U-Feast, We Feasted

Monday night, we were lucky enough to take part in a unique foodie experience: the "Wet" Your Appetite  dinner by Matt Basile. The night was organized by U-Feast, a young company with big dreams.

U-Feast is the brainchild of a few local entrepreneurs, including Terry Mocherniak and Kenn Koid, who I spoke with at different points during the night. The concept is to create an online community of food lovers and create fun and unique experiences for them. Toronto is staged as the testing ground for the enterprise, which began offering "pop-up" foodie events in May of this year, but their goal is to go international with it.

We first heard about U-Feast at Toronto Food & Wine, and we were intrigued, first by the novel idea and then by the amazing looking dinners they were advertising on their website. With the events usually taking place on week nights and not being entirely sure what we were getting ourselves into we hesitated a bit, but finally decided to take the plunge with this one.

A big draw was chef Matt Basile, the hot, young chef storming Toronto's culinary scene with Fidel Gastro and his restaurant Lisa Marie on Queen West. Lisa Marie has been on our radar for months and we had just been waiting for an opportunity to dine there. But this dinner offered something remarkably unique: we wouldn't just get to try Basile's food, we'd get to see his interpretation of Filipino street food. Matt Basile has recently returned from a trip to the Philippines and every dish was inspired by his experiences in their wet markets. As he said afterward: the food wasn't exactly traditional but all of the flavors you would expect are there. It had his own twist on them and also Toronto had made an impression upon them. As people who have spent time around chefs and seen firsthand the injection of inspiration that comes from experiencing new cuisines, this really spoke to us something that could be amazing. 

Not your average dinner party

The night dinner was held in an area of town more famous for its meat packing industry than fine dinning. Walking up to the nondescript building next to a self-storage facility made us feel like we had taken a wrong turn somewhere. But once we stepped through the door of the loft space and smelt the heavenly aromas of food, it was clear we were in the right place. The location, a it turned out, is Matt Basile's studio kitchen used for photo shoots and the filming of cooking shows.

The night had a convivial atmosphere of a friend's dinner party, where no one knew each other. As one guest was overheard to say, "But it's a party where you don't feel guilty about not sticking around to clean up." A room full of strangers could have become a quiet and cold place but the common love for food broke down any barriers and as people eyed the preparation of the meal with a glass of wine in hand, the conversation was loud and friendly.

The Feast

At a cozy, communal table, the feast was served up family style, starting with sambal head on prawns and smoked lechon lettuce wraps. The prawns were gorgeous and meaty packing lots of sweet flavor offset by the spicy sambal sauce. The pickled cucumber that accompanied it wasn't just garnish, it was just as good as the seafood. The pork lettuce wraps was one of the stars of the night. By midway through the meal, it was winning the informal poll of people's favorite bite. The meat was succulent and smokey. The pickled mango, sweet, tart, and fresh. And the fried pork skin light, salty, and crispy

Wine was being poured by John Paul Adamo of the Adamo Estate Winery, a vineyard in one of Ontario's non-traditional wine making zones and one of the event's sponsors. John Paul accompanied this first round with a  crisp and refreshing Chardonney Musque

From there, we moved on to spicy curried mussels and adobo chicken wings. The mussels were perfectly cooked and the broth was lively with coconut, green curry, and kalamansi limes. To sop up all that wonderful broth, coconut cheddar  hominy grits were brought out. They were rich and creamy and worked some fantastic alchemy with the curry. As for the wings, the smoke taste wasn't overpowering and added to their addictiveness. It was hard to stop eating them with all their fall-of-the-bone goodness and the platter sitting temptingly close. These dishes were perfectly paired with an Adamo Riesling, which had the right amount of sweet to balance the spicy and the right amount of citrus to balance the richness.

By this point we were getting to know some of our dining companions well and restaurant recommendations were flying across the table quickly. It was a nice change from a restaurant atmosphere. Just about everyone here was a foodie and no one was here for some other reason than to revel in the food. It was also nice that you didn't get any odd looks for photographing the food, since everyone was doing it.

