A London Some'ting

...or the great pork tour of 2016.

The Dotytron and I celebrated 15 years of jungle love this year.  15 years is not nothing. It's kind of a big deal.  We've been through a thing or two, and we wanted to celebrate in some grand, fiscally irresponsible fashion.  Originally the plan was New Orleans, for a extra-long weekend bacchanalia of jazz and beignets and crawfish and brass bands.  Then the Dotytron stumbled upon the 10 year anniversary of Rupture, a promotion company in London that's been pushing the breakbeat heavy sound that we love, that I really pushed when me and C64 were in the promoting game, that has been my heart and home.  For their 10 year anniversary they put together what can only be described as a "punishing" line up (very technical term).  So we did what any other jungle-crazed ex-ravers would do, we looked at each other and calculated the costs, and the time difference, and the fact that with the Dotytron's work schedule we'd only be able to spare like, 3 days in jolly old England, and the ridiculous exchange rate, and we said, "F**K IT, IT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN."  And we did it.

The logistics of leaving all three at home were not triflin'.  They were something else. We drew up a master schedule, we booked our caregiver to come in on the weekends, we set up contingencies and play dates and made food so it was all ready to go.  We sent emails, we left health cards, and even still, I was a ball of stress and nerves leading up to it.  A neighbour asked me before we left if I was excited and I was just like, "I'm too freaked out that something is going to go horribly wrong. I don't think I'm going to be excited until I get back to Toronto and find out that nothing happened."  (This turned out to be a bald-faced lie, since outside of a quick hello Facetime video shortly after arrival, I didn't worry/think about them once).  The wonderful grandmas (one of whom is effectively deaf and the other one who has major joint issues) conducted themselves admirably and we owe them the world.

We left on a Thursday night red eye.  Arriving at 9am the next day.  Now, I don't know if you lot know this about the Dotytron, but he is a terrible traveler.  His comfort zone consists of a razor thin slice of equilibrium - he can't sleep on planes, he gets sick, he's tall and awkward and uncomfortable.  It wasn't looking good for him, because even despite duping our family doctor into giving him a prescription for sleeping pills, they didn't do squat.  I on the other hand, am an exemplary travel.  Being used to functioning at a high level on little sleep is a point in my favor.

On arrival.

Our crash pad.

We dropped our bags, showered, and then hit Borough Market for a roast pork, applesauce, and crackling sandwich, and a sausage, arugula (sorry, rocket), and stilton sandwich.  The Dotytron also had one of the best cups of coffee of his young life at Monmouth coffee. It's coffee where people wait in line for about 25 minutes for a cup.

Then we did something we've never done before...we split up.  Usually, we're glued to each other, but he wanted to meet up with some Toronto crew to go record shopping, and I would've rather eat a bag of barf than follow around a bunch of DJs on a crate-digging expedition, so I went to the Tate Modern.

I **think** that's St. Paul's Cathedral, but we are always the worst tourists in the world, so I can't be sure.  Pretty picture though, right?

I hoofed it to Ottolenghi Spitalfields and picked up a bunch of goodies to tide us over the next day when we knew we'd be crunked.

After a long, luxurious, deep nap made all the sweeter by the subconscious awareness that there was no way I'd be woken by a little body climbing into bed and kicking me in the head, we posse'd up and headed to the venue, which was conveniently located about 100m from our apartment.  Good planning, us, good planning.  I have to be honest, I slept so deeply that I almost didn't want to go to the party.  It was also hectic because the promoter's had promised the Toronto contingent (about 8 people made the trip to London for the party, including our two buddies who were DJing) paid guestlist tickets available at the door.  Anticipation for the show was so intense (people were selling counterfeits??!  For a rave?!) that the promoters told us to line up by 10pm, or else they'd hit capacity.  It was kind of annoying (like seriously, you're not going to prioritize the people who you promised tickets and who crossed an ocean to be here?), and it was kind of fraught, but we got in around 10pm.

