JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

...this is a good time to bring up the Chowhound meal I went to on Saturday. This month's pick was Dominican Fine Cuisine , on St. Clair west of Oakwood. Hard to pick it out in this pic - look under the orange and black sign on the left. Continuing a trend when we go to restaurants serving Latin cuisine, we were serenaded with music. There was a birthday group behind us, who had the servers drumming on the top when the a candlelit flan was brought out. Left to right: chicharron de pollo (fried chicken), rancheta (beef stew), pargo a la coco (steamed snapper in coconut sauce), mar y tierra (sea and land platter. I had the latter, which included barbecued chicken (a thigh, meaty and non-greasy), shrimp in a garlic wine sauce (we also ordered these as an appetizer, which disappeared quickly) and a grilled pork chop (very juicy, well-marinated, one of the best chops I've ever had). All meals included salad, rice, plantains and beans. We were relieved the salad was n...

Food and I have had a good relationship whenever I've been in London. In university, my housemates thought I was a gourmet chef, mostly because I spent my money on food instead of booze, avoiding the Marks & Spencer pasty/potato/50p chips diet others lived on. I didn't make anything spectacular, just stir-fries, curries and pasta based on store-bought sauces and individual-size cans of ingredients. I rarely ate out while I lived there, usually grabbing mediocre-but-cheap Indian vegetarian near Mornington Crescent or tasty-and-cheap Italian in Soho (RIP Pollo). Exploring the nearby Sainsburys, Somerfield and Safeway was usually enough to keep my stomach content. Key rule: don't bother to compare meal prices to North America. You'll cry. Go with the flow. When I couldn't decide where to go, I pulled the Time Out Cheap Eats Guide out of my backpack and let my fingers do the picking. To make your digestion easier, food coverage will be split over several entri...

Considering how many times I visited members of the Princess Party Patrol when they lived across from the Revue, it's surprising that I had never seen a movie there until Friday night. Especially given it is the oldest continuously operating movie house in TO. A brief history of the Revue from Enright's Theatres of Canada . It was also the last installment of Kung-Fu Fridays , a series that has bounced around town for a decade. I had checked it out once before, for Bondyra's birthday a couple of years ago. The flick that night was The Golden Mask aka Golden Killah ( sound clips ). He and a coworker also came for the final edition, preceded by a round of sushi over on Bloor. Let's just say they were in the spirit of the evening...or a George Romero film fest. Take your pick. The trailers were a laugh riot, mostly from the 70s. The one above came from a flick about children and the undead, beings that shouldn't mix. Also featured was one I wanted to...

Clearing out some of the old scanned material before moving on to a fresh batch of recent finds. Let's just say I recently came into the possession of a stack of 70s goodness... We're setting the wayback machine to 1961 for today's presentation, discovered in the back of one of my father's high school yearbooks. For those of you new to these woods, Simpson's was a Canadian department store chain whose flagship store was located at Queen and Yonge, later used as the setting for Today's Special . They were partners in bringing Sears to Canada in the 1950s (the Canadian branch was known as Simpsons-Sears for years, a tag which remained on many Sears doors for years after the partnership ended). Hudson's Bay Company acquired Simpson's in 1978, gradually converting stores to The Bay moniker until the name was retired in 1991. Wikipedia lists where stores were located - I remember being excited when the basement of the Windsor store would convert enti...

Went on a Psychogeography walk Thursday night, this time circling Dufferin Grove Park. I've brushed past the park several times, but never taken a good look at it before. I would have loved this place as a kid. There is a strong sense of community behind Dufferin Grove, complete with an extensive website from its Friends . My cynical nature was nicely shaken - nobody has walked away with the toys? The cooking area is not a vandalized shambles? The first structure we noticed was an Uzbekistani yurt, raised a few weeks earlier. The left photo gives an inkling of how large the interior is, while the roof is on the right. Next was the cob courtyard and cooking area . The structure reminded me of Southwestern adobe-style. Methinks I'll be back when the ovens are in use. The taps were still on and the bottle of Sunlight was full, which came in handy when I accidentally touched an item that might have been an old diaper. Do these pants belong to anyone? Near...

Among the items on my list of things to do in London was snap shots of short, oddly-named streets a la the Backstreets of Toronto series. Every passage, every alley, even some narrow entrances to homes in central London have street names. The variety is staggering, as is how quickly streets may change their name. One of my favourite names was discovered while wandering along the backstreets near Bond Street. It's hard to turn down the curiosity meter when you discover a lane named after a joint of meat. I stumbled upon it again on the first day of the trip. Day one would end up as the lowpoint of the trip. The weather was unbearably humid, there had been torrential downpours, the keys were mixed up at my residence, etc. (at least the annoying stuff was out of the way early on - after these and the event outlined below, the trip was a blast). Across from the start of Haunch of Venison Yard are two buildings marked with the ubiquitous blue "...lived here" plaques....