Offered not so much as a palate cleanser but more of a respite from the meat heavy plates that had been served so far, the black noodles were the next to land on the table. Traditionally these are cooked in copious amounts of lard but Basile went with duck fat and it's impossible to say that was a bad decision. This simple looking dish just may have been the best of the night. My only complaint was that only one poached quail egg topped each family style bowl and I wanted my own. It was incredibly rich and decadent making it a revelation—this is how you cook noodles, people! Along with the noodles out came the Pinot Noir, which provided a surprising compliment with it's subtle fruits and acidic backbone. 
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We were starting to feel more than full, but we weren't done yet. Our last course was whole sea bream and stewed eggplant and king oyster mushrooms. The fish was lovely, delicate and light and the eggplant was creamy and tart. We wished we could wind back time and save room to eat more of these late arrivals, because it was feeling like we were bursting at the seams.

The night ended the way it began with lots of conversations. The hosts and the chef were out among us diners, talking about this wonderful experience we all had just been a part of.

Future feasting

U-feast is a concept and a business I hope will thrive and grow. This celebration of food culture is something that any resident of Toronto who loves food should experience at least once. As for the two of us, we're already anxious for our next adventure with them.

Halloween

Last Saturday was an important day in our calendar. A day where we usually go all out with costumes, a huge party, and with much time spent decorating and cooking. This being our first Halloween in Toronto, things were a little quieter. Our temporary housing doesn’t have the space for much more than a small get-together and all of our (many) Halloween decorations are boxed up at the back of a storage locker. So we decided to get tickets to an event and a have nice dinner beforehand.

Scary good

Despite that headline, there was nothing scary about Byblos, although it was hard to believe how good dinner was. We've been dying to try it for months, and it didn’t disappoint.

We ate upstairs in their very chic dining room. The décor was a beautiful blend of classic and modern. Showpiece light fixtures hung down just about everywhere, giving it the feeling of some indistinct era of the past or perhaps the future.

The service was incredible. There is something special about any restaurant the exceeds expectation in the service department. Service can so easily make or break a dining experience—it can elevate mediocre food and ruin wonderfully prepared meals. But when it's attentive, friendly, never hovering, and exceptionally helpful...and the food is amazing, then you know you have a winner.  Which might be why Byblos is a hard place to get a reservation, especially on the weekends.

The cuisine is described as Eastern Mediterranean and consists of items from the Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, and Israeli culinary traditions. Our waiter wasted no time making us feel at home with the somewhat unfamiliar selection and was generous with his help and suggestions.

We started off with two incredible cocktails that surprised us with their fresh and original flavors. Then we ordered six plates to share between the two of us consisting mainly of a selection of appetizers. I could easily spend a few pages gushing about the food that greeted us, but I'll save you having to read through it all with some food porn pix.

 

 

One of David’s favorite things about the meal was that thought was put into how the food came out. The dishes we ordered were brought to us in sensible courses, rather than simply their placement on the menu. So we got our grilled octopus main before our lamb ribs and duck kibbeh appetizers. It was a small thing but it showed the level of care that Byblos puts into its food.

We were pretty full by the time we were done, but not so full that we weren’t tempted by the dessert menu and ordered a couple, which were pleasantly light and not overly sweet.

The Main Event

But the big event was the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The symphony’s airing of films with a live orchestra providing the score occurs fairly regularly and the week before they did the same with Back To the Future. If you have never been to one of these screenings, you should definitely take advantage. It is an incredible way to elevate a night out at the movies into an event. And you don’t even need to spend a lot on the tickets because at Roy Thompson Hall, there really isn’t any bad seats.

We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of concert goers (and performers!) who showed up in full costume. Jen regret not wearing hers, but only slightly as the theatre was on the warm side and would have been hot under a wig and extra garb.

The movie is a classic for a reason, even though a few out-dated lines generated laughs from the audience. But overall, seeing the beautiful 35mm print on the big screen play out the twisted tail of Norman Bates generated all the right amount of tension and creep that one could ask for.

Thoughts of next year

So that was our first Halloween in the big city and it already has us thinking of next year. We found out about the Toronto Public Library Foundation's Hush, Hush party a little too late to attend this time, but a Halloween party in a library...how can we say no to that.