JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

This installment of my "Ghost City" column for The Grid was originally published on December 4, 2012. A longer story about Hans Fread later appeared  as a Historicist column for Torontoist .  Sign of the Steer restaurant, northeast corner of Davenport and Dupont, 1955. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 504. Click on image for larger version. Food and furnishings. These have been the staples for the revolving door of occupants at the northeast corner of Davenport Road and Dupont Street for over half-a-century. Back at the turn of the 1960s, this high-turnover site brought such ruin to original owner Hans Fread, Canada’s first star chef, that 146 Dupont was known for years as “Hans Fread’s Folly.” However, for this notoriously outspoken restaurateur, most of his follies were self-inflicted; as he once admitted, “I am sometimes like a little boy with a big mouth—when I am angry, I talk too much and it comes back to hurt me.” Originally a lawyer in ...

This post offers supplementary material for an article I wrote for Torontoist , which you should read before diving into this piece. If your appetite has been whetted, here are a pair of Hans Fread recipes I encountered during my research. First up, his take on chicken liver pate. Source: Globe and Mail , November 16, 1957. Note steer behind Hans's head. Second, from Fread's George Brown College course on "Cooking for the Budget Minded," a recipe printed in the September 12, 1969 edition of the Toronto Star . Budget braised beef 1 piece beef fat, size of small potato 4-5 pounds beef, crossribs, or bottom round juice of 1/2 lemon 1 garlic clove, minced 3/4 tsp celery salt 1 tbsp crystallized ginger, diced 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp pepper 1/2 unpeeled lemon, thinly sliced 8 small potatoes, peeled 4-5 carrots, quartered 8 medium onions Dice and melt the fat in a dutch over or pot. Brown the meat slowly on all sides, until it has a good-looking brown co...