FILM - ( August 6, 2009 ) I PEEKED UNDER JULIA'S PANS
As we ALL know by now, the new Julie & Julia movie starts its run in local theaters tomorrow.
Primed to be THE chick flick of the year, the advance marketing for the film has been omnipresent and relentless for most of the summer. Which only makes me more ambivalent about whether I want to rush out and see it. As much as I admire the talents of Meryl Streep, I'm afraid that she may try to reinforce Julia's image as that of a big, jolly and cute, if somewhat unusual, matron, when actually the woman was often pretty salty ... right into her nineties. ... CONTINUE READING .
Owning and operating a small, arty café in a hip part of town is one of the ubiquitous middle-class dreams -- right up there with planting a vineyard or turning one's heritage home into a friendly little B & B. However, as with all such fantasies, once the romance is tamped out, there's a lot of grit left to deal with. ... CONTINUE READING...
As a Victoria-based food writer and regional reporter for such local publications as Western Living, CityFood, Eat, and Vancouver Magazine, Shelora Sheldan is in the know when it comes to who is cooking where, and what's as hot as salsa on the Island food scene. Luckily for us, she's sharing many of these on her new (mostly cooking focused) blog called Cooking With A Broad. ... CONTINUE READING...
Now that's a set of tats that only a devoted food lover could really appreciate. Maybe also good for people who have a habit of putting their foot in their mouth? I spotted this young woman coming out of the Fancy Food Show at New York's Javits Center a couple of weeks ago, and chased her down the street to get the story. ... CONTINUE READING ... Filed in REGIONAL/ City+Travel:New York .
FILM - (July 9, 2009 ) TWO NEW FOOD FILMS COMING OUR WAY
A bumper crop of food-themed movies turned up in 2008 and the first half of 2009, with Food, Inc being the current eco-conscious film du jour. Organic Nation TV recently posted a list of the "Best Food Movies of 2009" . But when it comes to the green flicks, even they didn't get the entire list. Here's two more that we should be hearing about soon. ... CONTINUE READING ... Filed in ARTS & CULTURE/ Cinema .
ART - (June 17, 2009) VICTORIA ARTIST BRINGS A LITTLE MEXICO TO CHICAGO British Columbia artist Bill Blair has been commissioned to create five pieces of hand tinted Mexicana photomontages for the opening of Rick Bayless's new restaurant in Chicago, XOCO. Blair lives and works in Victoria, BC. Over the past two decades he has exhibited his photo-based work in numerous group and solo shows regionally and internationally at such venues as the Galeria La Mano Magica in Oaxaca, Mexico ... CONTINUE READING...
FILM - (June 15, 2009) FOODIE FILM FESTIVAL: OR WHY WE'D RATHER BE IN NEW YORK TODAY.
A farmer writes a love letter to buttermilk, a man embarks on his annual mission at the local state fair to eat everything that is either deep-fried or on a stick, a hamburger and a hot dog hunt a criminal through city streets, a stalk of celery and a knife encounter each other in a nail-biting thriller, someone tackles the sloppiest burger in Malaysia, Chef Daniel Boulud engages in a truffle purchase that resembles a drug deal ... all this and more happens at the 3rd Annual Food Film Festival which commenced last weekend ...CONTINUE READING...
TELEVISION - (June 8, 2009) BACHELORETTE JILLIAN AND HER BEAUS GET VANCOUVERIZED. Tonight, Jillian, The Bachelorette, will put her suitors through their romantic paces in a segment shot entirely in Vancouver. So we swear the only reason we will be tuning in will be see what local city icons get prime time during the show, and even more interesting, what local companies and their marketing teams successfully grabbed the opportunity to strut their stuff in front of the reality show's huge American television audience. ... CONTINUE READING ...
