Eating in quarantine: Patty melt and rings from The King Eddy

As I've mentioned I'm doing a lot more cooking while physically distancing, but I am trying to support local reasturants so at least once a week, often Friday nights, I order out for dinner delivery. And I'm trying to order from places I haven't tried before. So last week, my Friday dinner came from The King Eddy.

A diner-style restaurant located in the Byward Market, the King Eddy touts the quality of its hamburgers. Being partial to a good burger myself I ordered the patty melt, hold the pickles. Yeah, come at me y’all, I don’t like pickles.

Basically, it’s a grilled cheese sandwich with two burger patties and red onions inside. I made onion rings my side for an upcharge, and it came with two cups of their dipping sauce. I haven’t knowingly had thousand island dressing since I can’t remember when, but this is what I imagine it to be.

It was fine as a grilled cheese, fried appropriately golden with melty processed cheese. The menu described it as Texas toast, but it seemed like regular white bread to me. The patties were small and, when tasted separately, lacked much independent seasoning. I had passed on the option to add a third patty for $2.99 because it seemed like it would be too much, but it would not have been. A third was necessary. It needed a bit more substance.

The onion rings were excellent. Crispy, and served in a generous portion. Everything you would want diner onion rings to be.

Since it was a Friday night I ordered desert and they only had one on offer, which was a vegan, gluten free chocolate cake. My friends, just, no. Chocolate cake needs dairy and it needs gluten. Other than the chocolate icing, which was tasty, this cake was dry and unfluffy. I get they’re likely limiting the desert menu right now, and want to offer the option for those on restricted diets – I will leave the cake for those folks next time.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad meal, but by the metrics of Uber Eats and food delivery it falls on the wrong end of the value for price curve. When life returns to normal, I’ll try them in person and get that extra patty. But this week, new adventures await.

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Eating off the Hill: Come to the Canadian Club for the economy discussion, stay for the baked salmon

My friend Danielle had an extra ticket for a Canadian Club luncheon last week and, knowing I'm someone who tries to luncheon on a daily basis, she invited me along. It was a snowy day, but lunch awaited so off to the Chateau Laurier I went.

The discussion was on the economy, moderated by Canadian Twitter celebrity economist Mike Moffat. Jobs, trade, housing affordability, policy, all were topics of discussion. But come on, this is a food blog. I know what you're here for.

We began with a perfectly servicable salad. Leaf mixed greens, shaved carrots, and so forth. I've come to embrace the trend of salads with nuts -- adds a nice bit of texture and makes it seem more substantial -- the pecans included with this salad were a welcome touch.

As we discussed the West Block renovation we moved on to the main course, baked salmon with a cream sauce on asparagus risotto, with perhaps a few pieces of turnip or something similar. The risotto was a marked improvement over the last time I had risotto (which I realize I still need to report on, so, spoiler alert I guess), and the combination of the salmon (a known brain food) and the deep discussion of trade policy meant I left the room feeling slightly smarter than when I had entered.

The highlight of ths lemon cake was the mixed berry compote, which says something right there. The cake itself was dry, not particulatly lemony and, while the photo doesn't show it well, unnaturally yellow. Still, I tried to finish most of it in the interests of science before Ubering back down Wellington Street.

Oh, and the economy will either be great, bad, or ok. We'll see.

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Governing is about choices...let’s give them choice

If you polled 1000 Canadians, I bet you, say, 80 per cent of them would say they like cake, and they’d love it if the government enrolled them gratis in the cake of the month club. Starting with angel food in January, all the way through to ice cream cake (my fave, the one from DQ with the chocolate fudge crackle) in December. Because, except for those that perhaps can’t eat sugar, everyone loves cake. And, even better, what tastes sweeter than free cake?

That’s why the results of this particular poll are wholly unsurprising to me (h/t Steve):

The Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll – conducted in the three days after the Halloween economic update – found that 83 per cent of Canadians surveyed said they supported the income tax cuts.

Seventy-six per cent approved of reducing the GST by one percentage point.

So, Canadians would, by and large, not say no to a tax cut. And they’d like a free cake too.

What would happen, however, if you introduced choice? Because our free cake program would cost money. We’d need to buy the cakes, for one, although by buying in bulk we could probably get a deal, maybe from some super bakery in China. We’d need some bureaucrats to run the program, a department of baked goods if you will. Maybe even a cake registry so we can track the cakes to make sure no one gets extra cakes, and ensure everyone gets their just deserts. The lessons learned on the gun registry will come in handy – don’t worry, we’ll get it right this time, no billion-dollar flans.

So, to pay for our cakes for the masses program we’re going to need to trim somewhere else in the budget. Luckily though, we have a surplus at the moment, so no budget cuts needed. We could do something else with the surplus though than buying everyone cake. Like, say, universal daycare, and a cupcake per month for every child under six.

Ask Canadians if they’d like free cake they’re going to say yes. Give them a choice between free cake and universal daycare and a cupcake for their kid (with the option of two cupcakes and a juice box if the parent chooses to stay at home or enlists grandma to babysit) and the result will be very different.

The key, though, is to give people that choice, and that’s what we Liberals have been doing a bad job of. Harper is out there offering everyone free cake, and we’re just saying cake bad, no cake for you! Of course people are going to respond poorly to that. I would too. Tocuhe pas my cake Stephane!

We need to offer Canadians a choice. Cake looks good in isolation. But, when brought into context and contrasted with, say, a major push to eliminate child poverty, cake, or tax cuts, cake is viewed in a whole other light. When contrasted against such a choice, be it a real, flexible (meaning some kind of consideration for parents to opt-out and home care) daycare, or fighting child poverty, Harper’s GST cut is more easily seen for what it is: a cynical, selfish vote buying measure that 101 economists agree makes piss poor economic sense.

That’s why I’m cautiously optimistic to read this (again H/T to Steve):

Stephane Dion is poised to unveil a central plank in the Liberal election platform — a "bold" plan to reduce poverty in Canada.

An insider close to Dion said the Liberal leader will set ``aggressive but realistic" multi-year targets for reducing poverty in general and child poverty in particular.

He will also outline the policy tools a Liberal government would use – bolstering existing income support programs and new investments in things like child care and education – to meet those targets.

If this is true, if we are going to come out with some real, comprehensive and bold policy then it’s about bloody time, says I. Because it’s time we started defining ourselves as something other than merely just opposed to the Harper agenda. And it’s time we started illustrating the stark contrasts between Liberal and Conservative philosophies. And it’s time we started offering Canadians choice.

An income tax cut and a per cent off the GST, or an income tax cut and a major initiative to tackle child poverty? I know the side of that debate I’d like to be on. I’ll bring my own cake to the party.

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