Mató & Maple Syrup » Neighbourhood

Te Aro

alexandra — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:09:29 +0000

I ran into Thiago, the barista from La Merceria, at Manic Coffee yesterday morning. I hadn’t seen him in a while and he told me he no longer worked at La Merceria, that he was now learning the roasting side of the business at a place called Te Aro. I confessed I had never heard of the place and he encouraged me to drop by. Te Aro is a new cafe in Leslieville known for roasting its own beans in a very impressive hot air roasting machine. Since we had a day pass yesterday, Alan and I decided to go check out the place during our afternoon break. My only caveat is that they didn’t have cortados but the macchiato was pretty good. Click on the picture below to see a slideshow of the few pictures I took in the place.

Summer saturday

alexandra — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:29:43 +0000

It’s September and the farmers’ market was at its most colourful. The harvest is in and the variety of produce was phenomenal. We brought home:

sweet peppers (yellow, green, red & purple)
corn
shallots
fresh garlic
basil
melons (yellow watermelon & cantaloupe)
purple & yellow carrots
tomatillo (ok, this one was from Kensington, but still)
heirloom tomatoes
salad greens from Kind Organics
tomato sauce & pickled eggplants from Loffredo Fruit Farms
eggplants
red plums
Italian prunes

Stay tuned for what I’ve done with those…

Sam James Coffee Bar

alexandra — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:36:27 +0000

Sean, the new owner of our favourite bike shop, told us to check out his friend Sam’s new coffee shop on Harbord street. Heeding his advice and always eager to try a new local place, we cycled over. Turns out his friend is Sam James, considered one of the best baristas (if not the best) in the city. The cafe is very small – it’s truly a coffee bar – but well worth the visit. He uses coffee beans from the Toi & Moi Café, one of my favourite cafés in Montreal. Alan had a latte, Janine had a capuccino and I ordered my usual espresso with a bit of steamed milk and he understood immediately that I wanted a cortado. Sam lived for three months in Barcelona in his pre-coffee days and he credits Spain for teaching him about coffee culture. Each coffee came with flawless latte art and it tasted just right. Sam was extremely nice, down to earth and not at all like some of the snotty baristas out there who seem to see every customer as a coffee ignoramus. We’ll definitely be going back for more.Next time I’ll take some pictures of the actual coffee… I was too excited about it to remember my camera

Other reviews of the place:

Toronto Life

BlogTO

National Post

On the issue of making espressos at home, Sam says, “When people talk about buying a home espresso setup I tell them to save their money and just go to a coffee shop. To get a good home set-up it’s going to be about $5,000 for something that compares to a commercial machine, when you might as well buy a commercial machine and have it at home. For the two or three bucks you might pay every day for a good espresso, it’ll take you years to pay off that machine. You’ll be a lot happier if you go to a coffee shop.” He is absolutely right. Alan and I considered buying an espresso machine at one point. After much research on what makes a good espresso, we’ve decided it wasn’t worth it. We would never be able to pull something that was similar to what a well-trained barista can get out of a commercial machine unless we were willing to spend thousands of dollars. So we bought a good quality stove-top espresso for our occasional coffee at home and spend our time exploring the nice independent cafes the city has to offer. Sam James is one.

St Andrew’s Farmers’ Market

alexandra — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:01:37 +0000

There is no shortage of farmers’ markets in Toronto. But despite my interest in fresh, local produce, I haven’t been able to find one that is both conveniently located for me and on a day that I can go. At the beginning of the summer I thought I could go to the farmers’ market at Riverdale Farm, which meets on Tuesdays from 3-7 pm and is only a 5 min bike ride from where I live. I could come home early from campus and go there. Unfortunately, by the time I found out about it, I was schedule to teach a course every tuesday and thursday from 5-7pm. So there goes that farmers’ market at least until August. I’ve heard lots about the one on Duffering Grove, but again, it meets on Thursdays from 3-7 pm. The last couple of weeks I heard of markets that seem more promising. One is near King & Spadina and meets on Saturday mornings from 8-1. We always go to Kensington Market on saturday mornings so this market seems on our way. There’s also one on Borden & Bloor on Wednesday evenings that sounds promising.

So to St Andrew’s Farmers’ Market we went this morning. There was a huge rain storm before we left Kensington, so I wondered how the farmers weather the storm under their open tents. No need to worry; they were still there when we arrived around 11 AM. This is the first year for this particular market so it’s not as well known as the others and people are still discovering it. Although there are only a few vendors, I am quite happy with what I was able to buy.

From top to bottom: black & yellow bell peppers, fresh whole wheat pasta, oat bread, raspberry pear jam, eggplant in olive oil, fava beans, red new potatoes, cherries, garlic scapes, and heirloom tomatoes.

Added to the whole wheat couscous, chickpeas, tofu, lemons, limes, and Pinehedge kefir I got at 4 Life, at Kensington Market, we are all set for the next few days.

More pictures of the market:

Links:

Blog TO lists of the best farmers’ markets in Toronto

Toronto Farmers’ Market Network

Dark Horse Espresso Bar

alexandra — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:50:58 +0000

I had heard much about Dark Horse Espresso Bar, so when Alan and I found ourselves with a little over an hour to kill last Saturday and with a transit pass on hand, I suggested we hop on the Queen St Streetcar and make our way for a quick coffee at this Riverside cafe. I had a capuccino and a lemon-ginger scone and I have to say it was quite nice.

The place itself was pretty nice and we weren’t disappointed.

I even had time to read some newspapers while we drank our coffee.

