collection of poetry, Reporting from Night, was published by Iguana Books in December 2011.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF EQ3
“TO BE PRESENT IN THE EVERYDAY LIVES OF PEOPLE AND MAKE OUR SECRET DREAMS COME TRUE. NO MORE, NO LESS— THAT IS MY VISION FOR MARIMEKKO’S FUTURE.”
43
MAN WI
POWER BREAKFAST WITH RYERSON PR ES
THE NEW RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE
44
CULTURE
WITH A PLAN
PR ESIDENT SHELDON LEVY REDEFINES THE TERM BY LEANNE DELAP
RYERSON PRESIDENT SHELDON LEVY IS ON A ROLL
45
46
virtual, housing more than 60 companies and creating 800 jobs. It is located just below the Cineplex Odeon theatre on the Dundas Street corner that has become our Times Square, the theatre where Ryerson students attend early-bird lectures before the rest of us settle in for flicks in the afternoon. But this city building maverick is not one to kick back and watch cranes. He likes to keep his eye on what’s next: His dream is no less than to change the face of downtown, and he thinks big on behalf of Ryerson. Levy is tall and silver haired and genial, a favourite with students, a fixture wandering his own campus. He notices every flower bed, watches how the kids use the space and listens to what the neighbours say. But his chief trait is an astonishing ability to lay out his master plan for Ryerson in such an off-the-cuff manner that he makes you feel he is reflecting on these words and ideas freshly, just for you. It is the classroom mastery of a former math teacher. Levy’s first order of business was simple and obvious, but powerful: “The first thing we did was clean the place up. We planted flowers; we made the campus inviting. It was an important statement that we care,” he says. “We had to change the mindset of a downtown campus. We are not only publicly funded but we are the garden of our neighbours, all these condos and businesses. This is their space, too.” Levy maintains that generosity is at the heart of community: “If you ask for something, it is a deal. If you don’t ask, it is a relationship.” He may have a career as a romance advice columnist, if he ever gives up the top job here. gerton Ryerson, a politician and educator who devised Ontario’s public school system, founded the Toronto Normal School for teacher training on this site in 1847. Used as a training facility by the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, it became
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF RYERSON
he Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving turkey, a working breakfast for Sheldon Levy starts bright and early. After a weekend laying down some 700 kilometres of cottage country highways aboard his souped-up Beemer motorbike, Levy, 63, arrives for an 8 am breakfast with a Tim’s already on the go. Levy has been the president and vice-chancellor of Ryerson University since 2005, but this fall marks an auspicious moment in his tenure where a number of his big dreams have become reality. Levy may be the easiest man to interview of all time: One windup question and he launches into his story. It is an hour before we get to unwrapping the trolley of berries and pastries. “Before I ever got to the university, when I asked students where Ryerson was, they would inevitably say, ‘Behind Sam’s’,” Levy recalls. “Ryerson had turned its back on the city, all the buildings were built to back on to major streets. We had to become outward facing: Here we were in geographically the best location in Canada! We needed a proud, strong face on Yonge Street.” The view from Levy’s office, in Ryerson’s Jorgenson Hall, is of the older bits of the university he runs, those squat, dun-coloured structures that run along Gerrard and Gould, the old heart of the university. He can’t see the humming construction site where he is reshaping Yonge above Dundas, replacing the skiddy strip that was once ruled by Sam the Record Man with a landmark Student Learning Centre designed by Toronto’s Zeidler Partnership and Snøhetta of Oslo and New York. Nor can he see Maple Leaf Gardens, which reopened in August as Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre, a grand coup that Levy orchestrated with multilevels of government, business and his own student body. Out of view is this past September’s grand launch, the Ryerson Image Centre, with its public galleries housing the internationally acclaimed Black Star collection. And he can’t see the Digital Media Zone—one of his proudest achievements—an entrepreneurial start-up space that merges his university with the city and the world, and the physical with the
CULTURE
Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1948. What became Ryerson Polytechnical Institute was awarded university-degree-granting status in 1971, and the final name change to Ryerson University took place in 1993. And today the school’s footprint on the downtown landscape has expanded in every direction. Some of the growth is sleight of hand: “We put up signs!" Levy says. "People credit me with building more than I have. There were just buildings that had no signs!” But more important is the student—and alumni—sense of pride. Levy believes pride builds reputation. And reputation builds desire: “Physical space is connected to pride,” he says. And there is a clear correlation between a school’s reputation and student demand. Today Ryerson has the most applicants applying per position of any school in the province. Levy wants Ryerson students to feel about Toronto the way NYU students do about being a part of Manhattan. “It is about followers versus leaders,” he says. “The words students use to describe the campus are edgy, street-smart, urban. So the way we have gone about things is edgy, gutsy, risky. You gotta walk the walk.” In 2006, in consultation with a number of private sector consultants (including Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Daoust Lestage, Greenberg Consultants and IBI Group), Levy began work on a master plan. There were three main priorities: urban intensification, making the university a pedestrian zone, and a commitment to design excellence. “Every one of our deals has improved the city,” says Levy simply. Look at Maple Leaf Gardens. “Loblaws was a terrific partner on that one. They are the street level, keeping the street level alive, involving the public. We built above. But there is magic in that building. Don’t tell me that the person stepping on the ice at the Gardens is not inspired more by the atmosphere.” Each one of Levy’s deals involves a complicated corporate and public bartering. He feels strongly that the new projects should add to the
city itself as well. He is big on shared space—giving up air rights is how he gets buildings paid for, taking space for university activities in return—and his priority is keeping retail or public space at street level to maintain conversation with the community: At the Ted Rogers School of Business Management at Dundas and Bay, the main floor is Best Buy and Canadian Tire. There is the Cineplex Odeon theatre deal: Those seats were built to accommodate both state-ofthe-art lecture hall facilities as well as the latest surround sound for the popcorn set. The Ryerson Image Centre has public galleries. The new student residences going in at 186-188 Jarvis Street will feature retail along the streetscape. As will the Student Learning Centre; even the old Sam’s sign will be re-installed to be visible from Yonge Street. “The city uses the ground floor,” Levy says. “It keeps the streets safe.” evy is using this interview craftily to plant the idea with private sector developers that he is open to making deals for more joint student housing projects. “It would be ideal, between the Gardens and Gerrard on Church,” Levy enthuses. “Print that, let’s see if we can get someone to approach us.” But the key to Levy’s heart is inspirational design. “If you build ugly, they will look down on you. Build something that adds to the conversation, it takes us all further.” It boils down to rallying one clear voice: “I really do believe that if we all had the will we could become the top city in the world,” Levy says. All we need to get there, according to this urban visionary, is “to share a common dream and ambition.” Leanne Delap graduated from Ry High back when the journalism faculty was located in a church basement on Gould. She is prouder now of her flourishing alma mater under Sheldon Levy’s stewardship. Leanne has been editor in chief of FASHION and fashion editor at The Globe and Mail. She currently writes columns for the Toronto Star and magazines across the country.
47
21 TRINITY ST, THE DISTILLERY I 62 BATHURST STREET AT WELLINGTON TORONTO ON
416-260-9696
WWW.GOTSTYLE.CA
(PREVIOUS SPREAD) OSTRICH FEATHER DRESSES,
MARIKABROSE.COM; ALAN ANDERSON EARRINGS AT HOLT RENFREW, HOLTRENFREW.COM (OPPOSITE) ON ALY: WAYNE CLARK SEQUIN DRESS AT HOLT RENFREW, HOL-
TRENFREW.COM; FEATHER HEADPIECE AT LILLIPUT HATS, LILLIPUTHATS.COM (THIS PAGE) ON LEANNE: SEQUIN DRESS AT FASHION CRIMES, FASHIONCRIMES.CA; ALAN ANDERSON NECKLACE AT HOLT RENFREW,
HOLTRENFREW.COM; HERMÈS BRACELETS, HERMES.COM
53
54
ON LEANNE: KIMONO AT JACFLASH, JACFLASH.NET; CALVIN KLEIN LACE BRA, CALVINKLEIN.COM; JOEFFER CAOC LEATHER SKIRT, JOEFFERCAOC.COM. ON ALY: HUGO BOSS SILK BLOUSE, HUGOBOSS.COM; WOLFORD PANTIES, WOLFORD.COM; DRAMATIC ENCOUNTER MAC LIPSTICK, MACCOSMETICS.COM.
(THIS PAGE) ON LEANNE: LUCIAN MATIS GOWN, LUCIANMATIS.COM; HERMÈS BOOTS, HERMES.COM; BRACELET AT FASHION CRIMES, FASHIONCRIMES.CA; ALAN ANDERSON EARRINGS AT HOLT RENFREW, HOLTRENFREW.COM (OPPOSITE PAGE) ON LEANNE: GIVENCHY LEATHER DRESS AT HOLT RENFREW,
HOLTRENFREW.COM; PINK TARTAN FAUX FUR SNOW COAT, PINKTARTAN.COM ON ALY: METALLIC KNIT DRESS AT FASHION CRIMES, FASHIONCRIMES.CA
56
ON ALY: CHANEL CHIFFON BLOUSE AND VELVET PANTS, CHANEL.COM; JEFFREY CAMPBELL SHOES AT JACFLASH,
JACFLASH.NET; VINTAGE BRACELET ALY STEWART FROM FORD MODELS LEANNE PROCTOR FROM ELMER OLSEN STYLIST: MARCUS TRIPP HAIR AND MAKEUP: JUKKA, PLUTINO GROUP SHOT ON LOCATION IN THE PENTHOUSE SUITE AT 550 WELLINGTON ST. W.
