My favourite food moments on film

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 5:37 PM - 0 Comments

The TIFF Bell Lightbox has a new film series starting this week called Food on Film. Some fantastic movies, including Babette’s Feast and Vatel, will be screened with some big personalities, like Laura Calder,  leading discussions with audiences prior to showtime (it’s in partnership with Oliver and Bonacini and the Food Network.)

After reviewing the line-up, I realized that some of my favourite film moments involving food come courtesy of movies that don’t rely on gastronomy as a plot or a setting. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy watching Julie & Julia, Mystic Pizza, Big Night and the action-packed My Dinner with Andre just as much as the next food-obsessed film buff.  But the food movie moments that stand out especially for me all take place in the background, which, I suppose, is sort of like the role food plays in real life. It’s often in these moments, which may or may not include some sort of intoxication, when The Good Life unfolds. If it happens around a dinner table, then I’m in.

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Great: sugar is toxic

By Jessica Allen - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 6:05 PM - 0 Comments

Seth Perlman/AP

Yesterday, the National Post ran a story about a report in Nature that suggests sugar is toxic. It’s so bad, says the research journal, that the government might want to restrict the sale of soda pop to those who are at 17-years-old. That would put sugar in the same latitude of evil as alcohol and tobacco. And like those other two harbingers of depravity, sugar is everywhere: from sweet, colourful cereals to candy, fast food and sports drinks. But the real target of the report seems to be soda pop.

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Alberta’s Kate Middleton gets the royal treatment in Paris

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 3:58 PM - 0 Comments

Holly Ferrier, a 26-year-old former rancher who drives a truck and doesn’t have high-speed Internet, is a dead ringer for the Duchess of Cambridge. In fact, the resemblance is so uncanny that the producers of a French reality TV show, Qui Sera Le Meilleur Sosie? (Who is the Best Lookalike?), invited the Camrose Canadian ad sales rep to Paris, all expenses paid, to compete against other celebrity lookalikes for a grand prize of 15,000 euros (about $20,000). We found out about Ferrier after she just barely missed the deadline to enter our summertime Great Canadian Face-Off competition. Maclean’s caught up with her a few days after getting back from Paris, where she walked the red carpet and had to teach her Prince William how to drive a stick shift, Albertan style.

Holly Ferrier

Q: First of all, how did you traveling to Paris to be on a French reality TV show come about?

A: When Kate and Will came to the Calgary Stampede, a few people noticed the resemblance and the Calgary Herald did a little something on it and I ended up getting an agent. But I didn’t really take it too seriously. I actually moved back to the Camrose area after ranching in High River and took a job at the Camrose Canadian as an advertising sales rep. I had a lot of family stuff going on and a lot on my plate and my agent was kind of getting annoyed that I wasn’t doing anything. So I decided to put up a Kate Middleton lookalike page on Facebook, just to make my agent happy. And that’s how the show in Paris tracked me down—through the Facebook page.

Q: The show found you? Continue…

REVIEW: Fairy Tale Interrupted

By Jessica Allen - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

How did a wisecracking, Howard Stern-loving, twentysomething gal from the Bronx become the personal assistant to John F. Kennedy Jr.? By being sassy, wisecracking—and immune to the charms of the Kennedy scion, once named “sexiest man alive” by People magazine. “He loved that I treated him like a normal person and not like JFK Jr.,” insists author RoseMarie Terenzio, who worked for Kennedy for five years, during which time he launched George, a flashy political magazine, and married Carolyn Bessette. Terenzio’s memoir of their relationship is studded with such delicious detail that even readers who don’t remember the days when John and Carolyn fighting in Central Park made front-page news will devour it.

The two met in 1994 when a co-owner of the New York PR firm where Terenzio worked sold the agency in order to go into business with Kennedy. Terenzio thought she’d be out of a job but at the 11th hour, Kennedy asked her to work for him. The plan? To start a magazine that merged the two worlds of pop culture and politics. No one was more qualified to helm George than him, argues Terenzio, “since he exemplified both.” And, arguably, no one is better at observing the affairs of a magazine than the boss’s assistant: with sprezzatura to spare, Terenzio delivers tantalizing accounts of staff cattiness and celebrity dealings, including cold-shouldering Oprah, a crazy call from Marlon Brando, and Sean Penn behaving like, well, Sean Penn.

Of course, she made mistakes, like forgetting to book the occasional lunch reservation, but Terenzio learned fast, and the perks—courtside Knicks tickets, a week every summer at the Hyannis Cape house, shopping sprees with Carolyn—were plentiful.

