thekitchenman

21/10/2026

21/10/2026

Privileges The Keg Mansion. 1970s I did several shifts here when most the fireplace rooms were operating and it was the place to dine.
The Keg Mansion and Keg Manor are the names used for a subset of Canadian restaurants under The Keg brand. These are located in heritage buildings adapted to serve as commercial restaurant establishments.
The Keg Mansion, formally known as "Euclid Hall"
Toronto's Keg Mansion is located in Euclid Hall, a prominent downtown heritage building located at 515 Jarvis Street. The house was originally built in 1868 by Arthur McMaster, nephew of the prominent businessman William McMaster. At the time Jarvis Street was one of the wealthiest parts of Toronto and the street was lined by large manors. The house was set back from the street and surrounded by large gardens.

The former house has a neutral colour palette with pops of colour as in the green brass accents over the windows and red shingles on the turret. The hall uses the soft, deep colours to contrast the hard, crisp edges. As a residence, it consisted of twenty six rooms and seventeen fireplaces with a stable and large brick carriage house in the back. With significant alterations to the interior having been made since its era as a dwelling, the interior is now very different from the original.

In 1882, it was purchased by Hart Massey and his wife who had just returned to Toronto from Cleveland. The Masseys renovated the house and added a turret, verandah, and greenhouse, but the original Gothic façade was not significantly altered. Hart Massey's sons bought homes surrounding the manor. To the north his son Chester D. Massey built the home where Hart's grandchildren Vincent and Raymond were raised.

As the area became more urban and various commercial operations moved into the area, the Masseys decided to leave. The building was then bequeathed to the University of Toronto's Victoria College in 1915. The manor served as the first home of Toronto radio station CFRB in the 1920s and was home to an art gallery for several decades until 1960. It then became a restaurant named Julie's Mansion. The grounds were sold off and the greenhouses demolished and replaced with a service station. In 1976 it became home to a The Keg restaurant, and it was renamed the Keg Mansion. I have one of the first keg menus and worked a few other locations as well.

21/10/2026

Tigre Géant.
I call this the Giant Tiger Lunch because the 4 chicken legs daily special costs 3.95. So for the sum of one dollar, some seasoned spices. cup of buttered parsley noodles, two spears of steamed guylam.
Lunch deeds done dirt cheap.

15/10/2026

That photo stopped me mid-scroll.

Two bunches on one white plate — big, shiny ovals labeled american grapes and small, round, a little freckled ones labeled european grapes.

It taps the exact nerve we bring to this page. If another country can get the simpler fruit, why do we get the pumped-up version?

The size trick here is mostly variety, not chemistry. The big bunch looks like Autumn King, a late-season white grape bred by USDA researchers near Fresno. It naturally grows 11 to 13 grams, twice a standard Thompson, with no sizing spray needed. Europe grows big grapes too. Sweet Globe, grown in Italy and Spain, is naturally large at 18 to 24 millimeters and about 7 grams, and Spain now has 3,000 hectares of seedless table grapes in Murcia alone.

The hormone people worry about is gibberellic acid. Seedless grapes miss the growth hormone seeds normally make, so growers spray a plant version to make berries larger and firmer. That hormone is listed as low-risk in the European Union with no residue limit required, and exempt in the United States. UC Davis viticulturist Matthew Fidelibus puts it plainly — seeds make it naturally, so we would be eating it anyway. The other common sizer, forchlorfenuron, is allowed in both places, with Europe setting a tighter limit of 0.01 milligrams per kilogram for grapes.

Where Europe is actually tougher is residues. The EU default is 0.01 milligrams per kilogram when no specific limit exists, which is effectively a no-detect rule. US tolerances are often higher. American grapes can be legal here and still be refused at a European port. That 1,300 versus 11 chemicals meme you see in comments is about cosmetics, not food, but it sticks because the pattern feels real — Europe tends to say no sooner.

Grapes also come with baggage we can measure. They land on the Dirty Dozen every year. Federal testing finds more than 90 percent with detectable residues, averaging about five per sample.

Bigger is not better to me. I want the bag to tell me the variety, whether a sizing hormone was used, and why our stores demand uniform bright green at 15 to 16 Brix while Europe will accept a little amber at 14. Give us that choice, and we can decide what goes in our kids' lunchboxes.

15/10/2026

All three birds in this photo are the same age.

1957: 2 lbs. 2005: 9.3 lbs. Same feed. Same barn. Same 56 days.

This isn't a meme edit. It's from the University of Alberta. Researchers kept old Meat Control strains unselected since 1957 and 1978, then raised them right next to a modern 2005 Ross 308 broiler — the Aviagen bird that now makes up about 47% of the world's broiler market. The 1957 bird weighed 905 grams. The modern bird weighed 4,202 grams.

Over 400% more growth with half the feed.

And no, it's not hormones. Added hormones have been banned in U.S. poultry since the 1950s. The study and 50 years of follow-up put 85-90% of this change on genetics, not injections.

We designed this bird on purpose. Back in 1946-48, A&P and the USDA ran the Chicken of Tomorrow contest to find a meatier chicken. Charles Vantress's Cornish-New Hampshire cross won, Henry Saglio's Arbor Acres White Rocks came in second, and the cross of those two became the Arbor Acre — the bird in every tray now.

Look how fast that change accelerated: In 1925 it took 112 days to get a 2.5-pound broiler to market. In 1950 it took 70 days to get 3.08 pounds. Today it takes 47 days to get 6.57 pounds live.

We didn't see it happen because we stopped buying whole chickens. In 1962, 83% of broilers were sold whole. By 2005, only 11% were — the rest became cut-up parts and further processed.

That's the part that gets me. The animal we still call "chicken" became a completely different animal while we were just trying to get dinner on the table. Yes, it's cheaper — poultry prices rose at half the rate of other foods — but it's also unrecognizable.

If we're eating a bird bred to grow this fast, we should at least be told that's what it is.

15/10/2026

That ordinary bunch of celery once deserved its own special glass vase.

In nineteenth-century American dining rooms, celery could be expensive, fashionable, and important enough to display before the meal even began.

Growing long, pale, crisp stalks took care. So when fresh celery appeared on a well-appointed dinner table, it could say something about the household.

Glassmakers responded with tall, decorative celery vases. Unlike an ordinary flower vase, these were intended for a vegetable. The stalks stood upright, their leafy tops rising above the rim, sometimes with a little water below.

Museums still preserve examples from the 1800s, including elaborate pressed-glass vessels that once sat among the family's finest tableware.

As celery became easier to grow and more affordable, its status changed. The tall display vase gradually gave way to simpler serving dishes.

It's a wonderfully strange reminder that the foods we consider ordinary today were not always ordinary.

Did your family ever serve celery in a special dish at holiday dinners?

14/10/2026

Boston Style Clam Chowder.
Oyster Crackers make a great chowder even better! It's the small stuff that makes a meal deluxe!