Skanna - aka the love of my life

Ummm...what is there to say about this party, except that it was LIFE AFFIRMING.  I felt like I was home, in a very real way.  Among my tribe of people (aka weirdo junglists).  The party was oversold like crazy...three sweaty, grimey rooms PACKED with a throbbing mass of people...one of those parties where you can't even dance because it's just a constant rotating shift of people squeezing by.  Was I uncomfortably skin-to-skin with some white dreads at some point?  Yes. Was I thoroughly grossed out by the tacky feeling of their sweat-slicked bodies against mine?  YES.  Was I worried that one wrong step and I would be trampled?  YES.  Did I get hit on?  Yes (still got it, Lagerfeld).  Eventually, in the main room, during what was billed as the "Alliance of Science" set (Equinox, BKey, and some other shacker) I was dancing up on top of some benches lining the main room.  This sound...this breakbeat heavy choppage...this tsunami of thunderous, sequenced, programmed amens, this chest-rattling bass...nothing does it for me like that.  I never get to hear it.  I never get to be surrounded by people who love this sound like I do and will brock out.  I never get to be around my people.

The thing is...people still CARE about jungle in the UK.  There's still a scene...and not just that, but a bit of a revival going on.  People were calling out "Insiiiide" and shouting "boh" for rewinds and I was like YES YES YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!  Dotytron of course came back all fired up to rebuild the scene here but we all know that Toronto is a provincial backwater...a tertiary, staid, conservative town and if it wasn't the case that almost everyone I love in the world was here, I wouldn't stay.  I was like, you're almost better off saving the money you'd spend bringing Equinox here to play to 100 people (MAX), and going to London once a year for a weekend of Rupture.

It was beyond magical.  I danced from about 10pm-5am (jah bless the time change and our arrival working in our favour...it felt like we left the party at midnight).  I was sore and grungy and covered with a thin mist of rave rain and it was like a benediction.  We fell into our usual party rhythms...the Dotytron flitting around, socializing, me eking out a little square of space by the bass bins, throwing elbows to maintain it, reconvening at various points but otherwise, blissfully on our own trajectory, but near enough so that our orbits overlapped.  I want to go back.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

The next day our big outing was the Harry Potter Studios tour, in Leavesden.

We hit Borough Market again the next day for breakfast which was a duck confit butty.

So, you take a hour-long bus ride to the studio lot.  They usher you into a theatre, and they show a video of Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe reminiscing about their time on the studios filming the movies.  At the end of the movie, the three of them turn away from the audience and open the door to the great hall at Hogwarts, and say something to the effect of: "Follow us now," and then the screen of the theatre rises up and the doors to the Great Hall at Hogwarts is there and everyone turned to each other and went, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" and people were like, bursting into tears and screaming, and it was truly, truly, the best.  So funny and dorky and amazing.

It was a big day for us.  For our splashiest meal, I made us a reservation at Fergus Henderson's incredibly influential restaurant, St. John.  When he opened the restaurant, he was one of the only people doing nose-to-tail eating and elevating so-called "humble" cuts of meat and returning to classic British cooking.  The food was a revelation.

Oat crusted mackerel with bacon and brown butter, potted crab toasts, and the iconic bone marrow dish.

The Dotytron had liver and chard and I had lamb's heart with rutabaga mash.  It was heavenly.  The heart had a texture like pork cheeks, but slightly more tender, sapid and blood rare in the middle.

The next morning we had breakfast at Modern Pantry, Clerkenwell.  I had a pecan frangipane croissant, and a shakshuka type thing.  The Dotytron had a benny with a yuzu hollandaise.  

We spent our last full day record shopping, regular shopping, and milling around.  Pretty lowkey and chill.  I had plans to check out a classic Sunday roast dinner, but because the seat of the Empire turns out to be a provincial backwater (is anyone surprised?  Not I!), we found that a lot of restaurants right in the core (Picadilly and the like) closed after a lunch service.  Da hell?  So we wandered around, peckish, Finally, we arrived at a Spanish restaurant with a crowd of people outside, waiting for one of the coveted seats.  There was no order to the crowd, so there was the general sense of unease in the air, subtle jockeying for position, mental headcounts of the people in the mass outside cross-referenced with the number of seats inside.  The Dotytron and I were the last pair to snag a set of bar stools and felt like we'd won the lottery for it.

Croquetas

Tuna Tartare, which our Run Lola Run server insisted was her favorite dish.  It was okay.

Spanish tortilla

Fried baby artichokes with hollandaise

Octopus a la plancha

Fried zucchini blossom served drizzled with honey

Beef cheek stuffed piquillo pepper, fried

Spanish flan and an olive oil cake with some weird trail mix served on the side

Two lovebirds, in love

Two lovebirds, homeward bound

It was such a good, fun, trip.  Although, 2 months later, it seems like a distant memory.  I'm hungry to go back.  

