Toronto Eats: Live Food Bar and Hawker Bar

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Hannah

Toronto is chockablock with inventive cafés and restaurants, the majority of which offer up much delicious magic. I’ve previously shown you Fresh Restaurant, Kale Eatery, and Belmonte Raw, and today I’m taking you to Live Organic Food Bar and Hawker Bar.

For the record, neither of the aforementioned “bars” are of bars of the let’s-get-tipsy-mctipsypants-then-find-some-prettypeoplefolk-to-dance-with variety. They’re restaurants.

You might think I’m showing you the above photo because I want you to know how to spot Live Organic Food Bar from afar if you ever find yourself on Dupont St. That is only half true. I am also showing you because the man in the window above the restaurant makes me think (delightedly) of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry sending each other messages via flickering lights from their bedroom windows at night.

But I digress.

I visited Live with Lisa, because I always try to pick dining partners according to alliteration. Live is an organic raw food bar that also offers cooked options, and I swear I would like to eat ‘most everything on its (extensive) menu. Alas, Lisa and I were both feeling a bit under-the-weather on the night we went, so we kept our order simple.

Above is a plate of Live’s famous Chickpea Fries, described on the menu as “cornmeal and chickpea flour fries with bbq and spicy mayo dipping sauces”. These were fantastic, crispy on the outside yet both firm and creamy on the inside, perfectly spiced, and jazzed up by the two sauces.

The Big Bowl Salad, comprised of “field greens, kale, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, mixed seeds, avocado, micro greens, sunflower sesame hummus, and [I chose tahini] dressing”, was incredible. I’d never had raw hummus before, which seems silly in retrospect. Raw sunflower hummus is pretty much simply creamy tangy nut butter, and we all know I tend to go through at least two jars of nut butter a week straight with a spoon.

Last weekend Lisa, her brother, her brother’s fiancée, and I went to see Avenue Q at the Lower Ossington Theatre (the musical was just as marvellous here in Toronto as when I saw it in New York in 2008). For lunch beforehand we checked out Hawker Bar, a gorgeous little spot where the menus are printed on the back of cardboard squares from beer boxes, the waiters are super-friendly, and the flavours, oh the flavours! Each dish we tried sang with intensity, nuance, sweet-salty-spicy-hot complexity, and happiness.

Lisa enjoyed her vegan Laksa Lemak (a rare find, I believe, considering that most laksa bases involve shrimp paste), the Singapore Chicken Wings with sweet chili sauce and Chili Salt Tofu with house BBQ dipping sauce were gobbled up, the Singapore Noodles across from me looked appropriately dark and glossy, and my Silken Tofu arrived as a behemoth of baked creamy tofu topped with flavourful chili jam, a mountain of fried crispy taro root, fried mushrooms, slices of chili and ginger, and a black vinegar dressing that pulled everything together. It was wonderful.

Aaaaaaand I’ve just discovered that Hawker Bay’s chef, Alec Martin, is Australian.

REPRESENT.

Captivating Cabaret in Cedar City: REACH Presents!

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Hannah

During my time in Cedar City, I came to look forward to Thursday nights with a gleeful anticipation usually reserved for opening my stocking on Christmas morning.

Thursday nights in Cedar City during the Utah Shakespeare Festival are home to REACH Presents: The Cabaret, described as “an up-close variety show, new every week, performed by USF Company Members”. Personally, I’d describe these nights as “an up-close variety show of glorious, hilarious, moving, brilliant, and soul-uplifting wonderment”, but sadly no one asked me to be the copywriter.

With Sam as the accompanist and many of the performers being people I feel honoured to call new friends, these cabaret nights were a whirlwind of laughter, applause, and magic for my heart. And music! Let’s not forget the music.

(The fact that I got a reserved seat in the front row each week didn’t hurt, either.)

I desperately wish I could show you every video I took from the REACH cabaret nights. You could cheer for Logan’s tongue-in-cheek rendition of Part Of Your World, melt over the incomprehensible adorableness of the company’s young actors singing Don’t Stop Believing, snort with laughter at the lyrics to Random Black Girl, shiver as Tricia belted out Natural Woman, and try not to cry over Matt’s spoken word pieces.

Sam and Logan, pre-mermaid magic.

But, alas, copyright is a stupid demon and I’m not allowed to post anything longer than 30 seconds. I do, however, have two clips that I can show you, both of which came from performances that made me dissolve with laughter.

Believe you me, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Bishop from Les Misérables, Laertes from Hamlet, and three other swanky men re-enact the Cell Block Tango from Chicago, complete with red lipstick.

