I’m thinking of getting a publicist. Here’s my plan: I’ll hire an internet-savvy PR person to paint the town red with the news of my upcoming concert at Massey Hall (keepin’ it small and personal). My PR person will plaster the (virtual) town with news of my international reputation and musical virtuosity. Everyone will believe it because it’s in the news. They will then flock to my equally well-publicized debut Toronto performance.
It may be a bit of shock to the avid music fans at Massey Hall that I can’t carry a tune to save my life. Maybe some of them won’t even notice — or they’ll think I’m so avant-garde that they just don’t understand.
Isn’t hype interesting? All over town (including in this space) food writers have been extolling the virtues of the culinary team that opened R&D on Spadina in the home of Strada 241. None of the excited writers seem to have actually tasted the food they were hyping; but that’s how hype works: It needs the new new all the time, it chows down on anticipation.
And it has been so effective that it’s tough getting a table at R&D. Which begets more buzz. Who cares about the taste of things?
The lobster chow mein at R&D has nothing to lift it above its cheaper Spadina rivals.
One ought to. It’s so meh I wouldn’t go back if you paid me. The famous Red Star Punch, which comes in a smoking teapot thanks to dry ice and costs $45 for two to four people, is a too-sweet girly cocktail of gin with oolong, hawthorn, mandarin, lemon and rhubarb bitters. Tastes like sweetened gin. The equally hyped lobster chow mein is about as good as any chow mein I’d get for less money on the Avenue. Same deal with spicy Szechuan lamb buns: The wrappers are dry, the innards under-seasoned. Better dim sum exists elsewhere and cheaper on the Avenue. Ceviche of prawns and scallops tastes as if they put the seafood in its acid bath so far in advance that the acid “cooked” the seafood… and it’s bland.
The media heroes who bring us all this finery are Alvin Leung and Eric Chong. Mr. Leung was working as an engineer in Hong Kong when, aged 42, he switched to restaurants. He has a Michelin three star restaurant in Hong Kong and, according to the R&D website, “multiple restaurants to his name.” His partner Mr. Chong, also an engineer, is a TV chef who won MasterChef Canada, apprenticed for Leung in Hong Kong and at Buca in Toronto. Unlike the olden days, cooking on TV and a brief apprenticeship seem to suffice as credentials for opening a restaurant.
Who cares that the General Sanders chicken (a cute play of General Tso’s chicken) is overcooked and its coating is thick and hard? Or that their go-with Hong Kong egg waffles are doing a good job of mimicking the horribly dried-out frozen waffles we serve at camp?
Do the flocking crowds mind that the poutine is weird and uncrisp? That the so-called umami Caesar is bland? The octopus boring? The egg rolls pretty low octane on the flavour chart? The scallops are properly cooked, but we can’t find the promised Szechuan hollandaise anywhere.
Meanwhile, the room is crowded and the people are happy. Which makes me ever more confident about my impending musical debut.
R&D, 241 Spadina Ave., 416-586-1241
$70 dinner for two