59
STReeT
e
STYL
T.O.'S MOST STYLISH TURN KING WEST INTO A CATWALK FOR WMC FASHION WEEK
60
i
FOOD
FOOD FORAGERS FORGET CALLING AHEAD TO MAKE A RESERVATION. THE NEW TREND IN EATING OUT INVOLVES NIMBLE TYPING FINGERS AND AN ALL-WHITE UNIFORM. AND, YES, MEMBERSHIP DOES HAVE ITS PRIVILEGES. BY MARILISA RACCO
t’s possible that I’m sick of food. I can’t look at another pizza, bowl of pho, duck confit, osso buco or steak tartare. And don’t even talk to me about pork buns, smoked brisket or fish tacos. I’m done with all of it. Just kidding! I couldn’t be sick of food anymore than Lindsay Lohan could be sick of the spotlight, or Mitt Romney of infringing on a woman’s right to choose. It’s more likely that I’m sick of restaurants. And judging by the lengthy menu of novelty dining experiences popping up across the city, it would seem that I’m not alone. “Dining has moved beyond the plate,” says Ivy Ackerman, founder of Butter and Egg Road, a members-only dining club that organizes dinners in Toronto, New York, Chicago and Miami. For Ackerman, the term foodie “denotes that people want an elevated dining experience where they can sample different dishes, learn about their composition, enjoy a wine pairing, meet the chef and share their experiences with other food enthusiasts. The foodie wants to discover the story behind each bite.” The idea for Butter and Egg Road came to Ackerman after a solo trip to Paris, where, befriending two couples at a restaurant one boisterous evening of eating that ended up including the restaurant’s chef, manager and host, it occurred to her that while food and travel go hand-in-hand so does the desire to share those experiences with like-minded people. Ackerman launched Butter and Egg Road in early 2012 with the tagline “Be a local anywhere,” which will set you back $300 a year in Toronto and $400 internationally. What her club does is connect the well travelled and eager to be well fed, and provides them with a forum where they can dine with their peers while experiencing a new food concept in the city. A typical Butter and Egg Road event is limited to 14 to 20 people in a specially curated program that highlights a unique dining aspect exclusive to a city. Toronto events have included an after-hours dinner at St. Lawrence Market, a Chinatown crawl and dinners with menus specially created by in-house chefs. International events have included a 27-dish tasting menu at Danji in New York and a restaurant tour of Chicago’s West Loop neighbourhood. Unsure what to expect, I attended a Butter and Egg Road dinner at a restaurant in Roncesvalles last spring. I travel a lot but my budget is usually dedicated to handbags, making me more of an eatie than a foodie. I was sure they’d think me a Philistine. What I found was a varied group ranging from PhD students to entrepreneurs and creative types, who all shared a love for food and drink with no pretension. And I learned the real meaning of the term foodie when one woman told me she once booked a last-minute trip to Spain upon learning that she had garnered a coveted spot at Ferran Adrià’s world-famous (now-shuttered) El Bulli. But if you worry that the only way to get a world-class meal is to board a plane, Charlie’s Burgers has got your back—and your belly. Founded in 2009, Charlie’s Burgers (colloquially known as CB) is a guerilla dining concept that sees innovative suppers prepared by acclaimed chefs and held in undisclosed locations. Diners are admitted on a first-come, first-served email RSVP system, making garnering a spot at a CB dinner like scoring a ticket to an unscheduled rock show. Which is apropos when you consider that most of the chefs curating the menus are like rock stars in their own right. Founder Franco Stalteri spent several years working as an executive head hunter for luxury restaurants and kept hearing the same refrain from chefs: “I wish I could do the menu I want with no restrictions.” Since then, Stalteri has given select Canadian and international chefs a platform where they can create the menu of their dreams with wine pairings for a limited number of patrons who are eager to spend upwards of $150 for the experience.
63
“When a chef is able to fully execute and control every aspect of a menu without adhering to a specific set of food or labour costs, guest preferences or culinary style, the resulting menu and experience is totally different from a restaurant experience,” Stalteri says. “CB is not meant to replace a restaurant, rather it was designed to promote the industry and culinary arts.” In its four years of operation, CB has hit a few impressive milestones. In 2010, Food & Wine listed it as number 3 out of 100 best new food and drink experiences around the world; Stalteri has taken his concept to London; and famous collaborators have included chefs from Le Chateaubriand in Paris, Jamie Kennedy, Jonathan Gushue of Langdon Hall, and Gold Medal Plate winner Marc Lepine (who created a 100-course meal for CB). There’s even a CB-branded champagne from France. In Toronto, a seat at a CB event sells out within five to seven minutes. Just as macaroni has cheese, the trend toward innovation at the high-end has spawned a downtown subculture. The Toronto Underground Market (aka TUM) describes itself as a “social food market for the community to sample the food of Toronto home cooks.” Held at Evergreen Brick Works, for $15 patrons can gain entrance and peruse vendors (most of whom are budding chefs) preparing and selling everything from corned beef to tacos to the Filipino delicacy balut, a fertilized duck embryo that’s boiled and eaten out of the shell that sold out at the last TUM in under two hours. “Toronto has a huge lack of street food and I see the reaction to TUM as a demand for more,” says TUM cofounder Hassel Aviles. “TUM allows people to consume food in a completely unique and exciting way.” The crowd at a TUM event is like being under the beer tent at a Bon Iver concert. Bedraggled hipsters in reissued sneakers and horn-rimmed glasses stand in seemingly interminable lineups for some of the best and most innovative cheap street food you could imagine. Despite the chaos and questionable beverage offerings (I seriously cannot drink Ontario wine), it is the quintessential people’s forum for food. “Communal eating and food markets are not a new concept,” Aviles says. “It’s fun to see how others react to food and share the experience with lots of people.” For the ultimate communal food experience, it’s hard to top Dîner en Blanc. A “chic picnic” that started in Paris over 25 years ago, the yearly event has since expanded to more than a dozen international participating cities. This past August’s edition in Toronto counted some 1,400 diners. The hitch: Everyone must wear head-to-toe white. “All our guests share an appreciation for food, wine and the unexpected,” says Jessica Tan, an organizer of Toronto’s Dîner en Blanc. “It is about the journey, not just the evening. It’s that joie de vivre that we long for in our daily lives.” This year, Toronto attendees were given the option of bringing their own fare—typically seafood towers and miles of cheese and charcuterie boards— or purchasing food from Gourmet Cuisine, where chef Teddy Corrado put together a menu combining Korean, Italian, Latin and Canadian flavours to reflect Toronto’s diversity. There’s no such thing as getting rained out and they’re really stringent about the all-white policy. Which begs the question: How long will it be before Tide to Go jumps on as a sponsor? What the success of these new dining concepts proves is that innovation and imagination aren’t just attractive to Toronto diners, they are the next great thing in food. Or, as Stalteri puts it: “Luxury now is driven by creativity and having access to it.” And there’s no way any of us will ever tire of enjoying, or indulging in, luxury.
64
PHOTOS: (FOOD) SARA KUNTZ, (TUM) HASSEL AVILES, (DINER EN BLANC) COURTESY OF DINER EN BLANC
JUST AS MACARONI HAS CHEESE, THE TREND TOWARD INNOVATION AT THE HIGH-END HAS SPAWNED A DOWNTOWN SUBCULTURE.
WHERE PIZZA MET COCKTAIL
King West’s neighbourhood restaurant INSPIRED IN ITALY, MADE IN CANADA
333 King Street West T: 416.599.6585 | 3827 Bathurst Street T: 416.631.6585 www.paeseristorante.com
buca.ca | 416.865.1600
jacobssteakhouse.com | 416.366.0200
thesainttavern.com | 647.350.2100
DRINK
CHEERS! 6 OF THE CITY’S MOVERS AND SHAKERS MIX IT UP SO THAT YOU CAN TOO FORGET COFFEE. THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT PREMIUM HOOCH THAT THOROUGHLY WARMS THE HEART FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON. HERE, OUR PICK OF THE MOST INVENTIVE BARTENDERS SHARE WITH US THEIR COZIEST COCKTAILS AND A TWIST OF BARSIDE BANTER. BY IVY KNIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAOMI FINLAY
67
CHRISTINA KUYPERS BARTENDER/CO-OWNER, GWAILO 328 WELLINGTON ST. W. A pop-up Asian brasserie in Senses at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel for the month of November. KW: Why do you think cocktail culture is exploding right now? People are paying more attention to what they’re eating so it is only fitting that there should be an equal amount of curiosity about what they’re drinking. The history, romance and ceremony provide an affordable luxury and a bit of escapism. Plus, it’s a good reason for guys to grow a moustache and wear a vest.
VELVET GLOVE
1.5 oz El Dorado 12-year-old rum 0.75 oz Cynar 0.5 oz Amaro Montenegro Orange zest Pour the El Dorado rum, Cynar and Amaro Montenegro into a mixing glass. Add ice and stir. Strain into a small coupe. Flame orange zest over the surface of the cocktail. Fold the spent zest and cut two slits. Perch the zest on the rim of the glass.
68
DRINK
JOE HOWELL HEAD BARTENDER, THE SPOKE CLUB 600 KING ST. W.
KW: What’s the last word on bar culture? “I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny...” —Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
SOLSTICE CIDER
For the cider: 2 litres fresh apple cider 1 sliced orange with peel Juice of 1 lemon Dash of vanilla extract 2 cinnamon sticks 1 tsp each of whole clove and allspice For the cocktail: 0.5 oz Appleton VX rum 0.5 oz Calvados Boulard Combine cider ingredients in a pot and simmer gently for 40 minutes or until the room is so rich with the aroma of mulled cider you can’t wait any longer. Strain out the spices and fruit, pour into two mugs and add the spirits. Garnish with a stick of cinnamon, a peel of orange and a fine grating of nutmeg.
69
JORDAN STACEY BAR MANAGER, BRASSAII 461 KING ST. W.
KW: Where do you go for drinks after work? I’ve been to SpiritHouse a fair bit lately. Brad is a great bartender and a wonderful host. They make great drinks at Weslodge, plus it’s across the street so that helps.
