Thought people would enjoy the article, the comments are interesting as well. Don't think it'd be a good idea to place this in the Canada forum, but I'm sure someone will.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../lifeMain/home
Van City sizzles, T.O. fizzles
New York's finest are making waves on the West Coast while one of Toronto's best bolts elsewhere. As one city shines and another loses its lustre, Beppi Crosariol reports on what may be the passing of a prestigious torch: the culinary capital of Canada
BEPPI CROSARIOL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
April 23, 2008 at 10:39 AM EDT
Torontonians have long been flattered by the "New York of the North" conceit. Canada's largest city, after all, is also the country's business capital and, one could argue, its key cultural and entertainment hub.
So one might forgive a self-respecting Toronto foodie for recoiling at the news that two of Manhattan's legendary culinary stars, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud, are bypassing the Centre of the Universe to set up their first Canadian outposts thousands of miles away in, yes, Vancouver.
As reported in this newspaper last week, Mr. Vongerichten is negotiating a new restaurant in the Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver, scheduled to open early next year. Though nothing's been signed, the project is rumoured to be a high-end destination restaurant.
Mr. Vongerichten, who oversees 17 restaurants and has been dubbed a "superchef" by New York Times critic Frank Bruni, would follow in the clog steps of fellow French expatriate Mr. Boulud, best known for the Manhattan dining temple Daniel.
Last month, Mr. Boulud announced a partnership with David and Manjy Sidoo, owners of Lumière and Feenie's, two restaurants founded by the recently departed Rob Feenie. Under the plan, the New Yorker will take over both locations and rebrand the less formal Feenie's as DB Bistro Moderne Vancouver.
As if that weren't enough, Susur Lee, considered by many to be Canada's most internationally renowned chef, is adding injury to insult. Mr. Lee last month dropped the bombshell he is closing his Toronto flagship location, Susur, and heading south to the greener culinary pastures of New York's Lower East Side.
"I was kind of shocked," said Mark Bittman, a New York Times food writer who also maintains a popular blog at Bitten.blogs.nytimes.com. "He just seemed like a Toronto calling card, and I thought that was kind of a shame."
All of which, with due respect to Montreal, which has always excelled at French-based cuisine, would seem to raise the question: Has Vancouver trumped Toronto as Canada's culinary capital?
It depends on whom you ask, of course, but it seems to be getting easier to find an unqualified yes.
"Vancouver is a much more vibrant and favourable place for restaurateurs and chefs willing to do things professionally," said Pino Posteraro, chef-owner of Cioppino's, one of the city's top-ranked restaurants.
"I believe that, except for a few people, chefs [in Toronto] have lost the drive and the focus."
Harsh words. But if anyone is entitled to that kind of assessment, it's Mr. Posteraro.
An Italian native, Mr. Posteraro rose to prominence in Toronto during the city's culinary heyday of the 1980s with Celestino's and later Borgo Antico before being lured to Vancouver in the mid-1990s by restaurateur Umberto Menghi, eventually striking out on his own once more with Cioppino's in 1999.
Mr. Posteraro rattles off a litany of West Coast idols widely considered the best in the country for their respective cuisines. Among them: Vikram Vij of the modern Indian restaurant Vij's, Hidekazu Tojo of the haute Japanese institution Tojo's and Robert Clark of the pioneering sustainable seafood temple C Restaurant. Then there's the elder statesman of modern Vancouver fine dining, John Bishop, whose eponymous restaurant has been the incubator for an inordinate number of careers, including Mr. Vij's. Another notable acolyte is Jeremie Bastien, a twentysomething Quebec native lighting up the stove at Gastown hot spot Boneta.
Mr. Posteraro contrasts the environment with the Toronto he sees today, a once dynamic white-tablecloth scene that has largely yielded way to "cheap and cheerful" eateries churning out virtual assembly-line dishes catering to a less demanding clientele. "When I left Toronto, it was vibrant, it was beautiful," he said. "And then the pseudo-pizzerias, they started to ruin it a bit."
Besides Mr. Boulud and Mr. Vongerichten, another international star adding lustre to the Vancouver scene is Warren Geraghty, who in February landed with a splash in the kitchen at West restaurant after working as executive chef of L'Escargot, the Michelin-starred Soho establishment of famed London restaurateur Marco Pierre White. Mr. Geraghty succeeded David Hawksworth, the maestro who built West's reputation as one of the country's top restaurants and who is planning his own establishment in the redeveloped Hotel Georgia.
