Store Review: Bonne Journee

This new store is another addition that is starting to fill in the row between Coxwell and Greenwood along Queen Street East. It joins Sausage Partners, Queen Margherita, Rakia, The Film Buff serving ice cream and the Sunday farmer's market as a growing local food destination. That may be stretching it but for the longest time there was not much in the area.

So, a boulangerie opens. Boulangerie is basically a baker that does not specialize in fine pastry. It is often contrasted with patisserie which is a fine pastry shop. There are no claims from this shop that it is a fine Parisian pastry shop. It does feel French because it is. However, it does have some of the goodies that you would expect including mille-feuille and Paris brest. I happened to show up on opening day by accident. The accident involved going for chicken at Sausage Partners but that is a digression. Sticking to the point, I entered the shop and was a little surprised to see that it was barely noon and only two types of bread remained. (Here comes a major digression).

<DIGRESS>As an aside, a friend of mine went to Glory Hole about a week ago, shortly before noon where he was greeted by a rack of four doughnuts. There was one person in front of him and a few people lined up after him. The person in front takes the last of the doughnuts and the counter person told him there were no more doughnuts. A similar thing happened to me at Paulette's where a number of different types were finished.

The problem that we have with this is that both of these places have been in business for a little while and so they should have an idea of what their daily sales will be. The second is the response is a little shrug and sorry. The third is that they seem to trade on this shortage - when they are gone, they are gone and aren't they precious? There is a slight weirdness in TO food culture where shortages are managed to create buzz. Maybe this is because these places are worried that their products would not live up to the hype? I know, a little catty but...</DIGRESS>

The server was so apologetic and stated to everyone she served that they had made a mistake on their first day and should have made more bread. She assured every one that this would NOT happen again. It may have helped that she said this with a slight french accent belying the rudeness of the French. I got a bunch of stuff and headed back home to test the tastes on the hoard.

The demi-baguette tasted fine but the crumb lacked the large bubbles that I expect. There was a pain au lait sprinkled with sugar but I felt the sugar chosen was a little too coarse. It made the bread taste more like a sweet rather than a sweetened bread. A finer sugar sprinkled less liberally would make all the difference. Fundamentally, it tasted fine.

The pastries were another thing. The flavour for all of them was quite good. It tasted as if an experienced baker had made them. A complaint could be made in the lack of refinement; some of the crusts were unevenly browned, the cut of the brest allowed the cream to fall out.  Once again, the filling and the crusts tasted like they should. It was the texture and the crunch that was oh so slightly off.

You can always tell something about the make of a place during its first few days and I can tell that the pastries will become more regular and refined with more days to come. The bread situation will result in availability. This place will survive and make good on its promises because you can see it in the servers and taste it in the food. They aren't only here to make a living, they want to please their customers. I do have the choice of going to the patisserie down the way but I think that sometimes the raw, young desire to please will win me out sometimes, especially if I am only looking for a few loaves of bread.

Store Review: Moo Milk Bar

Whenever I hear milk bar I think of A Clockwork Orange but this place is more Milk n Cookies than moloko-plus. For anyone who remembers Nesquick Strawberry powder or glops of chocolate syrup into cold milk this will be a better memory. The nostalgia draw of homemade cookies and milk is evident from the young foodie hipsters crowding the sidewalk, slapping the bottom of the containers to mix the contents, who share the space with middle aged parents introducing their young ones to the joys.

The milk comes in a variety of flavours including Bottom of the Bowl, strawberry and banana. Some adult preferred flavours of vanilla bean and mocha round out the selection. I am sure given the attitude of the owners that there will be a few rotating members and look forward to what they present. I am hoping for a straight coffee, Camp, tea and others for the adult set.

Now for the cookies... Bad news first, they aren't as good as my wife's. Good news, my wife is an accomplished baker. We have often found that people have forgotten the joy of a home baked cookie. Some of standard flaws include inconsistency of texture, irregular shapes and a slight greasiness on the fingers.

Let's translate these flaws. Inconsistency of texture means that the cookies have spread and the outsides are crispy while the insides are soft and chewy. For some of their cookies, such as the ones with toffee, this translates into a slight burnt caramel taste on the outside and a softer texture and sugary taste on the inside. Not bad at all.

Irregular shapes. If I have to tell you then you have never had a homemade cookie. It means that sometimes they spread a lot, sometimes not so much. Also, what is a circle?

The greasiness comes from using good fats; butter, shortening but not some weird oleo or thing that doesn't exude grease. In cookies, this means love.

The only real miss was the sugar cookie. In my mind, sugar cookies should have a delightful snap and almost crystalline structure (crumbly). These were a little soft and not light enough. Oh, one more gripe.  When I sat down at my mother's table with a cookie and milk, I could dunk 'em.  Here the mouth of the milk container is too small. I had to wait until I got home to properly dunk my cookies in milk.

