Totonto Farewell Tour: The final bow

Sunday

I know, I haven't written about Friday & Saturday yet. Patience.

Last day in Toronto for a while. Excited & sad all at once. It's a big foodie day, though. The plan -- after packing up, checking out & steeling up my courage to park on the street again -- is to have brunch at The Hoof Cafe. This is THE reason why I'm spending C$150 to stay an extra night in Toronto.

I have to tell you this story first. I was in Toronto the week before Christmas and I thought it'd be my last trip up for the year. I had been getting into a bit of a slump at that point, repeating dinners at familiar restaurants rather than going on my adventurous walkabouts. Now there's nothing wrong with familiarity. I was starting to be a fixture at Biff's, like Norm in Cheers. "Jane!" and my seat at the bar was waiting. I have to admit that this is an awesome feeling for a lonely girl far from the comforts of home. Plus the food at Biff's is so good I could keep going back there night after night without getting sick of it. But I digress within a digression...

Back to The Hoof. So I was in a rut and I needed to kick myself out of it. Of course being the stubborn New Englander that I am, I decide to get adventurous again right at the very cold start of a very cold winter making this whole walkabout thing especially challenging. But I know how to do this. I mean, I walk my dog Nanny for hours in the bitterest of weather, right? So I came prepared for the week with my three layers of everything and my best walking shoes. Damn the torpedoes... onward! I had heard and read about The Black Hoof and its charcuterie-centric menu in the heart of the slum-turned-hipster Trinity Bellwoods neighborhood. Google maps pegged it as a 44-minute 2.2-mile walk. I wasn't going to dispute the 2.2 miles, but 44 minutes? I can do a mile in 15. Plus I had C$30 cash on me, ample for a beer-laden cab ride home. I decided to further trim my exposure to the cold, strapped on my sleekest gear & jogged there. I barely observed the pedestrian traffic rules and got there in 25 minutes. Fail! There was no room at the inn! Even a single bar seat would be about a 40 minute wait. But I was welcome to go to their newly-opened casual eats cafe across the street for a drink & app. So I went over to The Hoof Cafe, a bit crestfallen but determined to stick it out. I had come all this way and dammit I was not giving up until I had had my fill of cured bits bits of pig. My mood immediately brightened when I walked in & saw -- no lie -- the partially-carved rear haunch of a sow artfully displayed on the counter, hoof still attached and proudly pointing toward the chalkboard menu on the opposite wall. Damn! It's a HOOF! I could barely contain my excitement, especially since there was an open bar seat RIGHT THERE! Right next to the hoof! I sat down, giddy. It got better when I was presented with the all-Ontario beer & wine list and the extremely too-cool-for-me list of cocktails on the back, including a drink with their housemade bacon rye. I ordered the local Wellington imperial stout and the beef heart app for a wallet-friendly total of C$11. Occasionally one of the chefs appeared from the kitchen behind me with a machete-like knife to carve paper-thin slices of cured perfection from the sow. Good god, people, can you feel that? Can you see the gleam in my eye & slight bit of drool forming in the corner of my mouth? The Wellie appeared, skillfully poured for me by the barkeep who was, for the record, very sexy in a skinny straight chick kind of way -- usually not at all my type but that night I was so happy that I think I would have found anyone behind that bar to be sexy. At this point I got a call from the Black Hoof saying that actually a bar seat opened up much sooner than expected & I could come over anytime. Um... nevermind? Sorry, but I'm having way too much fun over here & I'm sticking to it. At this point I'm also getting this sinking feeling looking around the place that mayyyyybe they don't take AmEx. That's right, folks, part of my complacent sloth was getting into the routine of only going out with my driver's license, corporate AmEx & whatever I had on hand for cash which was, that night, C$30 for a cab ride home. For a moment I thought, OK, I have my ING debit on me, I can just find out where's the nearest ATM if they don't take any plastic at all but NOPE I hadn't put that in the little change purse this week. I sheepishly admitted all of this to the barkeep (who turned out to be one of the proprietors) and found out that, as I feared, no AmEx here or across the street. Fuck! Um... OK, can you help me have an absolutely fantastic Hoof experience for $30 including the $11 I just plunked down for the beer & app? I must have looked very sad & pathetic. She took pity on me, then seemed to really get into this idea of crafting a perfect Hoof menu for me. It was clear by now I was a passionate foodie and she was proud of her newly minted establishment. We all got caught up in the moment. First course: Roasted skewered beef heart resting on a yummy, tangy, vibrant green sauce. The flavors were off the chart & the textures a perfect combo of carmelized-chewy-saucy. Second course: I'm still kicking myself that I didn't write this down because I have no idea what it was but it was some of the best food I've ever eaten. Two loose "cakes" of lightly fried porky stuff on a bed of watercress-y greens that weren't watercress. I don't know how it was seasoned to get that just-barely spicy back-of-the-throat tingle or how it was prepared but the pork had a completely seductive melt-in-the-mouth quality with just the right addition of more tasty fat from the fry. I was completely transported. Anyone who has seen me eat anything this fantastically amazing knows what this looks like. I wish I could see myself in these moments but all I know is what it feels like on the inside and it's better than sex and I really like sex. Whew, ok, I get all hot & bothered just thinking about it! Main course: Schnitzel sandwich that I'm pretty sure was deep-fried tongue (it had that toothy-chew characteristic of muscly organ meats) on housemade no-knead bread with creme fraiche mustard. I can't think of enough superlatives for this place. My only comment remotely close to a criticism is that the menu was a little heavy on the deep fry, overhearing the hip guys next to me inquiring about the desserts, which were deep-fried this-n-that. Trust me, they could deep fry someone's big toe and it would come out tasty (am I stealing that comment from Padma Lakshmi?). The evening was near-perfection, marred but not by any means ruined by the leaden jog-walk home. All during this meal I'm chatting it up with the barkeep & the occasional chef wafting by, all of whom were more than happy to give me all the when & where & why of the pig leg on the counter, the no-knead bread recipe, the creme fraiche mustard, the Sunday brunch...