OLD BERNIE ROBERTS
1.5 oz 12-year-old Chivas 0.5 oz Calvados 1 oz smoked maple apple gastrique Dash of Angostura Bitters Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass, stir with ice and strain into a rock glass over ice. Garnish with an apple fan.
DRINK
BRAD GUBBINS BARTENDER, SPIRITHOUSE 487 ADELAIDE ST. W.
KW: What are you drinking right now? With the changing of the season I tend to drink more brown spirits and spirit-based cocktails. My spirit of choice is Blanton’s Gold Edition bourbon or Scappa Single Malt Scotch. For a cocktail I like the Vieux Carré or a Coffee Flip.
SPIRITHOUSE COCKTAIL
1.5 oz Beefeater 24 0.75 oz Carpano Bianco vermouth 0.75 oz Aperol 2 dashes of homemade peach bitters Combine all ingredients into a mixing glass filled with quality ice and stir. Strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with ice or a giant king cube. Garnish with grapefruit zest.
71
RHYS JENKINS BARTENDER/CO-OWNER, THE PEACOK 365 KING ST. W. KW: How long have you been working behind the bar? I started as a bar-back in Grand Cayman at 19, slowly working my way up to bartender. After two years on the island I decided to move back home and hit the big city. While working at a few hot spots in Toronto for nine years, I slowly planned to open up Peacok and did so with a hometown friend, Ryan English, two years ago.
THE CANADIAN BRUNCH
1.5 oz of Bulleit Bourbon 1 oz maple syrup 1 oz freshly squeezed grapefruit juice Shake lightly, pour over ice and serve in a mug. Peacok style!
DRINK MATTHEW LAROCHELLE BARTENDER/OWNER, COLD TEA 60 KENSINGTON AVE.
KW: Which bartenders in the city do you most admire? Robin Kaufman at Toronto Temperance Society is an unbelievable bartender. He has the perfect mix of creativity and technical skill and, most importantly, he’s a true host. Megan Jones at Reposado is also amazing. She makes a tequila old fashioned that blows the doors off! When not at work, I usually drink at 416 Snack Bar and Miller Tavern has great cocktails.
BELLWOODS SUNSET
2 oz Bowmore 12-year-old Scotch 0.5 oz tawny port 2 dashes of Angostura Bitters 0.25 oz maple syrup 1 barspoon of Green Chartreuse Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass. Stir with ice until very cold and serve straight-up in a cocktail coupe. Garnish with a cherry and lemon zest.
73
DRINK
THE pour
WINE PICKS BY ROBERT GRAVELLE
I like to drink good wine, but I also like a bargain. The wines below provide excellent drinking experiences for the money. So here’s to drinking well with these great value vinos this winter. LA MOZZA “I Perazzi” Morellino di Scansano 2010, Maremma, Tuscany, Italy $21.95 The Vine – Robert Groh Agency / robgroh.com The La Mozza estate is owned by celebrity chef Mario Batali, so it’s no surprise that this is an excellent food wine. The nose is slightly rustic with aromas of sour cherry, leather and forest floor. Medium body and balanced acidity with flavours of bitter chocolate lingering on the finish. Vasse Felix Cabernet/Merlot 2010, Margaret River, Western Australia $24.95 B & W Wines / bwwines.com – LCBO Vintages 947879 This juicy red hails from the oldest winery in Western Australia. The 2010 Cab/Merlot exudes class, with generous black currant fruit and ample ripe tannin. This wine is drinking now but will cellar well for 10 years. Vietti “Perbacco” Nebbiolo d’Alba 2009, Piedmont, Italy $30.50 Trialto Wine Group / trialto.com Vietti is one of the most important producers in Piedmont, if not Italy. This wine drinks like a well-made Barolo at half the price. Expect all the telltale aromas and flavours of classic Nebbiolo fruit: cherry, tar, truffles and rose petals. A very serious wine for the price.
Gaston Chiquet Blanc des Blancs d’Ay Brut NV, Champagne, France $55.95 Rogers & Company / rogcowines.com I can’t pass up the opportunity to mention a fabulous champagne, especially one that gives so much bang for the buck. Gaston Chiquet is “grower champagne,” as in “the same people that grow the grapes also make the champagne,” which is seldom the case for wines of this region. Expect notes of citrus, green apple and chamomile flowers supported by delicate, yeasty flavours. Robert Gravelle is the general manager/wine director for Jacobs and Co. Steakhouse and an instructor for the International Sommelier Guild.
74
PHOTO: (GRAVEL) RICK O'BRIEN
Domaine Lignères, La Baronne “Pièce de Roche” 2009, Vin de Pays de Hautrive, Languedoc-Roussillon, France $41.95 The Vine – Robert Groh Agency / robgroh.com This remarkable wine is the product of 120-year-old vines. These ancient vines yield tiny amounts of super-concentrated fruit with incredibly complex flavours and aromas: sweet ripe berry and stone fruit, milk chocolate and chalk dust notes waft from the glass. Generous acidity that balances and belies the relatively high alcohol (14.5%) and makes the wine seem medium weight on the palate. The finish here is long and a touch oxidative and nutty.
There’s nothing natural about the way wines are judged. Po-faced judges sniffing, swirling, gazing, musing, at long tables with anonymous wines in identical glasses. It’s a tough test track for any winemaker. But our winemakers have it doubly tough because not only do we have the judges to contend with, but also and more importantly, the hawk-like gazes of our forebears. One hundred and sixty years of the Hill Smith family of winemakers (making us Australia’s oldest family-owned winery). They are the ultimate judges. Would it get their raised eyebrow of approval? Would they put their name to it? Would they talk, eat, live, laugh and share it with their friends? And will you?
Pick up a bottle at your local liquor store. B&W Wines, 1179 King Street West, Suite 016, Toronto, Ontario Canada MK 3C5 P: +1 416 531 5553 F: +1 416 531 1320 kwp!YAL10275
JEM & RIO DOLLS, $125 each Holt Renfrew holtrenfrew.com
OUR GIFT TO YOU: THE CITY’S BEST STORES DELIVER THEIR FAVE HOLIDAY PREZZIES COMPILED BY KATE GERTNER
COCKTAIL CUFFLINKS, $80/pair Greenshag greenshag.com
BLOOMSBURY CARDIGAN, $325 Oliver Spencer oliverspencertoronto.com
ICE CRYSTAL JOURNALS, $18 Indigo / indigo.ca
TED BAKER SOCK AND UNDERWEAR SET, $65 Gotstyle gotstylemenswear.com
COCO NOIR, $152/100 ml Chanel / chanel.com
WOUTERS & HENDRIX ONYX RING, $430 Gaspard / gaspardshop.com
SELETTI "HOT" KETTLE, $110 Art Gallery of Ontario ago.net
76
COUNTDOWN CLOCK, $135 Drake General Store drakegeneralstore.ca
WHITE + WARREN TRAVEL WRAP, $350 eLUXE / eluxe.ca MISSONI TOYS, $50 Holt Renfrew / holtrenfrew.com
HOLIDAYS
RETURN TO TIFFANY BRACELET IN RUBEDO AND STERLING, $525 Tiffany & Co. / tiffany.ca
JOSEPH JOSEPH KNIFE CAROUSEL, $120 Neat / neatspace.ca
"THE LITTLE BLACK JACKET" BOOK, $98 Type Books / typebooks.ca
INKED NUTCRACKER, $30 CB2 / cb2.ca
GARMIN FENIX GPS NAVIGATOR WATCH, $399 Mountain Equipment Co-op / mec.ca
W & P BARWARE COLLECTION, from $7 West Elm / westelm.com
MIMI & MARGE 18K GOLD ANTLER NECKLACE, $100 Red Pegasus redpegasus.ca
BRUT DESIGN CUTTING BOARD, $50 DX Shop / dx.org
CIRE TRUDON ROOM SPRAY, $160 Teatro Verde teatroverde.com
INSIDE OUT FELT BASKET, $95 Pimlico pimlicogallery.com
CHICK-A-DEE SMOKE DETECTOR, $80 Swipe Design books + objects / swipe.com
FAVIKEN COOKBOOK, $50 Good Egg / goodegg.ca
CHOCOLATE ALPHABET TABLET, $9 Nadège Patisserie nadege-patisserie.com
DIGITAL MEN'S TIES, $210 each Hermès / hermes.com
METALLIC BOOTIE, $99 Joe Fresh / joefresh.ca
MONOGRAM EMPREINTE SPEEDY BANDOULIÈRE 25 BAG, $2,490 Louis Vuitton louisvuitton.com
CLASSIC SD SWISS ARMY KNIFE, $26 Victorinox Swiss Army swissarmy.com
24 REVO RADIO, $530 The Monocle Shop shop.monocle.com
77
HOLIDAYS
PROBLEM SOLVED
ASK THE PARTY PROS: HOW TO THROW AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER
78
Mika Bareket Owner, Good Egg goodegg.ca
Sebastien Centner Director, Eatertainment Special Events eatertainment.com
Barbara Hershenhorn Martina Stritesky President, Party Barbara Co. Founder and principal partybarbara.com planner, White Bow Events whitebowevents.com
Shawn Gibson Co-owner, Teatro Verde teatroverde.com
My guiding principle: Have fun at your own gathering. Your friends come to see you, not your table-scaping skills. To ensure you’re not scrambling in the kitchen all night, opt for dishes that can be made in advance and reheated. I like vegetable crudités with an interesting dip like bagna cauda or gougères (a pastry with cheese in it) that I can make ahead and freeze. Put your most charming friend in charge of bevvies; start with a pitcher of instant cocktails, followed by wines chosen to pair best with your main course. Bonus points for something new: a Scotch bar. Line up a few bottles and have giant ice cubes at the ready. Serve something sparkly with your sweets. I love a cheese course, truffles, small squares and piles of clementines. Décor-wise, go with things that hang—pendants, pennants, garlands—clunky bowls of ornaments eat up precious table space. Play music that reflects your taste but keep the volume low in case some of your guests are not King Tuff fans. I like to premeditate a dance floor: Line up the space and some bouncy tunes. Dinner parties don’t always turn into dance parties, but the best ones do, so it’s good to be prepared.