This is a great attempt at recreating the nostalgia. For those who have never had the experience, being of a generation where homemade cookies were not done, they have to have this experience. For those whose partners still bake, this could be a good second choice. I don't care for cookies but I am still looking for the moloko-plus. This will do until the future arrives.

Store Review: Sausage Partners

The new meat shop on the block opened a few weeks ago after a long spring and summer of a teasing coming soon sign.  The had created so much expectation that they had updated the sign several times with notes on what was going on.

It turns out that they ended up doing a whole renovation that required much design to meat the health codes. (I made a typo up there but I'm leaving it in.)  The problem, in my opinion, with the health codes is that they do not take into account the size of the business and sometimes this causes over design.  Even with all these codes, the big meat purveyors can get it wrong.  A small Mom and Pop shop cannot afford to get it wrong but someplace like Maple Leaf can take a six month hit and still find a way to survive.

Anyways, now that the digression has run its course, onto the review.  I live in a Marvelous Meat Triangle.  I am now as close to Royal Beef and Close to the Bone as this place.  Sure, there is Meat on the Beach and the Chopping Block but one isn't quite what I am looking for in a butcher and the other just falls out of that easy area for walking.

The Sausage Partners is open near Greenwood on Queen Street East. It is a small shop that has home canned goods on one side, local produce displayed in the middle with the meat counter at the back.  It reminds me of the old Farmer's Daughter on Kingston road was setup but Sausage Partners is focused on meat instead.

The are similar to the other places mentioned above in that they are butchers.  They get huge slabs of meat (hanging meat) and break it down.  This means that there is only so much in the counter but you are only limited by your imagination and knowledge in what you can get.  Also, sometimes you will not be able to get what you want.  This is where the second common thing happens.

These are butchers.  I know that sounds like the first thing but go with me.  This means that given the application that you are doing (grilling, braising, high and hot  or a particular recipe), they can give you suggestions or substitutions with out too much trouble.  Try that at a grocery store.

The last commonality is the bits they add.  Carmen at Royal has all sorts of gourmet goodies that she gets in because she wants to try it and is curious.  Often, they take off at other larger stores.  I got my first vanity salts there.  Mary's partner at Close to the Bone does smoking so you can see chips, rubs and other stuff there.  At the Sausage Partner's, I believe that it is Lorraine's preserves that will carry the day and set it out from the crowd.

I have had some of the sausages there and they are good but not the standout.  It is the bacon.  That is good bacon.  Real good bacon.  The package of chips says hickory but this don't taste like no hickory smoked bacon I have had.  It may be the freshness but it tastes like one of my best memories of bacon.

So, even though I have two go to butchers, I am looking at finding a way of adding a third.  It makes me feel like a sixteen year old boy again.  Maybe that's why the name sounds like a bad porn from the '80s.

Store Review: Patisserie La Cigogne

Finally, a great french pastry shop along the Danforth opens up.  This is the second location of the patisserie.  It has opened up in a location that was used briefly by an Italian restaurant and before that it was a long time Greek family restaurant.

The place is set up like a pastry or doughnut shop.  You want in and see the display cases across the back with ample room for sitting and the requisite Van Houtte carafes.  It could easily be mistaken for a Montreal style mom and pop bakery but the pastries are more refined.  On the day that I picked up some danishes, it had been very humid.  Even in that weather, the pastry was light and very tasty.  There was not a lot of crunch to the outside and therefore little in the way of contrasting textures.  The weather gives them a pass for that.  The only issue was the filling. It tasted too sweet and too similar to the type of filling that can be found on store bought pastry.  However, this turns out to be my only real criticism.

The cookie that needs no name did not spawn recollection of my childhood at my aunt's drinking tea in the cool of a summer afternoon nor did it devolve into crumbly letters and phonemes to extend to seven volumes of recollections and end unfinished in 1.5 million words.  It was good.  Bit dry.  Needed tea.  It was probably just as good as Proust's mother's madeleine -- which also needed tea.

The impressive bit comes with the slices or gateaux or goodies.  The part that I am always struck with french pastries is the use of different textures and flavours that are layered or filled or constructed in some architectural and interesting ways.  Jelly is placed on top of delicate cookies and mousses are extruded and covered in nuts.  Some times it is all a bit precious.  We tried four different gateaux and any with mousse were fantastic.  These guys can do mousse well.  My family loved three of the four slices that we picked (Symphony - three chocolate mousses layered with a fruit puree on top, The Flute  -- lime mouse and pistachios on a rum soaked cookie and Bacarra  -- pistachio and peaches.)  None of these felt overly precious.  The fourth just didn't appeal to my young sons or my wife.  I found that the flavours were a little jarring but that is probably more due to the alcohol, fruits and chocolate.  Done well but not one that I liked.