BOOKS - (June 2, 2009) NEW COOKBOOKS FROM QUATTRO AND C
This season has already seen the launch of Blue Water Cafe: The Cookbook(Douglas and McIntyre) by Chef Frank Pabst and team (with sister restaurant Araxi to publish next). Come this fall, two additional top Vancouver restaurants, Quattro and C Restaurant, will join the authors group. ... CONTINUE READING.
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia and the grunt gallery, Vancouver, have announced the launch of Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties, an online resource and digital archive incorporating hundreds of photographs, press clippings, audio recordings and film clips. ....CONTINUE READING...
WHAT WE'RE READING NOW - (May 12, 2009) TIM TAYLOR WRITES 'FOODVILLE'
In the Spring 2009 Issue of Vancouver Review (a Westcoast arts and culture quarterly), Stanley Park author and un-self-confessed "foodie", Tim Taylor, pens an essay on Vancouver's Food Fashion Era. ..."when food passed beyond objectivity and subjectivity and moved over into the wholly mimetic realm, the fun-house mirrored hall of fashion." ... CONTINUE READING.
Baby Bourdains. Three young chefs from Calgary via Winnipeg, Chad, Clayton and Lyndon -- hot, sweaty, mostly shirtless, and globally on the loose -- have been working their way around the world for the past six years. Most recent stop: Asia. To document their adventures they have been posting five minute trailers on YouTube in the hope it will land them a television series that would cover food and exotic travel throughout the continent. ... CONTINUE READING...
If you plan to attend the Naramata Bench Wine Association's "Spring Release Tasting" today you will have to notice this year's poster art. The NBWA has come up with some dynamic, eye-catching artwork in the past, and their latest effort is no exception. It was created by Hanna Melin, a young Swedish artist and illustrator living in London, England.
The following is a quick Q and A with Hanna about her design, and what was going through her mind when she created it ... CONTINUE READING ...
We're so loving the TED website, the thinking person's YouTube. Here's a couple of our favourites from the food topics area. Left , Jennifer 8 presents a humourous speech on the bastardization of Chinese cuisine in American culture, and right , Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwel l discusses what corporate manufacturers discovered about human requirements for happiness during their search for the perfect spaghetti sauce recipe.
Une Affaire de Goût (a Matter of Taste) From the opening titles -- scenes of chefs intently at work in a restaurant kitchen, carving chops from sides of beef, plucking chickens, mincing herbs with a mandoline – one might expect that Une Affaire de Goût is yet another food obsessed movie. And one would almost be right. ... CONTINUE READING...
The 2009 Sprout Cookbook Awards took place last night at Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks, with the honours going to Jennifer McLagan's book "Fat". ...CONTINUE READING...
Happy Birthday Barbie ! The ultra vixen with the Dream life and 100+ career path under her pink belt turns 50 today. Barbie was our cover girl in 1997 (when she was still a young thing approaching her 40th), and our issue themed around the doll as social icon became one of our most notorious. Advertisers cancelled their contracts after that foray outside the conventional lines of food publishing, but the issue also became a collector's item for Barbie fan clubs worldwide, as well as a favourite with certain members of the local gay community.
BLOGS - ( March 4, 2009 ) MARK LABA MOVES TO BLOGVILLE
So what we want to know is this ... Why it is when newspapers decide to put themselves on an economic diet, the first person they let go of is the food columnist? Especially if he/she is good at the job. Well, it's just too sad. The local guy with humour to burn and a unique perspective gets a boot in the bagels, while we the readers get stranded with the same old syndicated home economists and their recipes for pineapple cheesecake squares. ... CONTINUE READING ...
Agnes Varda’s cult hit, The Gleaners and I, may have been shot in 1999, yet ten years later its subject matter is more timely and relevant than ever. In the documentary film, the 80-year-old Varda (known as the “grandmother of the French new wave cinema”), focuses the lens of her portable digi-cam on gleaners -- those who 'glean' or collect, from the ground, the remnants of a harvest. ... CONTINUE READING ...
