Columbus Centre restaurant a hidden gem

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2016 TORONTO STAR⎮E7
ON ON0
>>LIFE
> DINING OUT
Columbus Centre restaurant a hidden gem
Ristorante Boccaccio
K (out of 4)
Address: Columbus Centre,
901 Lawrence Ave. W. (at Dufferin St.),
416-789-5555, boccacciaristorante.com
Chef: Nicholas Huey
Hours: Lunch, Tuesday to Friday, noon
to 3 p.m. Dinner, Tuesday to Saturday, 5
to 10 p.m.
Reservations: Yes
Wheelchair access: Yes
Price: Lunch for two with wine, tax and
tip: $80
AMY PATAKI
RESTAURANT CRITIC
Eating at the community centre usually involves casseroles, dartboards
and stacking wooden chairs.
Such is delightedly not the case at
the Columbus Centre, where Toronto’s Italian community gathers for
fitness and culture.
Here, you will find white tablecloths and truffle oil at Ristorante
Boccaccio, a fine-dining restaurant
like many others — except with a
pool in the building.
The restaurant is open to the public. Tall ceilings save the basement
space from feeling squat. A recent
facelift of the 30-year-old room
brought oversize black-and-white
photos of Italy and modern tableware. It looks like a model home, no
surprise given how many of the centre’s founders are construction magnates.
$20 meal deal
There is nothing cutting-edge about
Boccaccio and that’s the way everyone likes it.
“I want to keep it simple and traditional,” says chef de cuisine Nicholas
Huey, a 27-year-old who learned to
cook in Venice.
The clear midday option is the $20
lunch special: a choice of the daily
soup, salad or pasta followed by a
substantial main course such as
braised lamb. One day the soup is a
marvel of roasted eggplant purée as
comforting as a chenille throw.
There’s nary a lick of cream in it,
although much Parmesan and garlic.
The pasta might be a straightforward
orecchiette tossed with chopped rapini in the Apulian manner, simple in
a good way.
It’s a good deal for quality food
served with panache.
The Columbus Centre’s other eatery is the self-service Caffè Cinquecento, but why bother when the $8
meatballs taste mainly of breadcrumbs?
Big portions
Boccaccio has the same menu at
lunch and at dinner, with the same
huge portions.
ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE PHOTOS/TORONTO STAR
Fried artichokes ($12) at Ristorante Boccaccio in the Columbus Centre look like flowers and taste like Rome.
Fried artichokes ($12) look like
flowers and taste like Rome. Grilled
calamari ($14) rolls up like a carpet
under pulpy tomato sauce. There’s
too much dressing on the Caesar salad ($12) but the flavours are all there.
Lamb chops ($37) impress with
their chopped pistachio coating, veal
scaloppini ($28) with their red-wine
sauce. What appears to be the entire
root vegetable section of nearby
Lady York Foods comes with the entrées.
Similarly, a whole box of pasta
seems to go into each serving of fusilli ($18) with smoky duck breast.
Fresh green fettuccine ($20) holds
an abundance of garlic, white wine
and seafood.
A pick-me-up
Waiters are courtly in the European
tradition. Come once, and you’re an
honoured guest. Come twice and
you’re family, getting biscotti with
your espresso.
At Boccaccio, debit card payments
aren’t accepted and the all-Italian
wine list is short by contemporary
standards.
But staples such as tiramisu ($9)
needn’t be reinvented. Here, it’s a
cocoa-dusted delight of mascarpone
fluff and boozy biscuits. The bottom
of the cup appears too soon.
“The Italian grandmothers should
approve,” Huey says.
Art included
Lunch also includes a chance to visit
the Joseph Carrier Art Gallery down
the hall, the city’s largest after the
AGO.
The “mini-Guggenheim” is free;
the current exhibition of Italian-Canadian painter Albert Chiarandini
includes his striking 1967 portraits of
Yorkville hippies, on until Monday. It
is worth a look, as are the Venetian
carnival masks, historic crèches and
Etruscan objects in the library.
If you’re tempted, go soon. The Columbus Centre recreational facilities
will be razed in 18 months and reopened in 2019 to include a Catholic
high school.
apataki@thestar.ca,
Twitter @amypataki
Lunch at Boccaccio includes the opportunity to visit the Joseph Carrier Art
Gallery down the hall, the city’s largest after the AGO.
> SOURCED
‘Burnt Endz’ are
better than candy
Leftover fatty brisket tips get
remade into savoury snack at
Hogtown Smoke in the Beach
MICHELE HENRY
STAFF REPORTER
It began as an inventive way to move
leftovers: transform them into something better.