If I could imagine that a middle class in Vienna could go out to the opera with their kids and end up in this type of pastry shop drinking coffee and relaxing while the kids wolfed down these slices then it is not so far to reach to think that this is the perfect place to do the twentieth century equivalent.  After Karate, Kumon or seeing some street event, this is a great place.  Hell, even before or better yet ... during.

I haven't mentioned that they do sandwiches, crepes and tortiere.  We, as a family, will be going back to try some of this.  Who doesn't love a meat pie with ketchup?  That is the most important part of this place.  It lets you feel comfortable and eat as you like without talking down to you in terms of its food.  There are many gourmet shops that could take a good lesson from this...at the end of the day, it is food.  Meant to be eaten and enjoyed.

Shop Review: Nadege Patisserie

Yet another fine French pastry shop opens on Yonge Street just south of Summerhill.  Nadege joins Petite Thuet, Patachou, and the not quite only a patisserie, All the Best Fine Foods serving pastries and sandwiches for lunch.

While Nadege's website boasts coffee and fresh baked pastries, this Yonge location is a boutique with neatly placed goodies presented with an artist's eye. Read: No Coffee. It is easily the most artistic of the shops mentioned above.  I sampled three of the pastries and all were modern tastes using traditional techniques.  A dark chocolate pyramid cake and a bombe accented with l'espelette pepper were rich and had a daring punch not found in many traditional French pastries.  But does this area need another 6-9 dollar sandwich?

This place should take a note from the others and put in a sandwich press as their sandwiches are too cold.  Now, this might seem a quibble until you break it down.  I had two sandwiches that were served on croissants.  Croissants that are stored in the cold begin to seize, the butter hardens in the crust.  The brie and ham tasted like a cold piece of butter shoved into greasy piece of brioche toast.  My tongue can tell that the croissants are made the old fashioned folding way to create the crispy layers but the teeth feel one fused piece of bread.  Get a press to warm the delicate piece and bring back some of the joy or make it to order or make it just before lunch...maybe turn up the heat on the counter.  Anything will be better than this.

Some of the more delicate pastries such as the grapefruit and Earl Grey tart also suffer from the cold.  An instruction to the customer to let it sit out for twenty minutes may solve this problem of temperature.

So, I would recommend the goodies but skip the sandwiches.  Better and more reasonably priced sandwichy goodness abounds in the area.

   

Store Review: The Foodist Market

Update:  A sign went up last week (second last week of May 2011) announcing that the store was closing. 

A new market opened up to the east of Queen and Pape to supply the local area with organic and local produce where available.  The sign on the door reminds me that they are currently doing a soft opening but that does not scare me off. 

This store is another in a line of curated food stores where cold cuts and various vegetables are wrapped in plastic.  The current produce selection is hydroponic and local or shipped from foreign lands but organic.  It seems perverse that "better" food requires more oil in the form of plastics and shipping in return for a reduction of pesticides and some fertilizers.

This makes me question the whole labelling and certification of "Organics".  It would be nice to trade that label for a better assurance of local farmers who do all the right things but do not have the time, money or the inclination to get the certification.  I hope that more shops will take that into consideration.  I am willing to accept the word of a good stockist.

Since this is a new store, maybe some of the museum quality of the spacious goods are due to the soft opening or seasonality.  I wonder what will happen when local produce is abundant and the shelves will be too small.  It is a funny business of stocking local and organic; it seems that you are resigned to apples, potatoes, beets and foreign supplied goods in the winter while in the summer there is not enough space for all that is in season.  The winter options could be supplemented with local preserves and canned organics, as long as these are sold by summer.  This natural cycle is the one that grandparents would be familar rather than the 24/365 cycle of cardboard flavoured fruits and vegetables of today.

Another issue with the shop is the tight areas for the shelving for non produce items.  It was quite difficult to get into the U shaped cubbies and be able to view all the goods for sale.  With so much room in the shop, a little more care could and should be taken to allow buyers to see the items.  All in all, this shop reminds me of so many ethnic shops along the Danforth that act like a bridge to another culture with select items from Italy, China, the Caribbean, Greece or some other country but updated to take account of the new urban conscience.

When asked, the owner stated that she just wanted to open a place for organic produce that wasn`t Loblaws or PriceChopper.  While these comments discount the nearby Rowe Farms and the summer market at Withrow Park, it is mainly true.  The store stocks some of the best that can be found at St. Lawrence Market at similarly virtuous prices.  Kozliks mustard and Pingue cold cuts can be found here along with other familiar products.  There is much to recommend this place but with new places such as Sausage Partners cropping up, will this place be able to compete?  I hope for its success but will keep my eye on it over its first summer to see the answers to the questions this shop raises.