BOOKS - (February 27, 2009) JEFF BEZOS ON THE KINDLE2
In case you missed it ... Charlie Rose conducted an interview last night with Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com on the Kindle2, and how the new tech device will affect the future of publishing and book selling, not to mention our relationship with reading. ... CONTINUE READING ...
Waffles, pancakes, breakfast rolls, and just about every dish that can justify a poached egg perched on top of it are the new obsessions of the glossy food magazines. Top chefs are rethinking their aversion to brunches and the all-day breakfast menu. ... CONTINUE READING...
We could get all sleazy here and write a headline like: "Jillian Harris Says You Can Find Out Anything You Want To Know About A Man by Observing What He Does With His Wiener". But we won't do that. Although Ms. Harris, a bachelorette finalist on the current "The Bachelor" television series, does present a novel argument for her theory. If Harris looks vaguely familiar to some of us in the business of observing restaurants, that's because ... CONTINUE READING...
At the Paris des Chefs exhibit held in (naturally) Paris a week ago, Danish Chef Thorsten Schmidt wowed the crowd with this dish of oak flavoured ice cream garnished with fir tree shavings.
FOOD FILMS - (February 4, 2009) FROM THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Two entries in this year's Sundance Film Festival are likely to emerge as the year's most controversial films. And although each are concerned with food and consumption, neither present their subjects in an upbeat light. The first film, The End of the Line, a cinematic rendering of the bestselling book by Charles Clover, is a serious documentary focused on the devastation of the world's marine stocks from overfishing. While the second, and the complete opposite in approach if not tone, is Next Floor, a Canadian made, macabre fantasy about gourmand indulgence taken to a deadly extreme. ... CONTINUE READING...
Recently at CityFood Central, we received a review copy of the new Wallpaper City Guide to Vancouver, and the proof that the style arbitrators were aware who we are, at least enough to have our mailing address, gave our coolness quotient insecurities no end of comfort.....CONTINUE READING...
BOOKS - (January 6, 2009) THE SHARPER YOUR KNIFE ...
It’s a popular daydream: ditch the corporate job, run away to Paris, learn to cook, write a book about the experience, then have Hollywood come calling to make your story into a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts.
Kathleen Flinn, a native of Seattle, is almost there. Tinseltown hasn’t exactly put her on their speed dial yet but her best selling book “The Sharper the Knife, The Less You Cry” (the chronicle of her life adventures while chopping and dicing her way to a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris), has been featured on “Novel Adventures” a new web-based mini-series from CBS Interactive.* ... CONTINUE READING...
This month Chef Andrey Durbach (of Parkside, La Buca and Pied-à-Terre restaurants) debuts his new cookbook for children "Delicious Chicken Soup" with its delightful illustrations by the books publisher, Robert Chaplin, and typeset by Mrs. Durbach, Sian Pairaudeau. ... CONTINUE READING...
Four YouTube videos produced for C restaurant have gone viral over the last 24 hours, with emails richocheting around the Vancouver dining community ... CONTINUE READING...
ART - (October 16, 2008) INNISKILLIN LABEL CELEBRATES CANADIAN ARTIST GORDON HALLORAN
Ice meets Ice … This may be, quite literally, the coolest looking wine label we’ve seen yet.
As official wine supplier for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games, Inniskillin has released a Commemorative Edition of its Vidal Icewine with a label depicting the amazing artwork of Canadian artist Gordon Halloran. ...CONTINUE READING...
FOOD STYLE - (September 22, 2008) VEGETABLES ON A FENCE Seems like everything is riffing on the US political scene these days, even party food. Although we thought this "press conference" interpretation was a novel way of pinning down the candidates.
Called "Tomatoes, Turnips and Carrots on the Fence" it was Chef Dan Barber (Blue Hill at Stone Barns, NY) update on the classic veggies and dip, and consisted of heirloom cherry tomatoes, baby carrots and turnips impaled on ordinary, 3-inch construction nails embedded into a plywood block. (Watch those fingers!) ... CONTINUE READING ...