The thing is: 15-odd years ago, I made a choice to spend my life with this Tally McGoo from my high school.  I didn't know what I was choosing at the time.  I mean, how could I?  I was a half-formed lump of clay.  I'm still not even a fully-formed lump of clay.  Yet, every day, for the past 15-odd years, I've gotten up and continued to choose this life we've made together.  I choose this guy, with his big, pure, open heart and his ability to make me gasp with laughter. I choose his sentimentality and sensitivity and empathy.  I choose his silliness and his ability to be a goof around our children and his endless patience as a parent.  I choose our ups and downs, I choose our squabbles, I choose our brocking out in a car together, I choose our shorthand and our finishing each other's sentences.  2001 me, goomba that I was, turned out to be pretty smart, guys.  I don't know what life is going to throw our way.  I don't know what our struggles are going to be.  I don't know how low the capriciousness of fate will bring us.  The only thing I know is that there is an alchemy between we two.  As a team, we are magic.

Fin.

Junglism

On Friday the Dotytron and I had the Big Yam sleep over at Momma D's and we went out to a bomb-a** old skool jungle party.  That music is like, 20 years old.  Crazy-cray.  This is how far I am from my raving days:

1) I was originally wearing my Birkenstocks and then realized they didn't go with my outfit so I changed into a pair of flats.  The Dotytron is like, "You changed into those shoes?!?!" and I explained my outfit-consistency rationale.  Then we get to the party and I'm like, "Oh yeah.  Right."  Because, in jungle, EVERYONE WEARS RUNNERS.  It's like, a ballgown and KSwiss.

2) One of the MCs called "Hold tight for the DJ Lush and Marcus" and I asked the Dotytron, "are they here?" and he says to me, "He said, 'HOLD TIGHT'.  YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!  YOU'VE FORGOTTEN HOW TO 'HOLD TIGHT'"  LOL!

Basically, everyone looked the same as in our halycon raving days of yore, except like, fatter.  In some cases - MUY fatter.

It was the best.  I heard about a zillion tunes that I loved and rude bass and I danced and we were out super late and it was the funnest.

Right now we're living at Momma D's house which is *high sing-songy voice* THE BOMB.  She has a dishwasher!  She has central air!  She has this gorgeous giant backyard patio/garden with wicked patio furniture that we can lounge on like kings!  It's amazing.  I'm having a minor struggle trying to adapt my weekly menu plan to a white person kitchen (e.g. Uncle Ben's rice in the cupboard, no room temperature butter, no food processor), but other than that, we're loving the access to a comprehensive cable package and whatnot.

On Saturday night we had Dr. Rei and Hanbo over for swimming and then a dinner of lobster rolls, deep fried pickles, and corn pudding and chocolate pudding pie and then we played two games of Settlers and it was so good.  Seriously, playing Settlers with those guys is hilariousness.  Like Dr. Rei and I spilling glasses of water on the Settlers board within minutes of each other.  And Hanbo and the Dotytron going down the water slide at the pool.  So good.

Sunday we met up with SMckay and the FroYo Baron in Kensington for pedestrian Sundays which was crowded.  As the Dotytron said (or sang, rather): "You pay a million dollars, to hang out with bums" - which basically sums up our experience.  Pluses: dulce de leche filled churros from Don Churros, good snacks.  Minuses: me getting snookered into spending SIXTEEN DOLLARS on TWO tostadas from foodie favorite Agave y Aquacate.  I'm like, seriously?!  Two chicken tinga tostadas?  While they were tasty, eight dollars is highway robbery, in my humble opinion.  The other thing is that the Dotytron got it into his head that we should get a $5 portrait of the Big Yam done by this sketch artist who had set up shop.  Basically, the price is based on how much time she spends on the picture - $5 for five minutes, $10 for 10 minutes, etc.  The artist had sample portraits displayed that showed the level of detail you get for each price category.  These were really good.  I'd say on par with what you'd find at a high-traffic boardwalk/beach (like Malibu-calibre or something).  So we got a $5 portrait done.  At one point she says to the Big Yam, "can I see your eyes?" and then she hands over the portrait:

Ummmm...THAT'S NOT MY KID.  LOL!  We basically paid $5 for a picture of some other kid.  I'd say the only part that looks like the Boobla Khan is the top right 2" quadrant of hair/forehead.  The Dotytron was like, 100% she didn't do those other sample portraits.  We were laughing about how she asked to see the Big Yam's eyes and then DIDN'T DRAW HIS EYES AT ALL.