And here I am back in Toronto for Sunday brunch at The Hoof. This was a golden opportunity not to be missed and well worth the extra hotel bucks. With this I also had the chance to spend all day Saturday exploring the city which turned out to be a very good thing given how much Friday sucked. I was also on a mission to pick up only-in-Toronto foodie treats for friends-of-friends back home. After checking out of the hotel, the first stop would Hodo Kwaja for walnut cakes (score!), the final stop would be Gandhi for extra-spicy chicken korma roti (fail! closed sat & sun), and brunch in between. Here's where I admit that at the hotel that morning I made sure to put on some extra cute for the day in case skinny-sexy proprietor-barkeep was there. She wasn't. Sigh. But I was served by a cute baby-dyke of a barkeep who was, if I'm not mistaken, flirting with me. What the hell. I did look cute, why waste it? I started off with an Americano since I hadn't had a coffee yet & this bought me some time to decide on beer & food. I almost ordered the bacon-rye cocktail but considering my Thursday night drunk I decided better of it and got Mike Duggan's IPA, which I had heard about and gotten a taste of just the night before at C'est What. Dammit though I couldn't choose between the suckling pig eggs benedict or the can't-remember-which-part-of-the-pig grits. I wanted BOTH! Cute barkeep helped calm me down enough to decide on the benny & by the way could she recommend the bone marrow donuts as a starter? Hot damn, girl, yes you can! I got some of those to go, too. When given the chance to have bone marrow donuts you just don't pass that up. My eggs benny show up and they did not disappoint. Again the pulled suckling-pig-of-a-pork was melty awesomeness, sitting on top of tender biscuits instead of english muffins (yes! GREAT idea!) with the hollandaise as an extra-tangy balance to the all of the deeply rich components including its own creaminess. The accompanying arugula salad was completely extraneous to me on this day but was appreciated for its refreshing contrast for the eyes and palate. And I want to take this opportunity to sing the praises of the poached egg. Is there anything more delightful than a hidden treasure of barely-coddled yolk in a delicate balloon of white? Maybe I get it from Tampopo but that moment of breaking into the package to release the yolk is soooo sexy.

So, that's it. That's the perfect Sunday brunch for me against which all other brunches will be judged. I paid up and pulled away from the counter seat with my full-but-not-too-much belly as satisfied as it's ever been. I got back to the car which happily was not ticketed or towed, and I made way to the Gardiner Expressway for a long, relatively uneventful ride home.

Until we meet again, Toronto. This was the sweetest of bittersweet farewells.