First off, you have to want to host a holiday party to make it a great one. Not because your friends pressure you or you feel it’s your turn, but because you actually want your home filled with good friends and possibly a bunch of strangers. To make this year’s holiday party one for the memory books, set up a champagne (or sparkling wine) cocktail bar. Put out oversized ice buckets filled with bottles of bubbly, line up carafes of syrups and liqueurs for mixing, and put fresh garnishes like lychees and raspberries in martini glasses for added splash. Verrines—individual mini-portioned dishes served in glasses—are the hot item for the season. From layered salads to desserts, verrines allow guests to easily manage a bite to eat while standing (or sitting) at a cocktail party, plus they look so cool! Playlists are so last year. This year it’s all about Rdio and Songza for your background holiday party music. How about some parting gifts? Like you haven’t done enough, make sure your guests leave with a lasting impression. I like to fill small, colourful Asian takeout containers with chocolate bark. Perfect for guests to nibble on while “Ubering” home.
Let people know you are hosting a holiday gathering well in advance. Rather than a “save the date” email, a phone call may be well received. Make your gathering stressfree for yourself. If hot food confines you to the kitchen, consider a menu design with cold food service only. Keep the drink offerings minimal unless you are prepared to hire service staff. A full bar is lovely but not a must. Sparkling water, wine, beer and vodka (with several choices of mix) should suffice. Slice garnishes in advance and store them air-tight in the refrigerator. An alternate bar would consist of bubbly only—sparkling water, sparkling wine, cava and Prosecco. Take stock of your glassware well in advance. You don’t want to be washing glasses all evening. Rentals are affordable and easy to deal with the next morning. A little injection of theme goes a long way. Choose something simple that will set you apart from the rest and leave a lasting impression. Great drinks, menu, music and décor are important. However, it’s truly the people that make the party and a great mix of guests goes a long way.
For holiday entertaining, a combo of culinary, décor elements, style and hospitality will ensure that you serve your guests with an experience. Keep the food light, keep it on theme. I like to buy foods that are semi-done and then top them off with something new. For a cocktail party, simple canapés that reflect the season—arranged nicely on a tray with some fresh greens or sel de provence—can be beautifully paired with the right beverages (think Veuve Clicquot paired with turkey cranberry bits in a stuffing cup). Finish with fruitcake mini tarts or these sorbets you can get at Costco for $1 each that come in the shape of a pineapple or coconut shell. They’re delicious and they look fantastic. Themes are big for me. Choose one that reflects your personality and gets you away from the usual green and red. This year, I am feeling a gold, black and silver Versaceinspired mood or a Black Swan ballet theme that pairs pale pink with black. To really carry off a theme, go beyond the table setting and the front door to inspire tabletops and different rooms. Have fun with it! We once did an Oliver Twist theme where we gave guests a soup bowl and made them beg for food.
The key to any great party: lots of great food and wonderful drinks. If you have plenty of both, your guests are going to have a fabulous time. Remember that guests are coming to spend time with you and not socialize on their own, so do as much prep work as you can in advance! Do all your cleaning the day before, polish your silverware and set your table. Keep it simple— stock your bar well but don’t overcomplicate. I love to choose one signature cocktail (like Prosecco with red berries and a mint sprig for the holiday season) and then keep it neat with one red/white wine, a beer option and something sparkly that’s non-alcoholic. For an alternative twist, host a holiday retro adult game night. Pick a few of your favourite old-school games. For food, take inspiration from childhood snacks but add a sophisticated adult twist—think homemade mac and cheese with lobster and champagne. Infuse small elements of décor, like playing cards as coasters and sturdy board games as trays. Host a mini-competition by dividing the group into teams. Did I mention to keep the bubbly flowing? Your guests will only have as good of a time as the host. Relax and get in the holiday spirit with them!
PHOTOS: (BARAKET) JAY DESCHAMPS, (CENTNER) BRUCE GIBSON, (HERSHENHORN) RODNEY C.DAW, (STRITESKY) MIRZA NOOMOHAMED
INTERVIEWS BY DIANE PETERS
0676_spokeClubAD-KingWest-NOV2012FINAL_Layout 1 2012-11-21 2:58 PM Page 1
COME TOGETHER Toronto’s Social Sanctuary for the Creative Community T H E S P O K EC LU B.CO M
ESCAPE
80
DUE SOUTH ANCIENT BASILICATA, WAY DOWN IN THE INSTEP OF THE BOOT, MAY JUST BE ITALY’S LAST HIDDEN GEM BY KAREN VON HAHN
esperately in need of a restorative getaway, my husband, Thomas, and I flew down—all the way down—to Bari, Italy, a notoriously traditional and untouched part of that country that is suddenly generating a lot of buzz. The film director and bon vivant Francis Ford Coppola recently opened a grand hotel in an old palazzo in the ancient hill town of Bernalda, in the little-known region of Basilicata, a slip of olive- and palm-dotted biblical-looking landscape wedged between Puglia and Calabria in the instep of the “boot” of Italy, where Coppola’s grandfather was born. His daughter Sofia was quietly married there (as were Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, according to the tabloids, the week after our stay). Since Coppola’s hotel was still under construction for Sofia’s wedding, she and her children whiled away the hot afternoons by the pool at a small family-run hotel in the nearby town of Pisticci called Torre Fiore. Recently opened by the Giannone family from Toronto, this is also a story of return: The former masseria (a farm compound with fortified walls typical of southern Italy) was painstakingly restored by the family into a contemporary, luxurious 13-room boutique hotel just outside the very town their father emigrated from in the 1950s. Which was precisely where we were headed, back to Italy in the ’50s, though we didn’t yet know it on our winding drive through silvery olive groves dotted with giant palms, past sleepy hillside towns of stone turned a creamy pink in the light that looked in the distance like drip castles of sand on a beach. A stop for lunch en route in the ancient hilltop town of Altamura confirmed our suspicions that we had stumbled into the vintage Italian backdrop where they must have filmed those Chef Boyardee commercials. Wandering the deserted, laundry-flagged streets of cobblestone hearing the clatter of plates and conversation, not to mention smelling the most important meal of the day being enjoyed behind shuttered doors by all of the local families, there was literally nowhere open for a visiting tourist to eat. Just as we were about to give up and head back to our car, we stumbled across a tiny piazza with a door open to what appeared to be a small below-ground bakery. Stepping inside, we surprised the baker and his daughter, who were turning out glorious-looking focaccia with roasted tomatoes, zucchini and basil from a deep hole in the stone wall. The sign on the wood-burning oven: Forno Antica Sancta Clara dal 1423. Our first stop, an improvised picnic in a tiny piazza, was already about uncovering a way of life that has gone unchanged for centuries. “For my father, Italy was Pisticci,” says Toronto architect Ralph Giannone, whose King West firm Giannone Petricone counts the Southern Italian–flavoured Terroni restaurants across the city among his many innovative projects. “My mother spoke to us in Italian, but my father spoke to us in dialect. Wherever else we might go in Italy, he would say, ‘You think this pasta or this gelato is good, you should try it in Pisticci.’ He made sure we all went back every summer. It was very important for him that we not lose our roots.” The initial idea behind Torre Fiore was to create a place just for the extended Giannone clan to stay. “When we were kids, we would pile in with our aunts, but by the time we were married and had
82
kids of our own, the couch in the front room was less appealing,” Giannone says. The problem was that Basilicata is so off the map as a tourist destination—despite its ancient mysterious towns and seaside location—that it was a struggle to find any nearby accommodation. “We would rent these lousy apartments with bad views and worse mattresses, and so my wife, Pina, came up with the idea that we should look for a place of our own somewhere outside of town.” When they first opened the gates of the near-abandoned Casino Durante—a crumbling masseria with massive 16th-century stone towers and a view to the Ionian Sea—that had been used as a hunting lodge for generations of the Durante family, they knew that they had stumbled onto something else altogether. “It took two years just to buy it,” Giannone says. “You know, there’s no such thing as real estate agents. Down there, it’s all about talking to this guy who talks to that guy, and of course they all regard us as foreigners—fancy Americani—even though we’re Italian.” It took another four years for the Giannones to restore it— “lightning time to Italians,” says Giannone, but frustrating for Ralph’s father, John Giannone, a former Toronto developer who oversaw the project. To find local trades who still knew how to build a groin barrel vault out of bricks the ancient way proved initially problematic, not to mention finding a contemporary version of the local handmade yellowish bricks used in the original construction—until they were introduced to “this old brickmaking guy who still dug the clay out of the side of the hill in Pisticci with his bare hands, ground it into a paste with this old round stone, hand-formed it into bricks and then fired them once a year in a wood-burning kiln.” Which is not to suggest that the resulting design of Torre Fiore is wholly traditional. After conducting a heritage study of the property, Giannone learned that it had originally been built by the Fiore family, who had walled in the property against invasions of local bands of brigands. And that over the many centuries that Basilicata has been inhabited by humans, the area has been invaded by the Greeks, Crusaders, Saracens and Normans—who all left a trace. “The idea is that we are being invaded once again by an invader with discerning taste,” Giannone says. Hence the glorious bathrooms of local marble delicately streaked with trails of white Greek and red Persian marble and kitted out with Sicis glass and Eurochic tubs by Antonio Lupi. In keeping with the masseria’s humble roots, the heavy stone walls boast no art but found artifacts, like whimsical collections of lost bronze keys. Unlike the typical heritage property, however, there is no veering into bourgeois kitsch: The playful contemporary furnishings, from classic Eames rockers to glam-rustic oversized seating by Gervasoni remain spare yet express a very worldly 21st-century sophistication. Happily, for us new class of invaders, who do enjoy our creature comforts, the towels are luxuriously thick, the beds delicious, drinks (like the local Amaro) are elegantly served by the pool and the food (especially the locally made ricotta, which is pillowy in its lightness) is the height of elegantly rustic artisanal simplicity. This invader, for one, cannot wait to return.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF TORRE FIORE
ESCAPE
TORONTO, CANADA WWW.CABANOBATH.COM
MADE IN ITALY
CABANO
HANDMADE LUXURY, 250 YEARS IN THE MAKING
PROUDLY REPRESENTED IN ONTARIO BY KOLONAKI GROUP AVAILABLE AT VINTAGES IN SELECT LCBO STORES
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
FREED SALES CENTRE
KING
STEWART WELLINGTON
SPADINA
PORTLAND
BATHURST
ADELAIDE
ON THE TOWN
PHOTOS: GEORGE PIMENTEL
PHOTOS: AJ MESSIER PHOTOGRAPHY
DX INTERSECTION
Ashley Rumsey of Mason Studio; stylish shmoozers on the Stock Exchange floor; artist Douglas Coupland and DX prez Shauna Levy; Jenna Naumovich; hairstylist Sean Godard and friend in plaid; director Atom Egoyan and leading lady Arsinée Khanjian; Markus Anderson of Soho House.
