Category: Journalism

How to Cook Very Difficult Food

For Cooking Light Magazine It was while I was attempting to make “soil” that it occurred to me that my experiment with very difficult dinners might drive me insane. This is edible soil, from the cookbook by René Redzepi, chef at the world’s most buzzy restaurant, Noma, in Copenhagen. Noma’s soil is sprinkled on a […]

Anna Lena

When Chef Michael Robbins auditioned for Top Chef Canada, he stressed in his audition video that he was an “extremely competitive person”, like a promise of what might come. All the more painful an irony that he ended up cut first, before even preparing a complete dish. That was a loss for the judges and show. […]

Chicha

Continuing with my repost of restaurant reviews written for my friends at Vancouver Magazine… I confess that I’m torn about posting the bad ones. There have been a few. But I don’t know many food writers who enjoy speaking poorly of a place. And if you have to – because a place is pretentious or […]

The Farmer’s Apprentice

I started as Food Critic over at VanMag last year. I’ll be posting my reviews here periodically after they’re published. Chef David Gunawan’s restaurant Farmer’s Apprentice was my first assignment on the job. He captures perfectly the inversion of culinary values in the foodie west over the course of the past 30 years or so. […]

Zahed Haftlang’s Big Idea

The first time I met Zahed Haftlang was over two years ago, in connection with an article I wrote for Vancouver Magazine called Blood Brothers. That story was one of hope and determination. An Iranian boy soldier during the Iran-Iraq War, Haftlang saved the life of an Iraqi soldier, Nadjah Aboud, on the battlefield. Twenty years […]