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.

Preparing for Halloween

Last weekend was spent in anticipation of one of our most loved holidays: Halloween. How does one prepare for Halloween? In our case we took a ghost tour and went pumpkin picking.

I ain't afraid of no ghost

David has been itching to take a ghost tour of the city since the summer. The other thing that he's been wanting to do is visit the Necropolis Cemetery (the ghoulish interests of a horror writer). So it was a great disappointment when we missed out on last week's haunted tour of the cemetery. It apparently only takes place once a year (organized by Mackenzie House) and we waited too long to get our tickets. A mistake we won't make next year.

Fortunately, this Halloween season had almost too many ghost tours to choose from and we had no problem find something else to get us in the mood. Jen found the "I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost!" tour from Tour Guys. Tour Guys offers many seasonal and year-round tours around the city, most are of a historic nature and some are even free. This one, named after the line from the Ghostbuster's theme song, only runs in the autumn and just until Halloween (but there is still time to get it in before next year). It promised to be a gimmick free tour, offering possible scientific explanations for the sightings and an explanation of ghost hunting techniques. We were sold.

Faces carved into pillar at Old City Hall

We met up on the steps of Old City Hall on a blustery Friday night (read: cold), where a group of about twelve of us joined our guide Steven for an exploration of Toronto's haunted sites. Being recent arrivals to the city, the in-depth history  was fascinating and gave us a new perspective on some of the places we passed that went far beyond the spiritual realm. For example, even though we got many ghost stories about it, the most intreguing tale of The Winter Garden theatre was of how it was sealed up in the late 1920's and lost from memory until it was rediscoverwd during a renovation nearly sixty years later.

Mackenzie House

The tour took us to several sites but the haunted highlight was Mackenzie House. Home to William Lyon Mackenzie, Toronto's first mayor, it is reputed to be the most haunted building in the city. And it must be a well earned reputation if the traffic-jam of ghost tours was any indication. It was a hot spot that night and we had to wait to get our turn on the small patch of lawn in front of the building. The tour in front of us was a the traditional style with caped guides carrying lanterns. Having been on similar tours before, we had nothing against them, but it made ours feel a little more special. The lack of theatrics lent an air of authenticity to the evening, and the note of skepticism made the stories without explanation seem all the more real.

We ended up at The Keg Mansion or  Euclid Hall as it was called when it was a home. By this time it was late and we were tired and anxious to get somewhere warm. And here the genius of the tour's plan came in: the bar being only a few feet away. We didn't make that stop, favoring a nightcap at home instead, but the tales of dining room haunting has put this steakhouse on our list of plaxes to eat.

Pumpkin picker

On Sunday, we went with the family pumpkin picking to stock up on jack-o-lanterns for the big day. We ended up driving to Coopers Farm in Zephyr. Coopers is a Community Supported Agriculture enterprise and boasts a ten acre corn maze. Having a four year-old with a short attention span with us (and Jen who was traumatized by Children of the Corn when she was a youngster), we gave it a skip and concentrated on getting our pumpkins and some locally raised meat, which is sold along with vegetables and preserves in their shop.

Halloween

Now Halloween is just a few days away and we're all set. Being away from so many of our friends, this will be the first Halloween Saturday in years where we won't be hosting a huge costume party. So we will be off in search of other entertainment, which will include a fine dinner, an airing of Psycho accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and maybe some surprises. Who knows, maybe we will encounter our own ghost story while out on the town. Whatever happens, be sure to check back in next week for a full recap.