So hilarious.  We're going to take him to Scarborough Town Centre where they have one of those booths where you can get a "hand-drawn" portrait done in a number of styles.  Like, the Dotytron and I have a Rembrandt version of us when we were young pups that is one of our favourite photos of us of all time.

Last night for dinner I made us Baltimore crab cakes with andouille sausage, corn, and tomato-cucumber salad.  Pretty simple.

Tonight we had pulled pork sandwiches and mashed cauliflower and cheese patties and coleslaw:

Fin.

adventure/nimrods abound

imma do things chronologically so we don't lose anything in the mix.

when we got hitched, we had to rent an amp. so we went to the only music store in geneseo, ny - buzzo's music. owned by this fine gentleman:

who walks with the help of a jerry-rigged cane (it looks like a bunch of metal rods taped together with packing tape) and speaks in a raspy mumble that's near incomprehensible. buzzo, who's famous catch phrase is: "you kidding me or what?", is a well-preserved relic from the trip the light fantastic, don't drink the kool-aid, shine on you crazy diamond 60s counter culture. he doesn't really do rentals, but he made an exception for us. in return, the dotytron bought this shirt:

when the last of our auxiliary performance thank you cards went out shamefully late, i made sure to get the dotytron to include one for buzzo, with some photos of the amp and the dotytron rocking out with the electric guitar.

on wednesday, i came home and emptied the mail box (note for posterity and future house-chore labour division collateral: THE DOTYTRON NEVER EVER CHECKS THE MAIL) to find this envelope:

i waited for the dotytron to come home and we opened this letter together:

it reads:

dear lagerfeld and dotytron,
so glad it's gone so well!!!
hope this finds you both healthy and happy!!
the pictures will be "on the wall" somehwere (or on the "green giant")
thanks!!
best regards,
al "buzzo" bruno

AMAZING ON SO MANY LEVELS!!! first of all, only buzzo would write BACK. second of all, only buzzo's lsd-derived chicken scratches would take us the better part of half an hour to decipher. third of all, we're going to be immortalized on the wall of a geneseo institution! so the best! we got deep roots there, folks.

last night for dinner we had another legume-based dish. i made that warm baby spinach, lentil, bacon, shallot salad that i do. i usually bread and fry the goat's cheese rounds but we didn't have panko and we already had toasted breadcrumbs leftover from the lima bean dish on tuesday, AND i was feeling chided and remorseful from the weekend of gluttony followed so closely by fat tuesday, that i just smeared the goat's cheese onto toasted slices of my sourdough bread and served it alongside, topping the salad with toasted breadcrumbs for texture. it was good!

so we pile in the captain to do some errands before dball. as we're driving to dball, i start talking about ehm do's show on saturday and the dotytron mentions that he's kind of weirded out by how she was making kind of ribald comments (it was close to valentine's day, after all) and he doesn't really want to see his sister being sexy - that it gives him the willies. and i was talking about how you have to be supportive and then i said, "i'm sure if you were dita von teese's sister, you would go to her show"

the dotytron, driving, looks over at me with narrowed eyes and a puzzled, uncomprehending look and slowly says, "okaaaaaaaay.........i'm not really sure where you're going with this."

and i was like, "you know, if you were dita von teese's sister, or her parents, you would go to her show, even though it's sexy."

a couple of beats passed in puzzled silence. my puzzlement at the dotytron's obtuseness, his puzzlement to be revealed a second later when he burst out laughing, "oh, i get it. i thought you meant that dita von teese's sister would be going to ehm do's show, and i was all like, 'why would dita von tee's sister go to ehm's show?!?'" LOL!!! we laughed our guts out. it was the way he kind of gave me the puzzledeyes and was all like, "okaaaaaaaay..." about it. like he didn't have a clue where i was going but was willing to reluctantly follow along. kind of like a metaphor for our relationship.

so we played against a team that i kind of dislike in dball and lost because they're an amazing team. my team (well, like 2 players) got super rattled and freaked out and started accusing the other team of cheating and then one of the dudes on my team walked out like a poose. it was so poose. this broad on my team said that there's more glory in throwing someone out when you're the last person on the court for your team than a catch. THAT IS SO WRONG i almost smacked her upside the head. catching is the NUMBER 1 SKILL in dodgeball. the NUMBER 1! repeat it after me: CATCHING IS THE NUMBER 1 SKILL IN DODGEBALL. because it's the double whammy - you get someone out AND you bring someone on your team BACK IN. what an idiot.

