I Feel Like Chicken Tonight

Kitty corner to a KFC in Koreatown sits White Brick Kitchen. I went there for breakfast a while back and promised myself I'd return to try one of their specialties, Buttermilk Fried Chicken ($17). Thursday night, I finally came back for dinner.

The dish came with biscuits and a choice of sides. I opted for some greens and not the more filling fries or chips. Boy, that was a good move. I had glossed over the menu description. It wasn't just chicken, it was a half chicken! So when the plate arrived with a mound of 4 golden, huge, freshly-fried pieces, I was shocked at the portion.

The skin was crispy, slightly sweet, and piping hot. The inner meat was tender and soft. It was a good dish but ... so much chicken. I would recommend this as a sharing plate. In fact, after I stuffed down the very last bite with a groan, I vowed to stick to vegetarian meals for the next 2 days. And no more fried chicken for a year.

What a Jerk

Jerk Pork

Being a regular at Vena's Roti at Lansdowne and Bloor, I tend to bypass other restaurants in that area. But for the last two weeks, I have been checking out another long time tenant: Caribbean Queen of Patties. I first tried the jerk chicken special ($6). This week I opted for the other white meat, jerk pork special ($6). Jerk pork, oddly enough, isn't too common in Island restaurants. The last time I had it was years ago at a hole-in-the-wall Guyanan joint in Scarborough.

The specials are excellent deals. You get a generous amount of food for the price. The cole slaw is fresh and lacks that sweet sauce. Both chicken and pork were tender and tasty thanks to a great jerk rub. One warning though, the proprietress does not tone done the spiciness. Especially on the pork. It has a piquant heat, which although never overwhelming, will build with each bite. At the end, you'll need to wipe the sweat from your forehead.

Rock On

Tuesday day was the last night for the month-long residency of Montreal alt-country band Ladies of the Canyon. I liked their new songs during the last visit and I wanted to hear them again while waiting for the new album to drop.

It was a definite bonus that one of my favourite local bands, sweet harmonizing Hands & Teeth, was the opener. From their first song, Easy, their multi-part vocals were a pleasure to listen to. Though the harmonies remain, their new songs have a louder edge full of head-bopping riffs and guitar solos. Singer Natasha played rhythm guitar, but she also fed her mini-synth through guitar pedals which made it sound more rock.

Ladies of the Canyon also went more rock as well: from AC/DC and Sadies t-shirts, to leather jackets, and cut-off jean shorts. They kept a bit of country by wearing funky cowboot boots. This also came through their music. New songs like Dark Water and Two Moons were hard-driven numbers. But they included some country twang with tunes including Take The Night and Dear John. This is a great new direction and the new album should be fun to listen to (outside of wonderful live performances like tonight).

Jam Out

I dropped by The Piston on Monday to see a few bands, especially Army Girls who haven't played locally in a while. First up was OmHouse. This band was really trying to push the boundaries of indie rock. From non-rhyming lyrics, to odd drum patterns, to guitar riffs that did not adhere to typical chord progressions or scales, it made for unusual music. It wasn't entire successful for all songs, but I applaud them for trying.

Tasseomancy are two sisters immersed in goth folk: atmospheric effects, allusive lyrics, and a folk-song feel to their tunes. Tonight the nice sound mix made everything clear and pristine although there were a few muted vocals in the beginning. Sound guy: when a band has multiple singers taking the lead, let them decide on stage how loudly they should sing instead of fiddling around with the levels. Given their music, I was surprised to see the event listed them as a "jam band". In fact, they did jam. Not through extended guitar solos but through the layering of multiple sounds that transition in and out of harmony. It helped that they were multi-instrumentalists. It was a trance-y set that even quieted some loud talkers. I'm looking forward to their next album so I can get my hands on these great new tunes.

I would have stayed for Army Girls' brand of jangly rock but the late start to the music meant I had to head home to catch some sleep.