You all know the image. Red double-decker Routemaster buses making their way down the streets of London. An instantly recognizable symbol that many tour operators have latched onto around the world. When I lived in London, I rarely used buses. My feet took me to most places I needed to go, while the Underground was there for longer hauls. I recall only on kamikaze bus trip, where I hopped on to see where I wound up (answer: St. John's Wood). My main memory of any UK bus occurred in Edinburgh on a trip in grade 10, where the maroon/purple double-decker I was on passed by an accidentally caused by someone driving on the wrong side of the road. "Lousy Canadians", the driver muttered. *** Before heading over, I purchased a Zone 1-2 Travelcard (22 pounds), which allowed unlimited use of the transit system anytime outside of morning rush. Most commuters use the Oyster smart card system. If you lack a pass or Oyster card, you must purchase a ticket before hopping on a b...

This week and next likely mark the end of a good chunk of Toronto's rep cinemas. Last month, it wasa announced that the Royal, Revue, Kingsway and Paradise theatres will shut their doors on June 30th - you'll find plenty of links via this BlogTO story . Health and time permitting (I am currently battling a cold I may have picked up abroad), I'm trying to catch a flick at each before the doors are locked. First stop was the Paradise on Bloor West. This was only the second time I'd seen a film there, the first being Nashville several years ago. Main memories were a grainy print and that the armrest on my seat was attached by duct tape, gum or a similarly sticky substance. A brief history of the Paradise, from John Sebert's book The Nabes : There has been a theatre on this site since the early teens; the first was the Bloor Palace. After World War One, it was changed to the Kitchener - a tip of the hat to the British Field Marshall, Lord Kitchener...In 1939, ...

The game show that storming the world faster than ( insert name of this week's hot game show )! What the heck is a Plantagenet? Besides being the name of a town east of Ottawa , Plantagenet is the name applied to the family that ruled over England (and, at various times, chunks of France as part of the Angevin empire) from 1154 to 1399. Technically, the Plantagenets carried on until 1485, but monarchs after 1399 tend to be classified as belonging to the Houses of Lancaster or York, the main combatants in the Wars of the Roses. The object of the game is to test your skill at recognizing Plantagenet monarchs from their tomb effigies. The pictures used in today's game were taken at the Cast Courts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London . Click on the images for larger versions. Ready to test your knowledge? Here we go... (1) (2) (3) (4) Hints: (1) His brother also occupied the throne. In fiction, not a friend of Robin Hood. (2) Inadvertently ordered the ...

Hey folks, Just taking time out to give my feet a rest as Thursday winds down across the pond. Other than an up-and-down first day (I'll save that for next week), the trip has gone well so far. Great sights. Great weather. Good meals for under £10. A sudden addiction to fizzy lemonade and diet Dandelion and Burdock. Mostly bought CDs so far, thanks to better-than-expected prices. Days have fallen into a pattern. Start with wanderings around Camden Town to note changes (today's discovery: my old laundromat is gone). Head to a major attraction (today: the British Musuem). Wander around those neighbourhoods. End up resting my feet somewhere along Charing Cross, be it bookstores (Borders is open late) or, like tonight, storefronts offering cheap internet. Every pub I passed today had a crowd spill out onto the street. England won, but, so far, I haven't noticed much car honking or general joy - maybe I'm too deep into the city for that. Still, local pride seems to reign, w...

From our last entry, we head a block north to one of the best-preserved turn-of-the-century streets in the city. The origin of the name Tranby is unknown, though the best guess I've seen is a town in Yorkshire. Tom Cruickshank and John De Visser's 2003 book Old Toronto Houses provides a brief sketch of the street's origins: Tranby Avenue was an afterthought - an annex to the Annex, if you will - carved out of one of the last intact estate properties in the area. It is noticeably narrower than neighbouring streets and even more intimate. Lined with a random patchwork of brick terraces and duplexes, virtually all of Tranby Avenue went up between 1889 and 1892. But far from monotonous, the street is alive with gables and architectural curios, the whole unified by the omnipresence of warm, red brick. This has to be one of the most harmonious walks in all of Toronto. (202) From the City of Toronto's East Annex Heritage Conservation District Study : The outline...