And reportedly, since the mid 20th
century in the southern U.S. — the
kingdom of all meats rubbed and
smoked — “burnt ends” have been
considered barbecue gold.
“They’re a staple,” says Scott Fraser,
who calls himself an executive pitmaster, pork puller, brisket slicer and
professional meat rubber.
But for some reason — some sad,
sorry reason — they’re not a big
enough part of our local pit scene.
That should be all the better for
Fraser, co-owner of Hogtown
Smoke, a quirky, family run barbecue
joint on Queen St. E. The restaurant’s local version of this dish, which
reportedly originated in Kansas City,
is a constant sellout.
Fraser takes the fatty brisket tips he
wouldn’t dare serve a customer as is,
cubes them, re-rubs them in secret
spice, smothers them in homemade
barbecue sauce and smokes them for
another several hours so the extra fat
can render them impossibly tender,
even juicier than before and jumping
with flavour.
Customers cannot get enough.
Pop by Hogtown, where the smokin’s done outside even in subarctic
temperatures and the menu’s written on the wall, on a random
Wednesday evening and just try to
order a plate of brisket “Burnt Endz
($18 an order).”
Sorry, any number of nice servers
say, lowering their voice to cushion
the blow, “but they’re sold out.”
Sometimes, the burnt ends sell out
the night before, when savvy customers call in to order and pay in
advance. Many have cottoned onto
the rabid phenomenon of these oneor two-inch cubed wonders of barbecue.
You’d think Fraser would be overthe-moon that his dish is so popular.
But, really, he says, as a pitmaster
devoted to serving only fresh meat,
it’s a bit of a “problem.”
“They’re only supposed to be made
from leftovers at the end of night,” he
says.
“We’re now having to cook an extra
brisket just to put it in the fridge and
make that burnt ends the next day.”
It is almost sacrilege to do that, he
says. Almost. Fraser laughs when
someone suggests he charge “surge”
prices, just like Uber, for this highly
sought-after dish.
And to think, it was all an afterthought.
About two years ago, Fraser was in
his fledgling Beach restaurant, now
just three years old, debating what to
do when, on the odd occasion, he was
left with unservable brisket.
Then he remembered what he’d
learned on his many trips to the deep
south as a marketing executive (after
being downsized from the corporate
environment in 2010, Fraser decided
to turn his beloved pastime into his
day job and opened a food truck,
which has since grown into the
brick-and-mortar Hogtown Smoke).
Fraser refrigerated the leftover
brisket overnight so it firmed up.
J.P. MOCZULSKI FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Scott Fraser says his “Burnt Endz” are almost too popular. The dish is supposed to be made with leftovers but
“we’re now having to cook an extra brisket just to put it in the fridge and make that burnt ends the next day.”
> ONLINE
Go to thestar.com to watch
executive pitmaster and owner
of Hogtown Smoke, Scott Fraser,
make burnt endz.
Then he cut it into cubes, rubbed it
once again in a secret spice blend,
which includes cayenne and salt and
pepper, and covered it in homemade
blueberry and blackberry sauce before popping it back into the smoker.
Several hours later, it was ready for
dinner. He put it on the menu as a
special and customers fell in love
with what he now affectionately calls
the “endz.”
“That’s the lingo,” he says. “All the
kids are usin’ it.”
Chillax on Hogtown’s heated patio
any time of year and catch a glimpse
and hearty whiff of the briskets (and
all sorts of other yummy cuts) rendering and caramelizing in the large
silver cook shack.
It rotates 600 pounds of meat and
runs 24/7, Fraser says, imbuing the
good stuff inside with hickory
smoke.
You probably won’t see Fraser and
his staff making the Burnt Endz,
though. They do so once a day, usually in the early mornings when
there’s leftover brisket, which is rare.
Even then, it’s only enough for
about 10 to 15 orders, which sell out
almost immediately.
However, this dish is worth the
many return trips to Hogtown
Smoke you’ll have to make (before
you get smart and order them by
phone in advance).
For the carnivorous, these square
bits are better than candy and impossible not to eat with your fingers.
Fraser says they’re a simple thing to
make. This is good proof of the simpler the better.
Eaten something you think should
appear in Sourced?
Email mhenry@thestar.ca
> CORRECTIONS
á Saks Fifth Avenue opened its first
Canadian store at the Toronto Eaton
Centre (TEC) last month. A Feb. 27
column about the retailer mistakenly said the Toronto Saks store was
the first outside the United States. In
fact, it is the first in Canada.
á The Feb. 24 recipe for chicken
penne with roasted red pepper calls
for 1/2 cup (125 mL) of cooked penne
pasta. The recipe mistakenly omitted the amount of pasta required.