Level: Asian

There was a workshop for Asian creatives on Sunday. Afterward, there was a show featuring performers of Asian descent in conjunction with Small World Music at Revival Club. I wasn't involved with any of the activities but I did drop by to catch the tail end of the night.

Blitz was a loquacious rapper, given to rapid-fire rhymes, reminding me of a mellower Busta Rhymes. But his songs weren't mellow at all. Eschewing materialistic or aggrandizing lyrics, Blitz mostly propounded his takes on racism, unrealistic family expectations, and immigrant experiences. His full backing band including sax, guitar, keys, bass, percussion and drums was dynamic and lively. Their repertoire had a driving 70s funk, with some 80s balladry. It made for an interesting and catchy set.

It was a small crowd but Maylee Todd wasn't letting that dampen her performance. In fact, she used the occasion to be even more engaged with the audience by singing most of her set down on the floor instead of up on stage. In some ways, it was a better show than her album release a few weeks back. One, the sound mix was excellently balanced, allowing even the smallest sound (like the swish of a cabasa), to be heard. Two, there were lots of room for her and the dancers. Finally, as Revival is a dance club, they had nice spotlights and disco balls to shine on the dance action of both Todd and the crowd.

Don't Get Fresh

On Saturday, I went to Fresh for brunch. I always thought they only made juice. Turns out they also do vegetarian dishes. The inside of the Bloor and Spadina store was bright and airy, with cheery paint colours and patterns. The tables were small and tightly squeezed, they really want to pack 'em in.

Both orders came in at $13: a full breakfast and a blueberry pancake. Now for the individual selections. The home-fries were good; the toast, beans, and grilled spinach were mediocre. I thought the pancakes were a little too thick to be enjoyable after a few bites. This was the second vegan eggs I had (the other at Hogtown Vegan). No, just no. The texture was wrong and the taste didn't match. This is simply a bad idea. Surprisingly, the sausage was excellent, quite similar to the real thing with a good chew and just the right amount of saltiness.

Sigh

This week, The Grid profiled queer feminist cover band Vag Halen. They also listed a few others including Sheezer and Dwayne Gretzky. Included in this group: Horsey Craze, a Neil Young cover band. Coincidentally, Horsey Craze was playing at the Silver Dollar Friday night. As I have seen the previous 3, I decided to also check this band out.

Cut Flowers opened the night to a still sparse crowd. They did a short set of songs with a bluesy mixed with a dirty garage band feel. Singer Andre Ethier (who also joined Craze for Revolution Blues) had an early Bob Dylan drawl. Next was The Highest Order, yet another project for One Hundred Dollars' Simone Schmidt. This band kept a bit of her alt-country touches, but added more psychedelic guitar. Simone sometimes stalk the stage like a preacher, raising one hand toward heaven, and punctuating her lyrics with a pointed finger. She also came back to sing Winterlong with the head-liner.

It might have started as a thin crowd at the Dollar, but when 12:30 rolled around, it was as packed as I've ever seen at this venue. A lot of Neil Young fans? No doubt. But certainly also because Horsey Craze is composed of members of on-hiatus band The Constantines. Bry Webb mentioned later on, "This is a special night for me and my wife. We don't get out much anymore in Guelph." But this was no suburban dads vanity project, they brought the full power of their decade-long musical experience. As Neil Young's songs lent itself well to jams, Horsey Craze did not limit themselves to note-for-note cover. Witness a very extended take on "Walk Like A Giant". Casual fans may only know "Powder Finger" and "Cinnamon Girl", but every song was eye-opening and full of live energy.

Bry Webb and Will Kidman, who traded his keyboard for a guitar of reverb and feedback, exchanged smiles all night. So whatever reason that made him leave The Constantines was not on the table tonight. The good vibes extended to everyone in the crowd, too. So much so, that even after a towering Shots, full of machine-gun drums and flailing guitar, to end the set, they wanted more: two encores' worth. When Horsey Craze led a final sing-a-long of Cortez The Killer, it was past 2 am.