anyway, on the way home, we got pulled over by the cops because the sticker on our license plate was expired and we hadn't renewed it. the dotytron tensed up like whoa, but i found the whole situation kind of funny. we were literally 1 block from our house. i've never been pulled over before so i put my hands up in the air in the car to show the 5-0 that i wasn't packing. the dotytron was unamused. when the lady cop (it was a lady cop!) was shining the light in the car i suddenly had a hilarious idea. how awesome would it be to be pulled over by the cops, have them come up to the car, shine the light in, only to have you turn around with one of those halogen head-lamps strapped to your head?!??? ahahahahahahaha!!! i can picture it in my head and it would be so funny.

so we're waiting there while they run our vehicle and registration and insurance shiz and then the lady cop comes back and says, "it's your lucky day, guys. we just got called to a knifing" WHAT THE HELL? lucky us, unlucky schlub who got knifed, i guess.

so i've been on twitter for about a year maybe and i finally got into a snippy tweet flame war with the food writer for the toronto star, who wrote this incredibly smug article about how torontians aren't being "cool" about the arrival of guu. read about it here. it got linked in my twitter, so i'm like, ummm...FIRST OF ALL ELECTRO CYBER GEEK, how do YOU get to be an arbiter of taste i toronto? have you met you? btw, you posted THIS as your twitter picture:

what an "asexual snail" in the words of dr. rei. explain how i'm supposed to take any of the pretentious, holier than thou, "oh, i'm going to ask my FRIEND, the chef at kaiseki-sakura [aka native insider authenticity generator alert!]" drivel that comes out of your mouth, seriously? you, who overcooked a ribeye like whoa?

(i pulled this photo from his blog...which is teeth-gnashingly smug). so i posted in response to him...uhhh... what's your FREAKIN' POINT? people line up all the time. sorry if it's not "cool" to line up. people line up for all kinds of things: ramen at momofokus, yakitori in japan, caplansky's, the black hoof, reserving 6 months in advance for alinea (could be construing as lining up) - are all of those equally "not cool"? HOW ARE YOU "COOL"? so effin' elitist and self-aggrandizing.

sigh. i effin' hate the calibre of the food community in toronto if it's made up of corey mintz and toronto life and joanne kates. where's the realness? where's the inclusiveness? where's the JOY? the joy in eating...that giddy excitement, the desire to share, to encompass the world at your table and while away an evening with friends over the table? if these people have it...it doesn't come across. what comes across is how much you want to sock them in the nads. that corey dude even has a twitter hater who's only goal is to start flame wars with him (misterpsm) kind of awesome.

in other news of people being shacker hackjobs, the special library association, of which i am a member is hosting a workshop with a guest speaker on the topic of "information overload." the guest speaker, whose bio reads thus (you can skim it...the main point is...he talks himself up like whoa):

"Karl Dawson is the CEO of phiScape AG, a company specializing in distributed computing and data integration in heterogeneous environments, with particular application to digital media and knowledge management systems. Prior to founding phiScape AG in Zürich, Mr. Dawson was CTO of Deltavista, a data broker based in Switzerland which connects large volumes of data from a myriad of public and private sources through sophisticated record linkage. In this position, Mr. Dawson not only designed the software and data architecture, but contributed to key parts of the implementation. Prior to Deltavista, Mr. Dawson was employed at the Amdahl Research Laboratory in Toronto, where he helped to develop a relational database system with an embedded rule-based engine. Before this, Mr. Dawson worked five years at I.P. Sharp and Associates in Toronto, where he was privileged to help engineer the company’s APL interpreter, implementing new language primitives. Mr. Dawson holds university degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science."

anyway, chachi up there describes his upcoming presentation thusly:

"Arthur Toffler characterized "Revolutionary Wealth" as resting on three pillars: time, space and knowledge. The identification of these particular elements is in no small measure attributable to technology, particularly the internet. "Internet time" is something that we all know about. "The World is Flat" is the standard metaphor for globalization. But, whereas the internet has compressed time and space, knowledge is expanding at an accelerating rate. This is the “information overload” problem that we experience in our daily lives.