NEWSLETTERS - (September 3, 2008) DOUGH THAT SIZZLES
The CityFood mailbag receives a LOT of breathless newsletters from commercial manufacturers touting their latest products ... and most of them disappear into the X files. However, we admit to looking forward to this rather homespun version from Barbecues Galore and Woods Fireplaces (operating out of Calgary). Always plenty of humour, interesting points of view, good grilling tips, and often some smokin' recipes too.
Their latest missive features techniques for baking bread on the barbecue ... both regular sourdough and foccacia. ... CONTINUE READING...
WEBSITES - (August 21, 2008) ANGELA MURRILLS FRENCH BLOG
Now that Angela Murrills has left Vancouver for the rustic country pleasures of the south of France, do we miss her? Most certainly we do ... both Angela and her writing.
We were a fan of Murrill's virtuoso way with a pen long before we got into the business of food writing ourselves, and in all the years we followed her features and columns in the Georgia Straight and other publications (including CityFood), it always struck us that Ange's light and lyrical humour was far too good to be confined to just our little corner of the world and was deserving of wider audience. ... CONTINUE READING ...
BOOKS - (August 7, 2008) VEGAN A GO-GO By Sarah Kramer, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008, $17.95
Sarah Kramer is someone we tried to include in our Tattoo feature in the recent "Food and Art" issue of CityFoodMagazine.
After all, she had all the right qualifications. Kramer’s not only a chef with three best-selling cookbooks under her apron ties, her vintage-clad bod displays more ink than a highway interchange map. She's also the wife of a tattoo shop owner in Victoria (Gerry Kramer, www.gerrykramer.com). Unfortunately, timing and schedules didn't match up.
Never mind, with Kramer’s latest book, Vegan a Go-Go, we’ve connected with the punk princess of meatless once again. ... CONTINUE READING ...
The author of the newly published Waiter Rant asserts that approximately “ 20 percent of restaurant customers are socially maladjusted psychopaths”, and his book presents many an anecdote to back this theory up. ... CONTINUE READING ...
To quote New York Magazine:"They're sweaty, profane, covered with tattoos, and totally unavailable on both days and nights — what woman can resist that, right? Yes, chefs are the ultimate sex objects for a certain sort of girl, as a piece in this week's Time Out New York points out. But you knew that already, didn't you?"
And as seen above left, the first photos of Meryl Streep decked out as Julia Child are starting to leak into the Bloggo zone. It is also being reported that actor Stanley Tucci has been cast to play her husband, Paul Child, in the upcoming Julia Child bio pic. Should be fun. Although they will probably have to dig a trench for Tucci to stand in during his scenes next to Streep. Julia was 6' 2" and as Paul often remarked, "a whole lot of woman". ... CONTINUE READING ...
Renowned German designer, Mike Meiré, on assignment for Dornbracht, a manufacturer of bathroom fixtures, put the blitz on sterile, industrial-styled kitchens with a mobile kitchen installation which has touring the major art fair markets of the world for the past two years.
All that recessed lighting and uber sleek surfaces are just “so done and over with”, he declares.
In the “Farm Project”, Meiré turns the urban kitchen into a farmyard-like working studio that comes across as a playpen mix of ethnic deli, farmers market and high school science lab, each version reflective of the culture of its geographic local. At the Milan exhibit, a stuffed Canada goose hangs from the pot rack, trout swim above the sink and a future prosciutto snuffles about in a hay bed next to the icebox. In Miami, a box of cornflakes is stashed next to a case of Premier Cru Bordeaux. ... CONTINUE READING, VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP ...
MAGAZINES - (March 20, 2008) WHAT MAKES A GREAT CHEF, EGGSACTLY? (March 20, 2008)
Experts say that the best way to separate the chefs from the cooks is to test them with something that is easy to make, yet devilishly difficult to make perfectly -- such as a simple omelet.