May Two Forte

On a sunny Holiday Monday, I headed down to Kensington Market for lunch. There were lots of pedestrians wandering about, and packing the restaurants. I stopped by Via Mercanti, an airy Italian joint. The last time I was here, they were getting ready to install their new pizza oven, shipped all the way from Italy.

Instead of using 3 ovens, it looks like they've decided to get rid of their two locally-built ones. I ordered a Quatro Stagioni ($18), pistachio gelato ($7), and a beer ($6.75). The pizza came with the various ingredients placed in 4 separate quadrants. All were tasty: salty proscuitto, tangy dried tomatoes and artichokes, minty basil. The only downside was that they were not topped liberally over the entire pie. The house-made gelato was cool and refreshing on this hot day. It tasted like real pistachios were used.

It was a nice lunch but there were some issues at the restaurant that needled me. Given the cost, and the existence of equally good pizza joints elsewhere, I'll take my business to more sympathetic and accommodating restaurants.

One Fish Two Fish

There was a large BBQ dinner waiting for me tonight, so I wanted a light lunch on a bright Sunday afternoon. I headed over to the patio of Red Fish, near College and Ossington. This restaurant prides itself on sustainable seafood. I ordered the Trout Sandwich ($16) and a side order of house-made sausage ($4).

As a restaurant that offers higher priced seafood mains, it wasn't surprising that the overall presentation was impeccable, even for brunch. The sausage was meaty, fell apart in your mouth, and went great with the top half of the foccacia bread. I used part of the bread because you couldn't actually make a sandwich from the two halves. The bottom had been slightly grilled and was too greasy on the fingers to pick it up. In any case, the trout was nicely cooked and flaky. But the stand-out for me was the separate piece of fried fish skin laid on top. Crunchy and rich, it added a great texture to the dish. The bread was a bit too dense for my taste. The citrus rum vinaigrette gave the arugula salad a nice summer feel.

Crossroads

Many cultures make their homes in Toronto. So before checking out the local Norwegian community, dressed in traditional costumes, enjoying Norwegian Confederation Day at Dufferin Park, I headed around the corner to Takht-e Tavoos at College and Dufferin. The draw? A Persian take on breakfast. The room is bright and airy, covered with blue tilings and Iranian decorations. If you are with a larger party, you can choose to dine sitting cross-legged on Middle-Eastern rugs.

Artichoke Borani

Panier Boroshteh

I wasn't quite ready for kalleh pacheh, soup made from sheep's head and hooves so I opted for Panier Borosteh ($11.95), eggs and smoked salmon, and Artichoke Borani ($3.95). The Borani yogurt came out first. It wasn't quite as sweet as typical yogurt found here, and have a mild tang. In fact, spread over warm Persian flat bread, it had the texture of a very (runny) cream cheese. Cool and refreshing on the tongue, I would probably pick the stronger mushroom version as I could not discern the sautee artichokes.

The Borosteh came out with the traditional sunny side up eggs. But all the flavour combination differ from typical breakfast fare. The marinated olives were tart, the Halloumi cheese added saltiness, and the cherries tomatoes gave burst of juiciness. Outside of Vietnamese food, I have never been offered fresh basil. It gave a minty flavour to the whole meal. The mild smoked salmon and greasy eggs made a great base to complement these sides. I found the whole dish tasty and interesting, similar and yet different from your usual brunch spot.

Oh Boy

Having never seen Emilie Mover for years after buying one of her album, it's odd to see her for the 4th time in last two months. But I had free tickets for a concert at The Great Hall on Thursday.

Not that I'm complaining. I enjoyed listening to her languid voice on Tell Me Why, Fishes, Alex and other songs. The sit-down and well-behaved audience was also perfect for her low-key approach. She didn't make as many non sequitur jokes as at her album release, but she did reveal an amusing anecdote after True Love. After hours filming a video where she had to play the E chord, this seems to have stuck. Because it lately all her new songs resolve back to this chord, even against her wishes. "Just like some men", she wryly noted, "Chords and men. Be careful."