Information overload cannot be solved by search engines alone, since even the most precise search requests still leave us with a lot of information to absorb. We live in a post-Gutenberg world of electronic documents, but where are the post-Gutenberg tools to help us process all this information? There has to be something more than just tag clouds."

i got just one simple question for you: WHO THE F**K IS "ARTHUR TOFFLER"???!!!??? i can only assume you mean ALVIN TOFFLER, the actual author (with heidi toffler) of "revolutionary wealth" - unless of course YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO BE TALKING ABOUT AND MAYBE DIDN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK YOU'RE REFERENCING IN YOUR TALK SUMMARY.

WE ARE INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS. WE SHOULD BE GETTING THIS STUFF RIGHT. this is basic. that's like calling barack obama, bruce obama. or michel foucault, marion foucault. so i posted a comment on the event page. it's infuriating. because, you know, if information professionals actually had A SINGLE THEORETICAL INTEREST outside of hitching a cart to whatever "digital networking/crowd-sourcing/breaking down information silos" bandwagon happens to be jolting by n00b-alley, then stuff like this would be less likely to happen. you gotta crawl before you can walk, kids. GAH!!!

this weekend is gonna be dope.

tonight: dinner with the fam-bam up in markham. we're getting takeout from this sri lankan place, babu. i'm excited to try sri lankan/south indian stuff i've never had before like hoppers, etc.

tomorrow: i don't know where for lunch and then DREAM MENU for dinner for kung kung's birthday. hoping to hit up asc at the basement for old time jungle's sake. haven't danced in FOREVERS.

sunday: dim sum brunch with C et famille and then back downtown for dball.

family and jungle and food and friends - the quartfecta of good times.

fin.

EPIC

zomg. i came home at 3:30 last night (this morning). THREE THIRTY! that doesn't happen anymore! i'm so chuffed about it.

the past few days have been epic. let's start with friday night. got home from work and got all gussied up to take T and the dotytron out for dinner - to celebrate T being in town and the dotytron being DONE m-f'n TEACHER'S COLLEGE! i thought this day would NEVER come!

we went to tomi-kro restaurant in leslieville. it's close by and i've been meaning to try it for a long time. we also did a walk by of lil' ugmo as well (it was en route) to show T what is giving me periodic knots of anxiety in the flesh.

anyway, the meal was really lovely! we all had three courses, a bottle of wine, and one martini. here's what went down...

bread. basically warmed, pita triangles that had been brushed with an herbed oil. pretty tasty, but kind of nondescript.

lobster maki balls. bits of lobster mixed with chili mayo and avocado, encased in sushi rice which is then rolled in nori, dipped in tempura batter, and then deep fried. the lobster was barely noticeable, but i tend to be a sucker for deep fried maki. it's served with a slightly spicy wakame salad and more chili mayo on the plate. it's tasty because crispy+maki+spicy mayo is always a winning combination and this dish capitalizes on it.

at the top, foie gras brulé. a generous ramekin of foie mousse with a bruléed crispy sugar topping. served with toast and some kind of tart fruit preserve and other foie gras accoutrements. it was really really tasty. the foie mousse was whipped and airy and smooth and the bitter/sweet crunch of the bruléed sugar provided a nice texture and flavour contrast.

on the bottom, we have the miami short ribs. these were braised and then grilled and served with a vaguely asian, five-spice enhanced sauce. they were tender and delicious and generously portioned.

beet salad. huge slices of tender, chilled, beet topped with a goat-cheese cream studded with pistachios on top of greens. i loved this dish. it went over really well with a table of beet lovers.

i ordered the veal osso bucco. three tender, meaty chunks of veal shank, braised and topped with a rich, mushroom-cream infused sauce. this dish was quite heavy for summer but it was actually just what i wanted after waiting until 9pm to have dinner and walking through leslieville to find eats. the meat could have used a touch more seasoning but other than that, it was a nice take on osso bucco - extra points for a particularly huge slippery knot of marrow.

dr. rei ordered the seared salmon with tempura battered sweet peas and some kind of cole slaw type thing (or vinegary shredded stuff.) the salmon was served medium rare and had a sweet glaze going on.