Local chefs who dream of cooking within the DB Bistro Moderne empire, might want to peak inside the March 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine. It includes an article entitled "Chasing Perfection", wherein the author, Francis Lam, writes at length about the experience of cracking eggs under the tutelage of Chef Daniel Boulud. ... CONTINUE READING ...
Links to the food and wine articles from this week's local press can now be found in our MEDIA Section. And thank goodness for the digital age. It's The Golden Plates issue at the Georgia Straight, and despite that damned annoying Sony cellphone ad that insists on splaying itself between you and whatever you are trying to read on the GS website, its still better than wading through the annual shakedown of "Thank You" ads in their print version.
The articles, if not much of the awards lists (not ill chosen so much as predictable, although we heartily second the motion on the nod to Blue Water and Chef Frank Pabst), are worth the effort to get to. In fact, the best read this week is Angela Murrills' feature interview with Chef Rob Feenie, where the Cactus Club's new "food architect" declares he is happy just keeping it real. ... CONTINUE READING.
VIDEO - (March 18, 2008) THAT'S A WHOLE LATTE COMPUTER
Imagine you are sitting in your neighbourhood Starbucks, and all of a sudden people start schlepping in full-on desktop computers (complete with CRT monitors, printers and keyboards) and commence setting up for business.
You might wonder if it was a joke, and well, you'd almost be right. In this video, three people actually did just that while two of their compatriots secretly filmed the reaction of the cafe's other patrons using concealed cameras ... CONTINUE READING
PHOTO GALLERY - (March 18, 2008) MEDIA LUNCHEON WITH DANIEL BOULUD
David and Manjy Sidoo, owners of Lumiere and Feenies, held a luncheon last week to announce their partnership with New York Chef Daniel Boulud.
In attendance were a number of local celebrity chefs such as David Hawksworth, RobertClark and some who need only a first name reference: Umberto, Pino, Vikram. Food critic Tim Pawsey who attended the event on behalf of the Vancouver Courier shares his photos, as well as the menu.
(By all accounts it was the scallops that proved to be the gastronomic hit of the day).
FILM - ( August 6, 2009 ) 
BOOKS - (August 4, 2009)
ONLINE - (July 28, 2009)
IN PRINT - (July 18, 2009 ) 
BODY ART - ( July 16, 2009 ) 
FILM - (July 9, 2009 ) 
ART - (June 17, 2009)
FILM - (June 15, 2009)
TELEVISION - (June 8, 2009) 
BOOKS - (June 2, 2009)
ART & CULTURE - (June 1, 2009)
WHAT WE'RE READING NOW - (May 12, 2009)
VIDEO - (April 30, 2009)
ARTS & DESIGN - (April 21, 2009) 
IN PRINT -- (April 15, 2009)
FOOD AND ART - (April 4, 2009)
VIDEO - (April 1, 2009) 
VIDEO - (March 21, 2009) 
FILM - (March 12, 2009)
BOOKS - (March 12, 2009)
BLAST FROM THE PAST 
BLOGS - ( March 4, 2009 ) 
ART & DESIGN - (March 3, 2009)
FILM - (March 2, 2009)
BOOKS - (February 27, 2009)
VIDEO - (February 20, 2009)
VIDEO - (February 9, 2009) 
FOOD STYLE - (February 6, 2009)
FOOD FILMS - (February 4, 2009)
BOOKS - (February 2, 2009)
BOOKS - (January 6, 2009)
BOOKS - (November 24, 2008)
VIDEO - (November 17, 2008)
ART - (October 16, 2008)
FOOD STYLE - (September 22, 2008) 
NEWSLETTERS - (September 3, 2008)
WEBSITES - (August 21, 2008)
BOOKS - (August 7, 2008)
CINEMA - (July 1, 2008)
ART - (May 12, 2008)
THE LOCAL INK
VIDEO - (March 18, 2008)
PHOTO GALLERY - (March 18, 2008)