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I am the 20 per cent tipper and I bet you are, too

By Jessica Allen - Friday, January 27, 2012 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

The 17th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette, which dates to 2004, says that, “In New York, San Francisco, Boston, and other major cities, fifteen to twenty percent is standard.” So, eight years ago tipping 15 to 20 per cent was considered the norm in big cities.  Toronto is a big city, no? And it’s 2012. That’s eight years after 2004.

I’m telling you this to help explain why I’m so flabbergasted over how a Toronto Star story published last week on tipping 20 per cent being “the new normal” still has legs, and the gams won’t stop growing! If you haven’t been following it, here’s a brief summary: Amy Pataki reviewed both The Westerly and The Ace, two new restaurants on Roncesvalles Ave. in Toronto’s west end, for the Toronto Star. A few days later, Pataki wrote another piece in the Star reporting that both of these places have two options on their debit machines for customers to leave either a 20 per cent tip or to choose another amount. The headline read, “Standard tip in Toronto restaurants now 20 per cent.” That same day, the story was picked up by Toronto Life on their daily Dish blog and, the next day, the National Post reported the story on the paper’s front page. The Star did a follow-up piece the day after that, and since then countless blogs and websites , including Yahoo and BlogTO, have continued to report on it. Continue…

Bestsellers – Week of January 23th, 2012

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Is Starbucks pushing their Blonde on the Tim Hortons crowd?

By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 6:46 PM - 0 Comments

You know how Tim Hortons decided to make “lattes” in an effort to woo some of the sophisticated sorts from Starbucks? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that not long after Starbucks began advertising how their drinks are “handcrafted beverages” rather than, say, from a machine that dispenses a drink with a push of a button. Now Starbucks is releasing a “Blonde” roast that promises to be “lighter, mellower and more subtle” than their bold and medium blends. You know what that sounds like? It sounds a lot like an attempt to compete with Tim’s black water roast, if you ask me. Continue…

Bestsellers – Week of January 16th, 2012

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Bestsellers – Week of January 9th, 2012

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:42 PM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

REVIEW: White Truffles in Winter

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 8:25 AM - 0 Comments

Considering current tastes for all things culinary, it’s a wonder the life of Georges Auguste Escoffier, “king of chefs and chef of kings,” hasn’t been culled more often for historical fiction. Although there are relatively few biographical facts—he revolutionized professional cooking with his brigade de cuisine; he and César Ritz were both fired from the Savoy and went on to establish the Ritz Hotel Development Company; he allegedly had an affair with the actress Sarah Bernhardt—they were the right ingredients for author N.M. Kelby to prepare a tale of intrigue, war and love peppered with appearances of royalty, world leaders, literati and painters set in Paris, London and, of course, kitchens.

Kelby’s story is as much about Escoffier’s wife, the poet Delphine Daffis, confined to a wheelchair in her old age, as Escoffier himself. While her husband works on his fictional last book, The Complete Escoffier: A Memoir in Meals, Delphine hires Sabine, a chain-smoking redhead with a weakness for sailors—and an uncanny resemblance to “the Divine Sarah”—to be the cook at their homestead in Monte Carlo. But Delphine, who harbours resentment for the years Escoffier toiled away at the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London, not to mention her embarrassment over the scandal with Bernhardt, has an agenda: she wants Sabine to manipulate Escoffier into granting her immortality, by way of naming a dish after her. And the girl does try, but nothing seems “complicated enough, or passionate enough, or sensible enough,” in Escoffier’s eyes. It’s a hard thesis to swallow: Kelby’s Delphine, cheerless and practical, doesn’t seem to be the sort who’d yearn for something so vainglorious.

Kelby is more convincing when it comes to detailing Escoffier’s passions: his love for Bernhardt and his wife, and also for food, especially during tender moments when the elder chef instructs the stubborn Sabine in the culinary arts. How to ready lobsters for death? Drown them headfirst in a glass of Champagne, preferably Moët. A fine way to go, crustacean or not.

Bestsellers – Week of January 2nd, 2012

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Pass the spinach dip and other antiquated holiday favourites, please

By Jessica Allen - Friday, December 30, 2011 at 3:22 PM - 0 Comments

The night before she flew home to Truro, Nova Scotia, my friend Erinn came over for a pre-holiday meal. We got to talking about what sort of Christmas treats we were both in store for at our mutual family gatherings and as we listed off all sorts of delights a few common denominators were observed. First, most of the recipes that our mothers and aunts make during the holidays come courtesy of old issues of Chatelaine, Canadian Living, Family Circle and newspaper clippings. Second, the other recipes may be marked “from Debbie” or “Linda’s” but they too are, in fact, magazine recipes that have been adapted as “Lynn’s” own. Third, they all contain either cream cheese, instant soup mix, sweetened condensed milk, or some other canned good. And fourth, we two 30-something-year-old gals, who enjoy leafing through the occasional issue of Gastronomica and eating tacos and gnudi at Toronto’s latest restaurant hot spots, couldn’t wait to eat them, along with the water-logged shrimp from the shrimp rings and cruddy milk chocolates stuffed with weird nougats.