Or until one of your temporary housemates has burst onto stage in drag as Patti LuPone to blast out Everything’s Coming up Roses, freak-out and all.

Thank you, USF performers, for giving me so many golden memories from your cabaret nights. You are nothing but amazingful glorious joy, and it makes me cry inside to know I’ll be missing the Disney night at the end of September.

To everyone else: if you find yourself in Cedar City during the Utah Shakespeare Festival, you must prioritise these cabaret nights. And if you decide to buy a coffee at The Grind and make it your dessert for the night? I highly recommend the salted caramel syrup.

It will make your night even sweeter.

Cedar City Moments: Elizabethan Flamebirds, Candy Snacks, and VIP Friendship

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Hannah

I’ve been in Cedar City, Utah for over a week now.

As soon as I caught my breath that first weekend, I couldn’t help but let my happiness cascade into an early blogpost.

However, the day after that post went up, the Internet where I’m staying disappeared. While on the surface, the lack of constant connectivity to my Australian beloveds caused some fretfulness, deep down there has been a shimmering-quiet, deep-breath-now, swaying-in-the-breeze relief to letting go of the silver-sticky world wide web. To letting go of the need to constantly check, filter, write.

After all, how can I put into words this little pocket of time, this bounded roaming, this everything-and-nothing, this wild-me-quiet-me, this wicked-soaring-dreaming-lonely-laughing-embracing-exciting-hiding-freefalling distinct adventure?

I have within me all of the language, and yet not quite the right rhythm, to tell my time in Cedar City as true as it is in my soul.

So perhaps, for today, it is enough to speak in moments.

Moments like waking up late and walking through the gilded burning sunshine to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, where my favourite new Elizabethan friend, Andrew, is the keeper of the largest iced coffee in all the land.

Moments like hugging Andrew and chatting to the also-Elizabethan Emily, before setting myself up with my laptop and the largest iced coffee in all the land in the shadow of the Adams Theatre. After all, everyone knows that the best place to check emails and blogs is beside a theatre patterned after the original Globe Theatre.

Moments like snacking on American energy bars that are truly just candy, because even high protein counts and calcium fortification can’t hide the fact that mini peanut butter chips, caramel, and pretzels are less like eating a carrot and more like swooning over sweet manna from salty-sugary heaven.

And this one, too, though I perhaps should have known from the name Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch that it would be quite sweet. (But that’s why I have the largest iced coffee in all the land, right?)

Moments like choosing to laugh at the fact that Utah sends forth rain every. single. time we step outside to go swimming, and then choosing to duck into The Grind Coffeehouse to sip coffee and play the storybook version of I Spy with my favourite new flamebird-haired friend, Emma.

And then sunbathing by the pool as soon as the skies clear again (even if by “sunbathing” I mean “lie down in the sun for three minutes before covering myself entirely in towels because I am a Whitey McWhitester capable of turning into a Whitey McLobster within a half hour).

Moments like knowing that, right now, all I need to do is nothing, and all I need to be is peaceful. And knowing that that’s okay.

Moments like being a VIP while seeing the incredible USF shows, and cradling the secret joy in my heart that the actor on stage right just there? He’s the one who picked me up and spun me around last weekend in Sam’s living room. And that actor playing Peter Simple in Merry Wives, the one making me laugh with his antics in the background, and also that actor playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird whom we bought quesadillas with earlier, oh and the fellow who’ll be Laertes in Hamlet in September? We were all outside last night at 2am, playing Actor-Movie-Actor, trying to go full circle with Christopher Walken and John C. Reilly. And oh, oh, one of the actors in the oh, oh so magnificent Titus Andronicus, he’s the one who gave me that high five and said I looked lovely, and Cosette from Les Miserables gave us a ride the other day, and perhaps whiskey and rum and sambuca are actually quite a lot tastier than I had previously thought, particularly when accompanied by laughinghugslaughing.

Is this real life?

It is, it is real life, and it’s deepdarkest night and I’m snuggling in-under the covers again and it isn’t even hard to sleep, for once in my life, and then

the next morning

I wake up late and walk through the gilded burning sunshine to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, where my favourite new Elizabethan friend, Andrew, is the keeper of the largest iced coffee in all the land, and he says that my Australian voice is like heaven on toast

and I laugh and laugh.

The Problem With Wearing Tap Shoes Is That Everyone Can Hear You Coming

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Hannah

There comes a time in every young girl’s life when she arrives home after a stressful work week with a costume party to attend in three hours and absolutely no idea what to wear.

