The Yum Yum Factor

Fresh, modern Mexican food from El Bosco Wow, this past week was the polar opposite of the previous one where I struggled to share ANYTHING food related. I feel like I ate, drank or experienced something awesome every day and since I spent last Friday driving to Hamilton to drop Shack off to work and then continuing on for my second day exploring The Bench before returning to The Hammer for a wonderful evening of dinner, drinks and enjoying Hamilton's Art Crawl , I barely had time to think, much less write all of this down. Because the week was so jammed packed already, I am going to cheat and add my Friday night dinner and adventures in Hamilton to next week's post, so stay tuned. My sister came to visit me on Sunday and so every day after that, we were on the move - I will share the highlights. Bodega Henriette Rainbow Trout, crispy, dehydrated carrot, sprouts I went to this lovely little corner bistro after they first opened and had a great meal and ever since...

Ice Cask Whiskey from Gretzky was on the menu What a week in yum people. We grabbed Absinthe for The Kid and a few bottles of their Negroni for me from Dillon's It all started with a day trip to Niagara that got sidetracked in Beamsville after a stop at Dillon's Distillery to grab some Absinthe for The Kid. I asked the lovely young man who was helping us with our tasting where we should go eat. He sent us to Bench Brewing, which meant that we were going to be driving right by Malivoire so that sounded like a plan, even though I don't really associate The Bench with beer, but I like good food. Kew specializes in sparkling wines and is the winery equivalent of a chick flick and I mean that in the best way We drove past Kew, which is one of the prettiest little vineyards that I wrote about for Auburn Lane  , past Malivoire (we decided we would double back after a quick lunch) and found Bench Brewing  Bench Brewing Bench Brewing Wow, the parking lot w...

The only thing better than visiting a really nice winery is eating a fabulous lunch on a patio overlooking that really nice winery. Sadly, there are far too many really great looking wineries out there that serve underwhelming food. I want to be as wowed by my meal as I am by the wine that accompanies it and I will admit that I was not sure that my lunch at Southbrook Vineyards  was going to be able to knock my socks off but I was certainly happy to take a drive out to Niagara on the Lake and give it a try.  The winery and the vineyard are lovely and I have been there many times, perhaps to buy a bottle or ten of their delicious Framboise. I had not eaten anything here though and this visit was really about trying out their Farmer's Table menu. Starting in early June and ending on Thanksgiving weekend, the Farmer's Table @Southbrook is open from Thursday to Monday, from 11:30am to 5:00pm. Executive chef, Shawn Murphy has returned to Niagara after graduating f...

I just learned about this Wednesday night  Supper Market  at the Market at the Village in the last few weeks and thought it sounded like a perfect thing to do on a hot summer night - drive out to Niagara on the Lake, eat some great food and then drive back to Toronto with the top down just as the day starts to cool off while the sun is setting. Today turned out to be that perfect day. It was actually a totally perfect day because it started with a trip to the AGO to see the Picasso exhibit and if you are from the area and you haven't seen it yet, you should hurry up because it's gone at the end of August!