Next time we’re in the area, I want to try this other place we walked by…

Sylvester’s Cafe

alexandra — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:34:19 +0000

Located on the top of the GSU building in a little alley with the grand name of Bancroft Ave, Sylvester’s Cafe is one of U of T’s best kept secrets. When I first started my PhD, one of the first things I was told is that despite its size and central location, good food is hard to come by on campus. That certainly turned out to be true; most of the cafeterias on campus are served by Sodexo and serves fast food of the worse quality. So I ended up having to walk further away or bring my lunch from home. That was until I discovered Thérèse and her wonderful café. The menu is short, the influence is Mediterranean (Thérèse is Lebanese, raised in Egypt), and everything is made in house, with the freshest ingredients. Prices are unbeatable and portions are normal and not the over-sized amounts one encounters in most restaurants. Usually I feel guilty when I eat out for lunch since I always feel that I could have made something better-tasting and more nutritious at home but Sylvester’s is one of the few places where I can eat guilt-free.

This is what I had last time I was there. Usually I have either the Mezza plate, Yum Yum 1 or 2. This one is a new dish and it’s Fava beans with lemon garlic tehina & tomato sauce, a very Lebanese dish. It was VERY good and exactly what I needed in a rainy, cold day.

Starbucks at Kensington?

alexandra — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:56:57 +0000

I live in a very centrally located neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. I’m within a 15 min walk to just about anything – movie theatres, hospitals, schools, universities (two of them), shopping malls, you name it. There are at least four 24h grocery stores within two block of my appartment. The only thing that I don’t like about where I live is that there are no independent coffee shops close by. The closest thing is an Italian cafe at the Manulife Centre, a good 10 min walk away. There are plenty of chains though – Second Cup, Starbucks, Timothys, Lettieri are all around within a block. I’ve given up having espresso-based coffees in any of those places since none of them do a half-decent job. Lettieri is the less bad of all of them and occasionaly I’ll have a macchiato there.

To get my coffee fix, I go to Kensington on saturdays. It’s my therapy and my refuge from coffee-chain land. So, you can imagine my surprise and annoyance when I found out this week that Starbucks wants to open a store right in the middle of the market. Please. Give me a break. It’s not the place for it. But then neither is Paris or Barcelona but somehow they made it in. And it all comes down to landlords wanting to be greedy. A spot opened up in the market and what do they do? Well, apparently they don’t really want to have to spend money with renovations but want to charge 5,000$/month rent for a small store. Who can afford that? Only big corporations.You’ll see the resident’s response to that here.

One of the things that make me really sad when I travel these days is to witness the corporatization of businesses everywhere. North American urban centres and malls (and many rural shopping centres too!) look exactly like any other urban centre and malls anywhere else in North America. This trend is even getting to Europe where a shopping street in 15th arrondissement in Paris looks exactly like a shopping street in Barcelona. A friend of mine was having a baby shower here in Toronto and since I went to Paris in the spring, I decided to buy a gift there – I thought it would be nice to have a little outfit from a local baby store and it was kind of fun to go shopping for baby clothes in a foreign city. I got really disappointed when I got home and found out that the particular French store I shopping in has a store here in Toronto. What’s the point? I think all this homogeneization only stiffles creativity and tolerance for anything that is different.

Sorry for the rant.

PS: apparently Second Cup opened a store in the market a few years ago but it didn’t last very long…

Saturday morning at Kensington

alexandra — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:23:59 +0000

As I’ve said many times before, Kensington Market represents my idea of what Toronto and ultimately, Canada, means for me. It’s a place where old and young, rich and poor, every ethnicity, rub shoulders in peace. But despite the recent wave of gentrification, it’s not a place for everybody. It’s not manicured and some would say that it is definitely rough around the edges. Its origin as a cheap market for working class immigrants is still evident and one of the things that fascinate me, ever the historian. One can see the different waves of Canadian immigration history in its stores: first there were the Jews, then the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Jamaican and more recently, the Latin Americans. All of this is evident at the corner of Augusta and Baldwin where we hang out. Louie’s Cafe, where we spend many hours, is owned by three generations of Portuguese immigrants, their neighbour is Solly, the Jewish butcher, who grew up in the market and serves his own coffee at Louie’s, across the street is a Chinese fruit and vegetable stand where the matriarch of the Portuguese family does her shopping. The owner respectfully carries her shopping and walks her across the street when she’s done. Next door is the Chilean empanadas place. It’s a tight knit community.

Above all, Kensington teaches us not to judge by appearances. We’ve seen men in expensive suits sitting beside a group of very rough-looking punks, who were always apologetic and polite if they bumped into you. We are one a first-name basis with some of the local street people, who are always very nice and dignified.

Markets are a place filled with a special energy that capture much of the soul of a community. As Javier Reverte said so beautifully in his book about his African adventures, to really understand a place, one needs to visit its public markets. I take that to heart and try to always visit a local market where I am. In Montreal, we were regulars at Jean Talon, with its special Québécois atmosphere. In Barcelona, our favourite market was the Mercado de l’Abaceria Central, in Gracia, which was busy every day of the week. Here in Toronto, despite having visited the St. Lawrence Market a few times, we quickly took to Kensington.

This morning was a particularly nice one to be in the market. The air was dry and the sky was a perfect shade of blue. I regretted not having my camera.

But here’s a b&w from last year:

Coffee at Louie’s

alexandra — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 23:35:52 +0000

I keep saying that I LOVE going to Kensington Market for coffee on Saturday mornings. It has became our Toronto tradition. As I mentioned in a comment below, even at the depths of my comps’ blues, we still made it to Kensington every Saturday morning, summer and winter. So I decided to post here what I like to have when I go there:

It’s nothing more than a long espresso with a big of steamed milk. The small size means there is less milk than in the average latte/capuccino, which adds more punch to the coffee taste. It’s perfect in its simplicity…