The head-liner was Boy, a band composed of two women based out of Hamburg. They had a 3rd: a guitarist who also pedaled a small bass drum now and then. Given their origins, they were reminiscent of First Aid Kit. But whereas the latter veered more toward folk and americana, these two were more in the mold of confessional story-telling indie pop (Waitress). They charmed the crowd with their accented English. And singing in a second language also showed in lyrics where they employed phrasing and near rhymes that native speakers may not employ, often to interesting and pleasing effects. They ended the night with their clap-a-long break-out hit Little Numbers and played The Black Keys' Lonely Boy for the encore.

Ladies' Night

My first encounter with Montreal country band Ladies of the Canyon was seeing Maia Davis play a solo set at The Dakota Tavern. I last saw them at The Horseshoe quite a while back. So I was happy to see them do a month-long residency every Tuesday at The Dakota, trying out new material from their upcoming album.

Tonight, the opener was NQ Arbuckle, a veteran country band from Toronto. Songs like Cheap Town and Punk Rocker had an alternative flavour: a country foundation with forays into rock. They had a good sprinkling of fans singing along. But I couldn't get into their music. The lyrics were usually interesting and the songs would start with some nice bluegrass or old country feel. But by the middle section, they invariably wandered into generic Top 40 radio.

Ladies of the Canyon is a striking band at first glance: all female, very attractive, and decked out in eye-catching clothes. Their sound had that same brazen attitude. The new songs (Dark Water, I Get Down) were definitely on the rock spectrum end: full of swagger, guitar riffs, anthemic bass and drum, and Fleetwood Mac harmonies. What a great sonic evolution for this band. Old songs were strictly pure country including Haunted Woman from their last album. There was only 1 or 2 songs treading close to middle-of-the-road country-pop. Now Maia just need to tell the sound tech to crank up her guitar feed because she had some major rocking-and-rolling going on.

Addicted To Love

Kaeja d'Dance, a contemporary dance troupe with a focus on contact improvisation, premiered 2 new works at Harbourfront. I went to their last performance on Saturday. The first piece, Crave, had Stephanie Tremblay Abubo and Michael Caldwell act out the typical courtship from initial coyness, to new passion, and proceeding to exasperated indifference. This work used sparingly Kaeja's kinetic lifts. It focused instead on repetitive movements, imitation, and jerky motions. The dancers' need, perhaps each other, intimacy, or connection was a recurring motif where they would convulse, twitch, and even have vocal tics unless they were physically touching. Yet human contact would inevitably drive one of them away. This was a work that started light-hearted and grew in intensity.

X-Odus stayed more light-hearted throughout. This was due to the presence of audience members on stage, and especially near the end, when they were engaged to do some spontaneous choreography of their own. Dance critic Paula Citron thought this work felt more like a "physical exercise" than Crave. I agree with her that the set-up: Allen Kaeja directing his wife Karen, the other dancers, and the volunteers throughout the piece gave it the feel of a "rehearsal". But for me, this brought it back to the foundation of "contact improvisation" dance, namely the improvisation. This was most evident in a segment where the dancers had to string together a short sequence chosen from random slips of paper. Given that Kaeja d'Dance created a piece last year for Porch View Dances where non-dancers were coached to perform in front their house, X-Odus felt like a continuing exploration of this aesthetic.

Removing the 4th wall was evident in both works. In Crave, couples were invited to slow-dance on stage before the show, and the Abubo and Caldwell started as 2 people sitting down in with the audience. Later, when they were watching TV, it was the audience they were looking at. X-Odus had volunteers, up close and personal, not only watching but participating as well. Another pleasant surprise was the amount of good-natured laughter from the audience. It was an engaging and accessible evening of dance.

