Scene! heard!
Meanwhile: Could you kindly pass the spleen? Just one of the requests, inevitably, at one of the more diabolical sit-downs to happen in recent Toronto history — an homageto-Hannibal, essentially, hosted by the Cookbook Store, the other night, at Yonge Street. Executed by chef Matt Kantor and inspired by the work of Canadian food stylist Janice Poon — the stylist on the new Toronto-shot NBC Hannibal show shot — there were lungs (à la basquaise) and loin (with tuna sauce) and even a special off-menu surprise in the form of “veal brain stuffed with pasta and porcini and chanterelles.”
For dessert? Blood pudding, but of course. And, all in all, a rather elegant table setting — one, I note, that would have appealed to the senses of both Lecter as well as Paltrow.
Heard! Scene! z Mad Men’s Alison Brie cheering on the Jays at Sunday’s game inside the Rogers Centre. z Kiefer Sutherland freaking out about the Bruins loss while taking in the Stanley Cup whatchamacallit at Scotland Yard Pub, on the Esplanade, the other night. z Literary giant John Irving tweet-spied in his gym clothes, and ordering four — note it: four— lattes at the Summerhill-area Timothy’s near his home in Toronto. z Spec going around that James Gandolfini’s posthumous project — a film directed by the inimitable Nicole Holofcener — will have its bow in Toronto in the fall, come TIFF.
Finalement: Four Seasons maestro Isadore Sharp doesn’t usually get to see much besides the insides of his own hotels when he travels, but he made took an exception when in Beijing last Fall. A “remarkable” experience, the Toronto legend told Conde Nast Traveller recently when describing the whole day he took off to see the Great Wall. “You just have to understand how that wall was built and why ... the scale of it was just overwhelming.”