Many in the city also are awaiting the imminent opening of the downtown flagship location of Cactus Club Cafe, a Western Canada chain whose new "food concept architect" is none other than Mr. Feenie, Vancouver's superstar of the stove and Iron Chef champion.
"There's stuff happening at every level," said Tim Pawsey, Vancouver co-editor of the Zagat Survey, the New York-based restaurant-ranking service.
And Vancouver's purported supremacy is more than a figment of local perception.
"It would almost seem like Vancouver has picked up the torch," said Chris McDonald, executive chef and partner of Cava, a casual Spanish-style restaurant in Toronto. Mr. McDonald, who ran Toronto's acclaimed Avalon for 11 years before rolling out his less-formal tapas concept, described Vancouver as having more of the genuine substance and curious appetite of a "world class" city, preconditions for a thriving fine-dining scene.
Despite consistent acclaim for Avalon, he said, the place failed to pull in enough well-heeled traffic, notably Bay Street deal makers, to enable him to continue with his high-end, multicourse cuisine. "Just because we have the most important stock exchange in Canada doesn't mean we have a city that's going to spend its wealth in restaurants," he said.
Chris Nuttall-Smith, a former food editor for Toronto Life magazine, says while he is continually excited by Toronto restaurants, new, creative chefs sometimes aren't drawing the crowds they deserve. As a former Vancouverite, he says patrons on the West Coast tend to be more adventurous and keen for avant-garde cuisine.
Much of the problem, he believes, has to do with "old money" Toronto wealth compared with the "new money" of Vancouver's predominantly young entrepreneurs in technology and real estate. "In Vancouver, it's not all tied up in corduroy curtains and starched shirts," he said. "People with money in Vancouver don't need to go to the guy who's been doing it for 20 years. It's a less conservative audience."
Indeed, among Vancouver's estimated 100 new openings in 2007, about 40 were fine-dining spots.
Mr. Nuttall-Smith also laments that there are conspicuous and inexplicable weaknesses in Toronto's culinary repertoire. He has yet to locate a great seafood restaurant, he said, and finds it unnerving that his adopted city can be so far behind Vancouver with respect to two trends, Southern barbecue and Japanese gastro-pubs known as izakayas.
But Toronto is hardly devolving into a culinary backwater, of course. Mr. Nuttall-Smith cites Claudio Aprile of Colborne Lane, Scot Woods of Lucien and Mark Cutrara of organic-meat emporium Cowbell among the new leading lights. And more established chefs such as Splendido's David Lee and Scaramouche's Keith Froggett continue to garner near-universal praise.
Nor is Vancouver, strictly speaking, the only city attracting international chef-lebrities. Wolfgang Puck, Hollywood's famed pizza slinger to the stars, who runs Spago and dozens of café-style spinoffs worldwide (not to mention a brand of supermarket foods and line of small appliances and cookware), is slated to open two casual-service destinations called Wolfgang Puck Toronto Bistro later this year. The concept - which switches from fast-food-style ordering at breakfast and lunch to full service at dinner - however, is clearly not in the vaunted league of Mr. Boulud's investment in Lumière and Mr. Vongerichten's rumoured plans for the Shangri-La.
Perhaps more significantly for Toronto, this summer will see the much-anticipated return of Franco Prevedello. Venetian-born Mr. Prevedello, who blazed a trail for Ital-chic cuisine starting in the early 1980s with such successes as Biffi, Pronto and Centro, retreated from the business years ago to pursue real estate and clothing. His new "light and fresh" venture will be a 120-seat dining room operated with partners Yannick Bigourdan and Mr. Lee of Splendido. Its name, Nota Bene (which Mr. Prevedello translates as "pay attention") would seem to be pregnant with meaning.
"Is Toronto in a bit of a lull?" Mr. Prevedello said, repeating a reporter's question. "Could be."
Applauding Vancouver for managing to attract Mr. Boulud, Mr. Geraghty and Mr. Vongerichten, he added he wishes Toronto could some day do something similar.
"I think it's been too much of the same for too long," he said. "We need some more international traffic. Let them come. Let them show us something new and let people get excited about dining again."
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