PHOTOS: JORDAN BOWDEN AND DAN TRUONG, COURTESY OF TIFF
BOND AT TIFF
FROM TOP LEFT: Michelle Tiraborelli, Mark Caranci, Julie McEwen and Larry Holzenthaler; TIFF’s Cameron Bailey, CBC honcho Kirstine Stewart and Midnight’s Children star Zaib Shaik; Bond girl strikes a pose; winner takes all; TIFF CEO Piers Handling and Macleans’ Brian Johnson.
PHOTOS: GEORGE PIMENTEL
JOE FRESH
Pageboys from Versailles; ’70s supermodel Karen Bjornson McDonald, Essence’s Mikki Taylor, Joe Mimran, Versailles ’73 director Deborah Riley Draper, fashion icons Alva Chinn and Pat Cleveland and Cameron Silver of Decades; photographer Paul Alexander and model Stacey McKenzie; fashion A-listers get bubbly; designer Jeremy Laing and FASHION editor Bernadette Morra.
91
PHOTOS: GEORGE PIMENTEL
BOOBYBALL Happy campers; The Society’s Amanda Blakley; Green Arrow’s Stephen Amell and MTV’s Aliya-Jasmine Sovani; Christina Arsenau and Tracy Briggs; MTV head honcho Jon Graham and Rethink Breast Cancer’s Alison Gordon; Cosmo TV host Wilder Weir.
PHOTOS: VITO AMATI
GOTSTYLE AFTER DARK
Ben Le Fevre, Paulina Chmielecka and Damon Conrad; stylin’ studs Curtis Priest, guest, Montreal Canadiens’ P.K. Subban, Ryan Priest and Jeremy Choi; Lindsay Libman, Cory Atkins, Ralph Fox and friend; Toronto Raptors’ Amir Johnson and Tia Katz.
PHOTOS: TOM SANDLER
OPERANATION Gala co-chairs Amy Burstyn Fritz, Jeffrey Remedios from Arts & Crafts and Anne Maggisano; Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and COC opera singer Ambur Braid; Q host Jian Ghomeshi looking sharp; Nelly Furtado belts it out; Anthony Carone, Max Kerman and Michael DeAngelis of The Arkells.
92
A DIVINE FOOD & COCKTAIL EXPERIENCE DINNER AND BOTTLE SERVICE AVAILABLE
TEST DRIVE
RUBDOWN LOWDOWN SPA MY BLEND BY CLARINS AT THE RITZ CARLTON ritzcarlton.com Signature treatment: “Floating on a Cloud” ($220) A 90-minute massage that begins with an exfoliating foot scrub with a choose-it-yourself aromatherapy blend derived from local ingredients. I opt for “Tonic,” which contains mint, hazelnut oil and geranium. Vibe: While the reception area resembles a Clarins beauty counter—all white with tubs of creams for sale—the rest of the spa is all Canadianainspired décor, with dark wood, earth-toned tiles and cozy white chairs. Service is part of the package: A concierge leaves me at the locker room to get my plush white robe and flip-flops and then escorts me to my therapist. Amenities: The spacious change room includes lockers with electronic combo locks and long counters loaded with curling irons, creams and combs. While a public area features a sun-filled lounge and saltwater pool and hot tub (bring your suit!), the private area for each gender includes a small lounge, steam shower and hot tub where you can go robeless. The only other spa-goer in sight directs me to the cucumbers for my eyes and offers tips for towel placement in the steam. Therapist: Melissa, with her long blonde ponytail, is as sweet as a smalltown girl next door. (She leaves me a personal note wishing me a good bike ride home.) She’s deft with the chitchat early on but quiets once the bliss sets in. Signature move: After you pick your aromatherapy blend, you get a foot soak in a huge copper bowl and an oil-infused foot rubdown. The table portion of the massage is your standard Swedish affair. Lots of good work on the legs but she didn’t seem to have any creative ideas—except more pressure—for my tight shoulder muscles. Best part: Amazing service (my concierge pegs my shoe size at a glance and dashes out for better-fitting flip flops) and the women’s lounge area, where you could easily hang all day, steamed and soaked to a prune. Could do without: The chilly water by the end of my foot rub (I guess copper doesn’t hold the heat) and the predictable new age tunes. Messed-up hair quotient: A wash—almost literally—thanks to all my time trying out the moist amenities. A few minutes with the complimentary comb in the locker room and I was presentable upon exit. Bliss-out factor: 3.5 out of 5 clouds (although my feet would vote for a perfect 5) —Diane Peters
94
PHOTOS: CHRISTOPHER CYPERT
Rumour has it, KW's high-end hotel spas take luxury to a whole new level. Just how sigh-worthy are they? Our stressed-out editors sampled the top 3 to find out. (Someone had to do it.)
MIRAJ HAMMAM SPA BY CAUDALIE PARIS AT THE SHANGRI-LA
PHOTO: ((MIRAJ HAMMAM) COURTESY OF MIRAJ HAMMAM SPA
mirajcaudaliespa.com
889 YOGA AND WELLNESS SPA AT THE THOMPSON HOTEL 889yoga.com Signature treatment:“The Jet Lagged” ($135) A 75-minute massage designed to allow your stressed body and mind to recover from exhaustion and jetlag by leaving you feeling grounded and reconnected. Basically, a business traveler’s wet dream. Vibe: Zen. As I filled out the lengthy health form, I sipped on Ayurvedic tea in the Zen Zone lounge and lingered in the scent of lemongrass. Amenities: The small change room/bathroom where I donned my (slightly scratchy) robe and flip-flops was a tad too brightly lit. Few perks there, however, the studio has a fully stocked boutique with plenty of product to pamper yourself with. Therapist: When first introduced to Shawn, I was surprised for some reason that my therapist was of the male persuasion. But his strong, firm handshake assured me that this treatment was going to be deep…just the way I like it. Signature move: Lest one forget that 889 is a yoga studio at heart, before Shawn began the massage he told me to bring my awareness to my breath and to inhale deep into my belly. After a few full, mindful breaths, I was able to let go of my day and my thoughts and really be in the moment. Best part: The combo of traditional heated Thai stems and massage. First my body was compressed with gorgeously scented hot Thai stems—a bundle of blended herbs and oils wrapped up in cotton and steamed (intended to release toxins and muscle tension while increasing circulation). That was followed by a deep massage with a mix of sandalwood (grounding), peppermint (uplifting) and lavender (relaxing) oils. Bonus: The little brown paper bag of Epsom salts that all massage clients receive on their way out. Could do without: At 75 minutes, the Jet Lagged massage was blissfully long. Just as I started to drift off, the massage came to an abrupt end with the sounding of chimes and suddenly it was back to reality! Messed-up hair quotient: My usually dry hair, oily and smooth postrubdown (a massage and hair treatment in one!), got tied up in a bun and I didn’t feel one bit self-conscious while waiting for my takeout at the trendy Thompson Diner. Bliss-out factor: 4.5 out of 5 clouds (it should have been illegal for me to drive home) —RonniLyn Pustil
Signature treatment: Hammam, gommage and 60-minute massage ($200) Hammam is the classic Moroccan steam, which is followed by a vigorous scrub called gommage, capped off with a traditional Swedish rubdown. Vibe: Stepping off the elevator into a plum-hued oasis, I was greeted by two soft-spoken Asian women dressed in purple. Jazz played in the background as I filled out my life history by a burbling fountain under a gold-leaf dome. In the blissfully dark and amply supplied change room, I was given a pair of flip-flops and a puzzling measure of unfinished fabric that I was instructed to wrap around myself as my therapist shuffled me to the hammam, which resembled a set from Disney’s Aladdin and was approximately the temperature of the earth’s geothermal core. Amenities: Water, in an Aladdin-style brass pitcher, proved essential to maintaining consciousness in the burning steam of the hammam. I noted a red panic button on the wall, presumably for those who can’t take it one second longer. Therapist: Andrea, my therapist, was “dressed” in the same make-do scrap of fabric as I was. During the extremely splashy and wet gommage portion of the treatment, where she rubbed me down with a scratchy glove and Moroccan mud mineral soap, it became clear why she was so attired. Signature move: The rhythmical soapy swoosh of the glove up my back curving under one ear. Best part: Being virtually babied, the service was so concerned and maternal; the sweet mint tea in a glass served Moroccan-style on a pillowed daybed in the chill-out room. Could do without: The persistent worry that I was going to slide off the wet stone counter during the gommage and smash onto the tile floor. Messed-up hair quotient: I’ve seen worse, although the bartender gave me a sideways look when I ordered a post-treatment cocktail in the lobby. Bliss-out factor: 4 out of 5 clouds —Karen von Hahn
95
THE PLAYING FIELD
Boyfriend or BLOB? As time goes by, the fine line that separates legitimate attraction from a paralyzing anxiety that you’ll end up a shut-in with middle-age spread and a boxed-wine habit grows ever blurrier. The older you get (and by you, I mean me), the harder it is to distinguish between a man with baggage but potential and one who’s schlepping around moldy suitcases filled with unresolved issues. Admittedly, they are equally exhausting scenarios, but one could possibly help you avoid social ambivalence, while the other will probably make you hit that boxed wine harder than ever. It’s as though every potential mate nowadays is an emotional Rorschach test. There was a time when a first date would involve a pitcher of domestic beer and witty conversation that would flit between topics like OJ Simpson’s gloves, the saxophone stylings of Bill Clinton and whether Posh Spice would ever make something of herself. (Spoiler alert: She did.) Now my first dates tend to start with a strong cocktail and talk of custody arrangements, divorce attorneys and whether Kim Kardashian’s marriage will last. (Spoiler alert: It didn’t.) Inevitably, as the date goes on, my subconscious manipulates the man into an indistinguishable blob and I have to squint really hard to make out his potential. It’s OK, he usually mistakes this for me listening really intently. I realize this makes me sound callous, and who’s to say that my date isn’t squinting at me and trying to determine if my precarious employment and graying roots aren’t turning me into an inkblot? Either way, the fact remains that the new buzzwords of modern love—divorce, children, adultery, disillusionment—have the ability to determine the outcome of your potential relationship faster than you can speed dial your therapist. Oddly, my life is littered with examples of tests read seemingly wrong. My friend, a wildly accomplished social media guru, is involved in a long-distance relationship with a man who is married, has two
