The Bon Vivant Blog

Friday night – M is in town – and he wants to go where the ‘beautiful’ people are. Yaletown it is then. I call J to ask him (he works in Yaletown) where is a good patio to search out on a Friday night – he suggests Glowbal and so on we go. The very [...]

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Saturday night, out with J & J – an urban couple with no kids so it’s time to go somewhere that is more ‘cool’ than ‘chucky cheese’. We haven’t knocked our heads together ahead of time to get a reservation, but it’s early and we figure that Chill Winston has a great location, a cool [...]

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Just a quick note. We were hungry, on the Champs Élysées, and beer and mussels seemed like a good idea at the time. Léon de Bruxelles is a chain, with multiple locations throughout France. As I walked in, I noticed that the proportion of English-speaking people in the restaurant far outweighed the French-speakers, which in [...]

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For ages now we’ve been going on about how great the macarons are at Pierre Hermé while we haven’t been giving the other challenger, Ladurée even a chance. This is like seeing Joe Frazier go at a heavy bag and saying that he’s the best boxer in the world. It’s like seeing a Picasso and [...]

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Another night in Paris, another prix-fixe dinner. This time, at La Gazzetta, a charming restaurant in the 12th, again with dining pros B and A. We arrive a bit early, are welcomed to our seats and offered cocktails, a nice change compared to the previous dinner at Le Chateaubriand. I start with a Campari and [...]

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During her extensive research prior to the trip, D found a list of popular prix-fixe restaurants in Paris that had very good food. Le Chateaubriand was our first outing. Inside, Le Chateaubriand looks like it could have come out of 1945. Sparse walls, chalk boards with wine prices, that yellowed paint that looks like it’s [...]

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(note: wrote this in January – just getting around to posting it now) Back in Toronto for the weekend – woo-hoo! Look, Canadians – you may or may not like Toronto and/or Torontonians, but damn this city has some great food. And it looks like from reading some of the local magazines and blogs that [...]

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