T had the tuna, which came rolled in sesame seeds, seared, and served with some kind of miso sauce on edamame hummous. i didn't get to try it but T said it was yummy.

the dotytron ordered the filet of beef. it came with some kind of root mash and sauce. i was getting full at this point so even though we were going splitsies, i didn't eat as much of it as i thought i would. the meat was as tender as filet should be and cooked the requisite medium-rare.

despite my above assertions that i was approaching fullness, that didn't stop me from ordering dessert. i ordered the flourless chocolate cake, which is a silky, dense, mousse-like triangle of pure chocolate flavour, accented with whipped cream and berries.

dr. rei ordered the chocolate pudding, which came with a chocolate brownie (i found the brownie a touch dry.)

the dotytron and T had the dulce de leche cheesecake. it was also very good and and restrained with the caramel flavours, which can sometimes get too sickening and cloying.

all in all, i thought the food was really good and pretty fairly priced, for the portion size and the execution. we paid $280 including taxes and tip for four people to have 3 courses each and a bottle of decent wine and one cocktail. i would go there again.

yesterday was a loooooooong day. the roomie was moving out yesterday, so T and i hightailed it to bonjour brioche to get out of her hair. plus, i wanted to take T there because it's something a little different in the brunch department. on our way, the area that i live in now was having a massive street sale, so we walked through that. some of the prices were exorbitant and not in the spirit of yard sale-ing. for example, some dude was selling a plastic radio flyer wagon for EIGHTY DOLLARS. that's not good yard sale etiquette. do you want to get rid of the stuff or NOT? on the way back, we spotted H and baby D and H's mom J. they stopped over for a visit and showed off some of their finds from their trawl through the yard sale. H has the best yard sale/goodwill/value village luck i've ever seen.

then S came over to look at some furniture and we visited with her for a bit. it turns out all the stuff i'm getting rid of is too big for her new place so it's not going to work out. but it was nice catching up.

finally, after the cavalcade of stars, we headed out for our day of shopping. i didn't buy much. i got a straw hat for myself and a pair of shorts for the dotytron. pretty restrained considering i saw a bunch of nice stuff i wanted. i'm really into the thin, button down, breezy, rolled up shirt/dress look this summer. i think it's so crisp and clean and like, blake lively strolling through martha's vineyard on a hot summer's day.


this is kind of what i'm talking about. so nice! so breezy and crisp and still relaxed and vaguely hippie for hot climes. it's very vacationy. but i was good and didn't succumb. i'll do a trawl through the sale racks if and when i ever get some disposable coin. i definitely don't want to pay full price for that stuff.

we walked and walked and walked and had a serious case of barking dogs. we met up with the dotytron at harbord fish'n'chips and mowed down and then came back home and napped. we met up with our buddy B at the subway and headed over to our buddy M and fox's apartment in kensington where we did some pre drinking with other peeps. bwong came and met us there and was winningly insouciant as per usual. we headed out to supermarket first and were bored to death with some crappy disco-y standards ("pyt" etc.) i went up to the dj and asked if they were going to play any hip hop and requested m.o.p's "ante up" and he said he'd play it. we sat through some more indeterminate crap tunes and were just about to leave when he dropped it and the crowd went OFF. what the hell dudes, just let me program a set. then he played some more old skool hip hop but it might have been too little too late. we trooped over to thymeless but they were full (!!!) so i convinced people to go to some random jungle party at toi bar featuring the sounds of dj saigon and possibly frankie gunns.

we squeezed in just before last call and got a reduced rate. T and i bonded at trent university over le jungle, bwong is an old torontojungle.com stalwart, the dotytron and i met via jungle, and some other random friend of friend of the dotytron's high school crew who was in attendance was also a former jungle devotee. it was a BLAST. we danced our butts off to really crappy jungle and it was awesome. lol! i think my voice was hoarse from "brup"ing and "bo"ing. ahahahahaha. at one point, i started rolling up the legs of my jeans and told a (shocked) bwong that i was really going there. T had been worried about being under-dressed for supermarket but we were totally OVER dressed for jungle. ahahahahaha! so good!!! i also got hit on by a n00b. he offered to buy me a drink. i ordered a gin and soda (T's drink of choice) thinking i could pass it along to her but the bar was closed. the point is, i got hit on (i'll take what i can get) and i still got it for skeevy jungle dudes (like i said: i'll take what i can get. lol!) we kinda closed the place down. like, the lights came on. then we dip-setted out of there with bwong shouting, "quick! before the lights come on!" and then we kind of staggered out because it felt like we had all just like blacked out and fell into a time warp. it totally escalated quickly. all in all, a super fun night. can't ask for more.

i'm about to make some breakkie and get this day started.

fin.