96
children and no intention of leaving his wife. There’s another on a different continent that is involved with a coworker who has a wife, kids and a guilt-addled obligation to stay in his marriage. And I recently learned of a successful single mom who was in a year-long relationship with an illegal immigrant with children to support overseas and a dodgy habit of disappearing every other weekend. I’m not judging these women. I, myself, just came out of an intense five-month relationship with a recently separated father of one. And despite all the warning signs (including one breakup and one half-assed reconciliation), every time I examined his inkblot I could have sworn I saw a butterfly. Turns out it was a blob with a suitcase of unresolved issues. It’s hard to pinpoint what events altered his Rorschach reading, but when I learned that he was back on the dating scene a mere two weeks after we broke up, I realized he was schlepping around a serious fear of being alone. This is not to say that all divorced men and single fathers are to be avoided. In fact, I have a friend who has been with her boyfriend for a year now. He’s a separated father of two, and despite the fact that their road to happiness was littered with emotional potholes and financial debris, they’re stronger than ever. And Shoshanna Beren of TheFrisky.com recently wrote a piece about how she met her boyfriend two months after he left his wife, and despite some serious ups and downs, they have been together for two years and counting. But the fact remains, the older you get (full disclosure: I’m 28 years and 106 months old) the more difficult it becomes to find someone who doesn’t have at least one of those aforementioned buzzwords embossed on his emotional psyche. With every year that passes, more weight is added to those bags, making the Rorschach test harder to read. And I worry that my eyesight is starting to fail me.
ILLUSTRATION: MIKE BOZINOVSKI
IT’S GETTING INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO READ THE RORSCHACH TEST OF LOVE BY MARILISA RACCO
THE DEAL ARLENE DICKINSON’S DOWNTOWN DEN
KW: What sold you on it? I loved that the previous owner, who had been part of the consortium that converted the old warehouse building into a condo, had taken a lot of care to preserve the building’s original charm. I loved the brick; there is very little drywall. I loved the privacy of the setup and that the interior is so open and full of natural light. Also, it’s so large and spacious that it really allows you to have your own personality. KW: Have you made a lot of changes to it? I have to admit that apart from the furniture it really looked pretty much like this! I just painted and moved right in. But then, I’m always doing little things—like this open wine storage cabinet. It used to be this skinny little useless closet, so I got the idea to open it up and line it with stainless to work with the kitchen. I’m always coming up with ideas for new home projects. Right now I’m thinking of re-doing my bedroom. I think I drive my designer, Ashley Botten, a little crazy. KW: Was it a big change, moving from a house to a loft? Not really. I’ve always lived in houses with open plans, so that wasn’t
98
that different. This place really works for my daughter, Marayna, and I. She is a photographer and has her own separate space here. I’ve also always loved living in the city. I’m a downtown girl and I love feeling so connected to the city’s inner core. I can walk to work and all of the neighbourhood’s restaurants, parks and shops. I go running on the waterfront, which is so close, it’s just amazing. And the proximity to the Gardiner and the airport is a bonus. I can’t imagine anything more convenient. KW: You have quite a few unusual pieces. How and what do you collect? Everything here has a story. I’m South African, so my African pieces mean a lot to me. But I like to find something wherever I go that will remind me of a place I’ve been. And, of course, my favourite pieces are my daughter’s photographs. KW: You are a very busy person. What says “home” to you? I’m a Libra, so home is very important to me. I like my own space to be versatile, so I can throw fundraisers for 200 people, make dinner for friends or just hang out here on my own and relax. In the winter, I cozy up to my fireplace. In the summer, I throw open the French doors and take in the city view. I work here at that desk in the corner and curl up on the couch to watch TV. Home is a gut feeling of being in the right place. Here, I felt at home the moment I walked in. Entrepreneur Arlene Dickinson might be best known for her role on the CBC series Dragons’ Den. As owner and CEO of Venture Communications and founder of Arlene Dickinson Enterprises, her newest initiative is an online community for entrepreneurs called YouInc.com.
PHOTOS: ARASH MOALLEMI; HAIR AND MAKEUP: KEVIN SMITH
KW: This place is amazing. The ceilings must be 25-feet high! How did you find it? Two summers ago, I was living part time in Calgary and part time in this semi-detached house in the Annex. I’ve always been a house person, so when I started looking for a larger place here in Toronto, I was looking at homes. I didn’t think a condo was my style. But a friend told me about this place being on the market. I was resistant at first, but the minute I walked in, it was love at first sight.
REAL ESTATE
THE DEETS
•6,000 SQ-FT LOFT IN CONVERTED WAREHOUSE IN KING WEST •SOUTH-FACING EXPOSURE WITH VIEWS TO THE LAKE •3 BEDROOMS / 3 BATHROOMS •PRIVATE ELEVATOR
“I ALWAYS BELIEVE REAL ESTATE IS A GOOD INVESTMENT AND ONE THAT TYPICALLY WITHSTANDS MARKET PRESSURES. IF YOU CAN BUY INTO SOMETHING UNIQUE LIKE THIS DOWNTOWN, ITS RARITY AS A COMMODITY MAKES IT A GREAT INVESTMENT.” 99
WORD ON THE STREET
WHAT’S THE ONE THING THE KING WEST HOOD NEEDS? INTERVIEWS BY ELI YARHI
100
“King West has everything. I work in the neighbourhood and I feel like there is a good mix of everything here—good restaurants, some fast food, really great nightlife and alot of cool bars. SPiN is fun for ping-pong and games. I don’t know if the hood needs anything more.” —Jeffrey, 22, promotions
“I’m new to the hood and from what I’ve scoped out there’s a lot going on. Good restaurants and bars and great coffee shops are all close by. But there aren’t as many art galleries, which is something I’d like to see more of. They might balance out the area. And perhaps more of a mix between smaller markets and bigger box stores.” —Jenna, 26, salon manager
“Since I started working here I’ve had to find a new doctor, dentist, nail salon and hairdresser that are closer to work. But it’s not that easy to find these things in the heart of this neighbourhood. Other than that, I can’t complain about King West, it has so much going on. But basic amenities like these would help with my routine.” —Adriana, 21, travel agent
“More retail. Right now it has really nice restaurants and it’s a residential area, but if you need groceries or stuff from department stores you have to go elsewhere. I live and work here and I’d like to have everything close by. It's shaping up to be a self-contained pedestrian area, so what it needs is more retail to make it that way.” —Danny, 47, chief tech officer
“I could do with some more shopping. I’d even include a children’s store so I can shop for my family. More clothing stores—and a variety of them—would make things easier for me.” —Sandra, 40, finance director
“Generally this area needs to be more pedestrian friendly. I'd suggest creating more pedestrian-friendly areas like green spaces. Bike lanes would also be helpful. Mostly, there should be a single lane for streetcars so you don’t get blocked by them in the morning when you’re trying to get to work.” —Lloyd, 40, DJ
“That’s easy: fashion. We need more shops and boutiques. I work in the hood, and shopping and browsing would give me more to do with my down time—something other than either eating or drinking; there are so many places for that around here.” —Sandra, 47, vice-president of sales and marketing
“We have a lot of food, we have a lot of drinks and we have a lot of condos. What we need is more paid parking—that would bring more business to my shop. It would help any small business. People don’t want to come downtown in general because of the parking and the high fees. So we need more parking and cheaper rates.” —Shamela, 50, store manager
“There’s an LCBO at Spadina and King but a beer store would be perfect. I travel to and from this area for work and it would be nice to be able to stock my fridge when it’s most convenient, like during my commute.” —Jason, 26, systems administrator
We’re always in the neighbourhood NEW OFFICE | NEW AGENTS | NEW INSIGHTS | NEW WEBSITE 77 Portland Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2M9 416 360 0688 | info@psrbrokerage.com psrbrokerage.com
Q&A
Toronto Real Estate Uncovered An insider’s perspective. Eric Kuzuian, Broker of Record and President of Private Service Realty, and George Carras, President and Founder of RealNet Canada, talk trends, the bubble and the future of Toronto’s real estate market. By Eli Yarhi
Eric Kuzuian President & Broker of Record of PSR
Let’s start with a state-of-the-union for the real estate market in Toronto. George: Over the last ten years, the GTA has grown on average by about 98,000 people per year. Which has caused real demand for housing. Since the Places to Grow act was set in motion, the region has had to grow up and not out—resulting in a shift in housing. The balance of growth is shouldered on high density, and the response in pricing has been growth for the most part. Price appreciation really took full opportunity of the lower interest rate environment since 2008, and has been a positive outcome for higher prices across the board. Now what you’re seeing is a softening in prices on high-rise and a very dramatic increase in pricing on low-rise. One of the real reasons behind lower high-rise prices is that the units themselves are smaller.
SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE
What you basically get is taller and smaller— that’s how growth is being shaped in the GTA.
How can we put this in perspective? George: When you look at condo prices flattening, yes it’s because their size is smaller, but on a relative basis the price-gap between a low-rise home and a high-rise home has averaged $78,000 over the long term. Today, that same price-gap is a near record-high $177,000. This relative affordability of high-rise is a big insight. Because of the shift between low- and high-rise, the high-rise price has been leveling off—it’s up 1.9 percent on an index basis—and low-rise is up 15.7 percent. Another perspective is supply. On the high-rise side, we went into 2012 with all developers scheduling about 24,000 units to be delivered in the year, and will probably leave the year with less than 12,000 units delivered. This ratio seems to level off at about 15,000 units, which suggests that is the most you can produce in a year. Eric: We’re constantly reminded in recent articles and publications that the real estate market is down in sales, year-over-year, compared to 2011—the highest year of GTA sales to date. What they don’t mention is that we’re on pace to have the 3rd best year in sales. It’s also said that Toronto condos were down overall by 2.1 percent in price. But Toronto is a very big area with multiple sub-markets. If you look at CO1 (Downtown Toronto), which is the predominant area where these high-rises are coming, the downtown core, we’re up 3.8 percent in price from last year. So ask yourself: What do these stats really mean and have I looked at every related economic factor that they encompass? I think if most people took a step back and just looked at the number of real estate transactions that took place this year, along with the increase in immigration,
“The notion of owning something, real property, and renting it out so people can live in it—that’s a global understanding” George Carras
George Carras President,RealNet Canada A 25-year veteran in the real estate and information industries, George Carras is president and founder of RealNet Canada, the official source of new home information for the Building Industry and Land Development Association, the Toronto Real Estate Board and the Real Property Association of Canada. He contributes up-to-date real estate analysis in his monthly column for the Toronto Star.
relocation and overall population, they would agree we’re still in a pretty healthy real estate market. George: This market can be seen from two angles. Year-to-date, high-rise sales are down 30 percent from last year—a record year. It’s also fair to say that this is the third best year the GTA has ever had.
Going back to size, what’s the average size of a new condo and its price? George: Price is broken down into two components: Price per square-foot and by size. Price per square-foot has been growing modestly, up 2.8 percent from last year. But size is down 3.9 percent. The unit size from 2009 to 2012 is about 120 square-feet smaller. In other words, a 10-by-12-foot room offered in a 2009 condo is missing. At an index across the GTA, size is roughly 800 square-feet, and the index price for October was $549 per square-foot.
Who is renting, buying and living in these units? Where do they come from? Eric: First, there is the foreign investor who is looking to invest in Canada. They’re not just investing their money in a stable country and economy, they are also looking for a better place where their children can live, earn an education and start a career. The second group, which I see on the ground level, is the local population realizing that there’s a lot of opportunity here. In the next 15 to 20 years, Toronto is going to be a place for incredible growth. In that time, property prices are going to continue to rise — history has shown us that they don’t go down. A lot of my local investors realize that they might not be able to afford to purchase a property
SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE
We’re still a young demographic in terms of condo development and lifestyle. We’re a young city with room to sustain density and growth. Eric Kuzuian
in downtown Toronto after that time. The affordability factor is there today, and that’s why I see so many interested investors.
condos left unsold than there are today, with a much smaller population and a much slower absorption rate back then.
George: You are the generator of a lot of our stats, Eric, and I think you’re right. In terms of renting, the people that buy have a strong motive behind their investment. Even as an end-user you’re still making an investment through the purchase. You’re not buying property and forgetting about the math.
What is the absorption rate for condos and how many have been absorbed over the last decade?
Eric: That’s a great point. Were seeing more and more companies from New York, Vancouver and Boston for example, relocating their staff to Toronto. As a result, the rental market is not only sustained right now—it’s growing. George: That’s a global understanding— if you’re an investor, the notion of owning something, real property, and renting it out so people can live in it, is understood everywhere. Eric: And we’re still a young demographic in terms of condo development and lifestyle. We’re a young city with room to sustain density and growth. In 1991, when the realestate market was in a dramatic downturn cycle, there were 2,400 condo units left unsold in the city. Today, we have about 900 unsold condos in the marketplace. That really grabs me. There were almost three times more
George: The GTA has averaged about 40,000 total new home sales per year over the last decade, with a population growth of approximately 98,000 people. The question is: What kind of homes are they? Where it used to be 3 to 1 low-rise to high-rise, we’re now 3 to 1 high-rise to low-rise.
How many condos are currently under construction? George: As of October 31st, there were 226 high-rise projects under construction, comprising 58,982 units. The timeframe for completion is probably four to five years. When you see that number of units under construction it does not mean that next year you’re going to get 58,982 units — because the larger the projects become, the longer they take to build.
Given recent changes to mortgage insurance and amortization rules, how should buyers proceed?
Eric: The new rules are a conscious effort from our lending institutions to minimize the risk of creating a volatile housing market. Personally, I’m all for them. I think that they qualify our purchasers to be a lot more stable, minimizing industry risk. Those fearful of a one or two percent interest rate increase have purchased with the least amount of money down. Still, when you buy new construction, you are automatically qualifying for a conventional mortgage because most developers require a minimum of 20 percent down. George: And you’re qualifying at a posted five-year rate. No one can give you a guaranteed interest rate five years out, so it’s prudent to think about that—relative to what you think rates are going to be in five years—and act accordingly.
What do you think the future of Toronto looks like? George: If intensification plans continue to shape the city’s growth, and if the transit system can improve, the city will be denser. Typically, the expression of that form has been point-towers, so if there are innovations around high-rise—like stacked town-homes— it will be a tighter future. Taller and smaller.
PSR’s Favourite Buildings In The City DISTRICT LOFTS — 388 RICHMOND ST. W.
Corrie Hain Broker Winning architectural awards in 2001 for outstanding design, District Lofts remains one of the most architecturally fascinating buildings in the heart of the city. The views from both the north and south tower are spectacular. The suites are larger than what you see built today. The balconies are generous, and the high ceilings create voluminous space. Live in the edgy spaces as they are or do what most owners have done and call in your interior designer to make the space your own.
BREWERY LOFTS — 90 SUMACH ST.
Brandon Ware Broker Ranked among my favourites, the 100-unit Brewery Lofts hosts such unique details as 14-foot ceilings, concrete pillars and massive entry doors. Few options in the city allow residents to boast that their 100-year-old building once hosted the Dominion Brewery, and CBC prop warehouse. Situated near the Distillery District, the West Don Lands and Regent Park—all benefiting from substantial development—this neighbourhood shows tremendous potential.
20 NIAGARA ST. – LOFTS
Ted Kern Broker A personal favorite is a sentimental choice. The completion of Twenty Lofts in 1998 marked the first stage in the remarkable evolution of Central King West, previously having been a residential diamond-in-therough. This is an intimate boutique building, with just four suites per floor, nestled within Victoria Memorial Park. Residences of this award-winning building get a mix of indoor/ outdoor living with high ceilings and direct elevator access. The first child in a family is always special—Twenty Lofts is no exception.
TIP TOP LOFTS — 637 LAKE SHORE BLVD. W.
Oral Karol Sales Representative Walking through its period brass-framed doors and into the Tip Top Lofts lobby is like stepping into a glorious past. A hard loft, you’ll find some truly original floor plans and features that you don’t often find elsewhere, including exposed wood beams and 17-foot ceiling heights. I often recommend Tip Top Lofts to those who want to live in a home with history and character. Future retail development planned around Bathurst and Lakeshore will make this a truly sought-after address.
416 360 0688 | psrbrokerage.com
FEAT U RE D L I ST I NGS
55
Stewart St., Suite 438 $1,689,900
Features - Custom-designed 3 bedroom + den loft - Two oversized balconies with views to city skyline - Two parking spaces, one storage locker - 24hr room/maid service, rooftop pool, gym and more - 4 plasmas, Zaneen + Flos lighting
Cutting-Edge Contemporary Design At The Thompson. Custom Designed 3 Bdrm + Den Loft Boasts Over $300K In Upgrades & Includes All Custom Furnishings, 4 Plasma Tvs, Zaneen + Flos Lighting, Frameless Glass Shower W/ Freestanding Tub & Marble Shelving/Desk, Extensive Built-Ins & Glass Walls Thru-Out. Multi-Room Audio/Video & Lighting Controlled From Your Ipad. Poggenpolh Kitchen With A 12 Ft Island, Miele D/W, Bertazonni Gas Stove & Sub Zero Fridge/Wine Fridge.
391
Ontario St. $999,900
Features - Live/work opportunity in Cabbagetown - High ceilings and open floor plan - Recently retrofit 2.5-storey stucco building - Private rooftop terrace - Dual zoning for commercial and residential use 416 360 0688 | psrbrokerage.com
Great Live Work Opportunity In Cabbagetown. Recently Repaired And Updated 2.5 Storey Stucco Building With A Private Rooftop Terrace. Approximately 100 Year Old Freehold Building Minutes Away From Don Valley Pkwy And The Downtown Core. Property Has Dual Zoning For Commercial And Residential. The Property Has A/C On The Second And Third Floor. High Ceilings And Open Floor Plan Offer Many Suitable Uses.