South of The Border

There have always been Latin American stores in Kensington Market. But lately an influx of Hispanic eateries have expanded the available offerings here. On Saturday, I tried out 3-weeks-old Pancho Y Emiliano. This small diner with two large communal tables and a few seats at the front (offering a great view for people watching) has all the typical foodstuffs covered: tostadas, burritos, quesadillas, even churros. I ordered a fish taco norteno ($5.75) and two steak tacos ($6 for 2).

The norteno taco is larger at 8-inches and made from white flour. As a result, it has a softer, milder flavour. The fried fish was tender and not too greasy. Instead of the usual toppings, there is a cole-slaw style cabbage. It is a good taco but I missed the usual spiciness.

The steak tacos are more traditional: the yellow shells made from corn, with salty beef, onions, tomato, and parsley. There is also the requisite bowl of green spicy sauce. This is a tasty duo that doesn't depart too much from the standard offerings.

Fish taco (norteno)

Steak taco

Which more or less is the vibe at Pancho. Price and menu wise, it sits between your typical hole-in-the-wall and the trendier Grand Central or El Carnita. This explains the clientele here: more groups of Latino friends and family and less foodies and hipsters. This is a nice place to grab a bite when you don't want to wait 30 minutes for a taco.

Le Sigh

Creole Platter

Le Ti Colibri is a rare beast, a French Caribbean eatery in Toronto. But because of other commitments, the owners have decided to close it after only 2 years. I went down to Kensington Market on a sunny Saturday to try out their dishes.

I settled on the Creole platter ($6.50) and a bokit sandwich with tuna ($7). The platter came with two sort of appetizers: a baked pastry stuffed with salt-fish and deep-fried shrimp in batter. The salt-fish was average, there wasn't enough filling to impart much flavour. I couldn't find any shrimp but the chewy dough went great with the spicy salsa-like sauce.

Bokit Sandwich

I was looking forward to the sandwich. Instead of bread, they hand-rolled the dough and cooked it in the deep-fryer. Fresh, crunchy bread? Sounds great! But the result was disappointing. There was no flavour to the tuna though the spicy sauce gave it some punch. The bread was too doughy and also had no taste of its own. I was expecting perhaps a slight sweetness given the aroma. It became simply a chore to eat that much carb.

Moving On Up

With seasonal allergies brought on by the warmer weather, I haven't been in any mood to go to shows. But I decided to head out Friday night to the Drake for Emilie Mover's CD release party (Mighty Time). Though I had already grabbed my copy a few weeks ago when she opened for Nicki Bluhm, I was excited to hear her with a full band.

Tonight, the opening act was Callan Furlong. This baby-faced country crooner sang, in his words "songs that are the staple of country: bitterness". So whether it was his own composition ("Rose Or Olive Branch", "Don't Get Cute") or covers ("After You're Gone"), it was music rooted in heart-ache. But it wasn't necessarily all sad, as a couple of blue-grass numbers really got the toes tapping. What elevated this performance was the lead guitarist, Nichol Robertson. His furious finger picking, jazzy chords, pizzicato plucks, and everything in between made the numbers interesting and fun.

After a Townes Van Zandt duet ("No Place To Fall") with Furlong, Emilie Mover started her own set. After she sang alone on a few songs ("14C", "Alex", "Fishes"), her band joined her. The addition of 2 back-up singers, guitar, drums, and piano enriched the sonic palette though lyrically Mover stayed wistful and quiet ("Ride With The Tide", "Goodbye My Love"). She did let loose on two rocking numbers: the bluesy "Time In My Mind" and Harry Nilsson's "Gotta Get Up". Mover should consider doing more songs in this vein, they fitted well with her wacky, wise-cracking humour. There are many "underrated" acts in Toronto, given the depth and breadth of talent in this city. But this velvet-voiced singer deserves much wider recognition (although she did recently win a Juno for the children's CD "The Stella and Sam Album").