[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: December 14, 2009]
It so happens that I've seen a lot of Toronto over the years. Not by choice, although I have nothing against the city at all. Clean, friendly and pleasant to visit.
It's just that the reason for my bi-annual and later annual treks took some of the shine off the experience. US immigration law quaintly requires holders of visas to seek renewal of those visas beyond the country's borders, with all the attendant bureaucracy and completion of insanely anachronistic forms enquiring after your intended vessel and port of arrival. As if, despite the change of the century and the obvious ease of renewing visas, with all attendant security, at any domestic immigration office, the INS insists on seeing all visitors as huddled masses, disembarking from so many schooners at some Ellis Island of the mind. Technology be damned, new arrivals are to be seen in monochrome only.
Anyway, so off I went to spend the usual couple of nights in Canada (of course, a visa can't simply be renewed with a simple mouse click). Canadian immigration is, inevitably, a bit huffy about their borders being breached by a stream of US visa-renewers, so one is forced to chirrup about vacationing and shopping on entry to the country - the weakness of the Canadian dollar at the time made this very plausible.
I put up at the Four Seasons, conveniently close to the Bloor Street shopping drag - menswear central beckoning my brawny US currency. Arriving late-ish, I ate the hotel's Studio Café. A glass of Pol Roger matched a gravadlax of Arctic char with roast beets. An anonymous Californian cabernet accompanied pot roast venison with spätzle and red cabbage. That sounds a nice dish, and I wish I had a clear recollection of it.
The grotesque tedium of queuing outside the Embassy most of the next day (in the cold too - sheltered waiting space was introduced later) gave me a pretext for late afternoon shopping at Harry Rosen's, Perry's and Holt Renfrew, after which I ran into Liam Gallagher of the band Oasis in the Four Seasons elevator. He turned out to be surprisingly diminutive for such an aggressive young man. Unimaginatively - I was still not yet a reader of online food forums - I dined that evening at the posher Four Seasons restaurant, Truffles. A lengthy tasting menu it seems:
Carpaccio of tuna loin, basil and tomato bruschetta
Frogs' legs with Jerusalem artichoke fondant and Parmesan crisps on a garlic coulis
Sea scallops, potatoes and endives, chicken liver sauce
Roulade of veal with spinach and lime, tian of vegetables with minced veal
Chocolate mousse dome, fresh berries, crème Anglaise
Gevrey-Chambertin "Petite Chappelle" 1988 from Louis Jadot with the veal.
A smart hotel meal which now seems from a different age. A coulis here, a fondant there, vegetables as a tian. Today it would be foams or nothing.
The next day was allocated simply to waiting around until the hour struck to pick up the refreshed visa. The Art Gallery of Ontario, with a Cindy Sherman retrospective I'd seen before elsewhere. A walk around Chinatown, then along vaguely Bohemian Queen Street West. Another long wait in line.
Then home. And I see that, forearmed against the empty hours, I was reading Proust on this jaunt.
Next week, New York in December and another bout of sickness - which shows how little some things change in a decade.
AGO - Cindy Sherman retro (again)
Chinatown & Queen ST West
Harry Cipriani - sopa de fagioli e pasta
tagliardi con veal ragu
Morrell's - seafood tarares charcuteries cheeses
Les Halles
rilelttes de porc, t-bone fritez, Tavel