F E AT U R E D L I STI N GS
95
Bathurst St., Suite 1003 $1,325,000
Features - 1,800-sqft. terrace - Gas line for outdoor bbq, and water line - Gourmet marble kitchen - Upgraded hardwood floors, lighting and appliances
- Views of the city and lake
Unique Custom Combined Unit With One Of The Largest Terraces In King West. 1639 Sq.Ft. Interior Plus 1800 Sq.Ft. Terrace With Boxed Hedges, Gas Line For Bbq And Water Line. Professionally Finished With 150K Spent On Upgrades. 2 Bed 2 Bath With Gourmet Marble Kitchen And Large Entertaining Island, Upgraded Hardwood Floors, Lighting, Appliances, Etc. City & Water View With 2 Parking Spaces!
550
Queens Quay, Suite 1108 $669,900
Features - Open-concept floor plan - 400-sqft. terrace - Lake Ontario views from every room - Floor-to-ceiling windows - New kitchen with granite countertops
One-Of-A-Kind Completely Renovated, Lower Penthouse Unit With S/E Exposure! Million $$$ Lake Ontario Views From Every Room. Huge Private Terrace (Approx. 300 Sqft). This Beautiful And Modern Unit Boasts Massive Floor-To-Ceiling Windows, Hardwood Flooring, New Kitchen With Granite Countertops And Stone Backsplash, S/S Appliances And 2 Spa-Like Large 4 Piece Bathrooms. Open-Concept Luxury Living By The Water In A Suite With The Best Layout In The Building.
416 360 0688 | psrbrokerage.com
FEAT U RE D L I ST I NGS
250
Manitoba St., Suite 717 $279,900
Features - 2-storey loft with 17-ft. floor-to-ceiling windows - Panoramic views - Modern staircase and Jacuzzi - New oak-strip hardwood floors - Minutes to QEW, Lake Ontario, trails, parks and TTC
75 Portland St., Suite 601 $499,000
Absolutely Stunning One Bedroom And Den Loft At 75 Portland. This Minimalist Building Boasts A Philippe Starck Designed Courtyard And Lobby With Concierge. The Suite Features Pre-Engineered Hardwood Floors Throughout, Stainless Steel Appliances, Corian Counters In The Kitchen, A Balcony With Spectacular Views Of Toronto And The City Skyline. The Master Bedroom Has A Walk-In Closet And SemiEnsuite Washroom With Deep Soaker Tub. Parking And Locker Included!
416 360 0688 | psrbrokerage.com
Large 1 Bedroom Sub-Penthouse Skyloft Condo At Mystic Pointe. 1938 Mcguiness Distillery Plant Loft Conversion. Spacious And Functional 770 Sq.Ft. Open Concept 2-Storey Loft Offers Soaring 17 Ft Windows And Floor To Ceiling. Gorgeous Panoramic Views. New Oak Strip Hardwood Floors, Gas Fireplace, Large Breakfast Bar, Ensuite Laundry, Huge Walk-In Closet, Modern Staircase And Jacuzzi Tub. Minutes To The Qew, Lake Ontario, Trails, Parks, Ttc And Downtown Toronto.
637 Lakeshore Blvd., Suite 517 $549,900
Impressive, Incredibly Upgraded One Plus Den At The Tip Top Lofts. Soaring Ceilings, Built-In Salt Water Aquarium, Stainless Steel Appliances, Hardwood Floors, Central Vac, Frosted Glass Sliding Bedroom Doors, Upgraded Washroom With Frameless Glass Shower, Parking And A Massive Locker (3 Lockers Combined Into 1). Incredible Building Amenities Include A Gym, Visitor Parking, Concierge And More.
F E AT U R E D L I STI N GS
1
St. Thomas St., Suite 4D $1,349,900
Features - Open concept 1 bedroom suite - Custom-designed by Brian Gluckstein - Gourmet eat-in kitchen - Walnut floors and custom cabinetry throughout - Subzero fridge/freezer, Wolf stove/oven/microwave
55 Stewart St., Suite 510 $429,900
Stunning Luxury One Bedroom Loft W/ Parking! In The Exclusive Thompson Hotel/ Condo In The Heart Of King West! Best 1Bdrm Layout In Area. Over 25Ft Of Floor To Ceiling Windows And Two Large Balconies Off The Living And Master. 9Ft Exposed Concrete Ceilings And Several Upgrades. Best Location & Amenities In King West, Incl: The Famous Thompson Roof Top With Infinity Pool And Bar, 24Hr Conc, Room Service-Access To Other Hotel Amenities And Services.
Welcome To 1 St Thomas, Yorkville’s Finest Fusion Of Luxury, Elegance & Prestige Designed By World Class Architect Robert Stern. This Breathtaking Open Concept 1 Bdrm Suite Has Been Custom Designed By Brian Gluckstein & Upgraded Top To Bottom W Impeccable Finishes. Features A Gourmet Eat-In Kitchen, Walnut Flrs, Custom Cabinetry Throughout, Custom Stone Mantle On Fireplace, Additional Pot Lights Throughout, B/I Speaker System, Private Terrace & Much More!
550 Front St., Suite 1105 $849,900
What Would You Do With This Massive Private 1000Sf Terrace In The Heart Of King West? This Custom Designed Loft Boasts Thousands Of Dollars In Upgrades Including Hardwood Floors, Crown Moulding, Intricate Hand Painted Design Walls, Hunter Douglas Window Coverings, Quartz Counter Tops & Upgraded/ Panelled Kitchen Appliances, Master Bdrm Has A Private Ensuite Washroom & Walk-In Closet. Private Terrace Is Perfect For Entertaining, Lounging & Dining, All At Once!
416 360 0688 | psrbrokerage.com
IT’S WHAT THEY WANT.
CELEBRATING FIVE DECADES OF BOND All the Bonds. All the girls. All the action. All in high-definition. Celebrate 50 years of 007 with the explosive golden anniversary Blu-ray Collection. The complete Bond experience showcasing all 22 classic films on Blu-ray together for the first time ever. BOND 50 marks the debut of nine James Bond films previously unavailable in high definition Blu-ray and comes with a dossier of more than 122 hours of bonus features.
007 Gun Logo © 1962-2012 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation. JAMES BOND, 007, 007 Gun Logo and all other James Bond related trademarks TM Danjaq, LLC. © 2012 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC. “Twentieth Century Fox,” “Fox,” and their associated logos are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and are used under license.
HMV-FP4C-KingWest-11-30-12.indd 1
12-11-19 9:14 AM
DAROPTICS.CA
INGLY DIFFERENT DAR OPTICS is a luxury eyewear boutique specializing in unique niche brands as well as commercial brands from around the world. Dar Optics’ global brand is now in its first North American location, in the heart of the entertainment district in Toronto.
Located at 356 King St. West just outside the Bell TIFF Lightbox
@DarOpticsCanada facebook.com/Dar Optics Canada
356 King St. West, Toronto, ON M5V 3X5 416.977.1000
WELCOME TO THE KITCHEN AND HOSPITALITY BOUTIQUE AT THE BRICK AT 4250 DUFFERIN STREET, TORONTO Envisioning en Vogue - Come See What’s in Store for You Impeccable design sensibilities create more than just a kitchen or room setting, they create atmosphere that captivates, inspires and transforms. Nothing commits a vision to memory quite the same way as being in the picture, so with this in mind we have launched our new flagship showroom with a difference, featuring some of the most sought-after brand names and design trends that reflect the sophistication, refinement and diversity of the finest hotels worldwide in immersive environments that bring your ideas to life. Our knowledgeable and friendly staff is always on-hand to help guide you through the world of choice that awaits you. Come and let us inspire you today.
416.635.4848
NOW OPEN TO BUILDERS, DESIGNERS AND THE PUBLIC 38 NEW HOME GUIDE GTA | JUNE 11 - 25, 2011
To book a private tour contact our Sales Centre today at 705.687.7900 or info@muskokabayclub.com &
VISIONARY
From as early as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Probably because I didn’t know what an editor does. My partner, Sergio Sgaramella, and I started AZURE magazine in 1985 and DesignLines 10 years ago. It was hard to be a design magazine in Toronto when we started, but by the time we were identified as “from Toronto,” things had already begun to change. Since we moved to King West, the area has changed dramatically. Obviously it wasn’t a place that many called “home” back then. Although the garment industry was vanishing, it was very much a place where people came to work at 9 and went home at 5. Now it is much livelier, especially in the evenings. And I can’t think of another Toronto neighbourhood with so many fabulous places to eat. Hands down, the best design fair in the world is the Milan furniture fair. Practically the whole design world heads there in April to catch up on the latest trends. It’s the place to launch anything related to material culture. It was in Milan, where I lived in the early ’80s, that I first got hooked on design. Just riding the streetcar there is a visual extravaganza. It’s still the place that inspires me the most. I have an old poster where it’s described as “city of art,” but it for me is very much a city of design. Where design is headed depends on where you look. As manufacturing gets increasingly sophisticated, there is growing interest in objects that are unique and made by hand. You see this in the art/design movement with limited edition or one-off furniture and objects. Young designers are producing and marketing their own stuff, while DIY-ers are downloading plans and following instructions from magazines. Another branch of contemporary design is exploring new materials and techniques to create futuristic forms and novel environments. And yet another design direction leans toward sustainability through the use of natural materials and the integration of nature into interiors and architecture. The market drives the business of design. When the market is down, design becomes more conservative and there are fewer risk-takers. However, this means that companies that produce more exuberant and experimental designs get a lot of media attention. The celebrity effect on all aspects of modern commerce, from food to fashion, is undeniably huge. But while the public might enjoy a celebrity chef on TV, they don’t necessarily want to be sitting on a celebrity couch. Design junkies are those who could spend hours looking at paint chips in the hardware store, examining how clothing is made on the inside, turning stuff upside-down to find out where it was made. To them, accessories are just as important as the suit itself. Jasper Morrison is the next Eames. You heard it from me. Nelda Rodger is the founder and editor of AZURE and DesignLines. 116
PHOTO: ARASH MOALLEMI
NELDA RODGER
SOCIAL NETWORKING DOESN’T ONLY HAPPEN ONLINE.