The party: Jeniqua’s Farewell (I must stop crying. I must stop crying.)

The theme/costume requirement: “Something you love.”

My wardrobe: Devoid of costumes.

After throwing nearly all my clothes into a pile on the bed, texting my mum, putting on a sequined beret to leprechaun-dance around the kitchen in front of my new housemate, and eating about forty seven hundred spoonfuls of Mighty Maple peanut butter, I had finally created a costume for Something I Love. A multi-layered costume, in fact. One might even say A COSTUME IN TWO ACTS.

My pick for Something I Love: Musicals.

Act One:

Good mornin’! Good mo-oo-ornin’! It’s great to stay up late!

Singing in the Rain.

Golden Days with Fiddler on the Roof, Or Why I Travel

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Hannah

How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do what I do,
Why I must travel to a distant land,
Far from the home I love.

The song “Far From the Home I Love” has long been one of my favourites from Fiddler on the Roof, yet it was only during my fifth viewing of AIM Management’s production that I realised how apt the lyrics are for travellers like myself.

Flying into Toronto, en route to London

I’ve been asked many times recently why I’m travelling, and each time I find myself rather flabbergasted because, well, I can’t imagine not wanting to do this.

Usually, I just say that I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t planning travel; that as soon as I got a job at age 15 I began placing the majority of my earnings into a “travel fund”; and that my trip to Japan at age 19 cemented my exhilaration over exploring other cultures (and other cultures’ food).

Yet after spending four days with the musicians who help make AIM Management’s Fiddler on the Roof so memorable and moving, I have a new explanation for why I, and hopefully others, travel to distant lands:

Because sometimes, when you take a chance and throw yourself into a new experience, you get gifted with beautiful, uplifting, laughter-filled and friendship-creating days that shimmer above all the jet-lag-induced oven burns*, flight delays, and moments of loneliness, and remind you that not only is life worth living, but you’re worth living it.

(Yes, I realise this is bordering on Hallmark. I’m not trying to sell anything, though, so bear with me.)

Motel's sewing machine: You work it with your foot AND your hand!

I watched Fiddler four times in Coral Springs. Consequently, I feel confident stating that this group of performers, musicians, and crew members are more than proficient at what they do. Each performance was as passionate and funny as the last, with the 11-piece orchestra playing a key role in heightening the story through the music.

(Side note: You know how some fancy restaurants offer Chef’s Tables, whereby patrons can sit in the kitchen and watch the chefs cook the food served to them? I think theatres should start selling premium seats in the orchestra pit. Speaking from experience, there is nothing like being among the musicians as they play. My evening spent in the orchestra may have been my favourite of the lot.)

Open your door, I'll be your tenant / Don't got much baggage to lay at your feet / But sweet kisses I've got to spare / I'll be your lover and I'll cover you. (It appears the Coral Springs Center for the Arts has hosted other shows before, but we shan't hold that against them.)

Even more fun and happy-making than watching the performances were the moments in between, such as when I chatted to members of the cast (Thesa Loving, one day I’ll make it to Austria and the concert hall you raved about), saw how sets and lights were operated, and brainstormed with the effervescent producer Don Westwood about finding financial backing in Australia for a Fiddler Down Under tour. (I think this will involve me wearing my new Fiddler shirt at opportune moments.)

After trips to Boca Raton for Guinness, trips to Starbucks for coffee, trips to delis for sandwiches and pickles, and trips to the poolside in the early hours of the morning for post-performance wind-downs, I can say that the musical theatre life is rather a rewarding and superb one (of course, I didn’t have to do any of that “working” bit).

Last Bit!

And just to close, I have to send a few messages to the musicians with whom I spent the most time…

To the trombonist: I win. You will never get me inside an Outback Steakhouse.

To the trumpeter: It only took me four attempts today to turn on my computer with my stick. I’m getting better at this.

To the accordionist: I promise to relay your message to “the old girl” when I see her – and maybe, one day, you’ll be able to in person.

To the flautist: Your smile. *hug*

To the violinist: I wish I could entertain everyone so much simply by referring to petrol stations.

To the music director: Awed by your talent. And thank you.

Dibs on the feather-rigged pillow. And the butter churn. I'm rather tired of making my own butter by hand every morning.

* Apparently, one’s reaction time after getting 6 hours of sleep in 48 hours is not so stellar. Apparently, one doesn’t bother to run one’s hand under cold water, much less look for medication, when one gets a nasty burn from pulling a pie out of the oven after getting 6 hours of sleep in 48 hours. Apparently, this results in a rather a lot of hurty later on.

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Category Archives: Musicals