“The first thing I’ll do when I get home tomorrow,” explained Erinn, “is open up the fridge, where I’ll find about ten of those Philly cream cheese bricks, and get started on making the dip.” The dip is actually called Pepper Spread, which is odd, since “it is neither spreadable and peppers don’t feature any more than any other ingredient.” And those other ingredients include margarine, sugar, vinegar, eggs and–of course–the brick of cream cheese. Apparently it’s wonderful with “veggies”.

Two things that inevitably show up at my mom’s family’s holiday gatherings are that spinach dip thing–the one where you hollow out a loaf of pumpernickel and fill it with frozen spinach, sour cream, mayonnaise and a package of Knorr vegetable soup mix–and my Aunt Sandy’s shrimp dip, which, as it turns out, is actually Sandy’s friend Carole’s shrimp dip, but Sandy’s been making it every Christmas for the last 15 years, which entitles her to the copyright in our family. It’s supposed to be made in a mold and then turned out onto a festive platter. But Sandy simply serves it in a plastic container. Why go to all the trouble of a mold when 20 or so hungry relatives will pile crackers inches high with the stuff and deplete the precious stock within minutes of it being put out?

How is it that all these jellies, molds and dips, that most wouldn’t dream of serving at a dinner party, are perennially featured in holiday spreads?  Maybe it just comes down to tradition. “The new magazines are what my mom goes to for inspiration throughout the year,” says Erinn, “but at Christmas she leans on tried and true recipes from a bygone era.”

I can relate. For Christmas dinner this year I tried a Bon Appétit recipe for glazed carrots that were gussied up with fresh tarragon, sherry and clementine. They were great, but I’ll be honest: those fancy time carrots didn’t come close to Marg’s carrot casserole, which came courtesy of “Diane.”  It’s a dish that requires a half pound of processed cheese slices, among other things. Enough said, no?

Tim Hortons lasagna: just like Mom never made

By Jessica Allen - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 0 Comments

I adore lasagna; all kinds of lasagna. I love the sort my mom used to make with canned mushrooms, slices of processed mozzarella and ground beef flavoured with garlic powder and onion; I love the classic Canadian version that other mothers used to make (the one with cottage cheese smothered between layers of noodles, a tomato-dense meat sauce and grated mozzarella from a plastic bag); I love President’s Choice and No Name frozen lasagnas, even though they take, like, forever to cook in the oven; and I love the quintessential lasagna alla Bolognese that comes courtesy of the Italians in Emilia-Romagna, a north-eastern region famous for producing Ferraris, Fellini and food.

They’re so crazy about food in Bologna, the region’s capital and arguably the gastronomical capital of the country, that they even codify classic recipes, for posterity’s sake. Like lasagna alla Bolognese. How does this version differ from what many Canadians grew up eating? Continue…

How to make beans n’ toast the perfect student dish

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3:13 PM - 0 Comments

Pythagoras thought they were evil and Aristotle said they were destructive. Plus, there’s also that really funny song about them. We’re talking about beans, specifically in their most glorious rendering, on toast. Not only are they versatile in the kitchen, high in fibre, protein and iron, but they’re also incredibly cheap—especially the dried variety—making beans perfect student grub. Maclean’s, along with two Toronto chefs, presents three variations that may just be the greatest thing on sliced bread.

Drink like an Egyptian

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 1:50 PM - 0 Comments

Landon Nordeman/Maclean's

When it comes to food these days, everything old is new again, which isn’t that surprising after years of genuflecting in the church of molecular gastronomy. The only altar left for foodies to worship at is an old one. Jars of preserved goods, just like grandma used to make, line the kitchen shelves of countless restaurants. Noma, voted the best restaurant in the world last year, fashions most of its dishes from ingredients foraged from the Danish woods. Menus, including the one at Chicago’s Next, are built around a particular time and place, like Paris circa 1906. Chefs, including Charleston, S.C.-based Sean Brock, hunt down long-forgotten varieties of grains, vegetables and fruit, and Toronto’s own Jamie Kennedy prefers the rare Canadian heritage breed of wheat called red fife.

And then there’s Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum who, after analyzing the residue that lingers in the nooks and crannies of millennia-old potted vessels, is bringing ancient elixirs back to life. It’s gastronomical nostalgia on steroids.

McGovern, a pioneer in the field of biomolecular archaeology who did undergraduate work in chemistry and has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology, has collaborated on five beverages with Sam Calagione, the award-winning founder and president of Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware: Midas Touch, an Iron Age beer based on samples found in the king’s supposed tomb; Chateau Jiahu, a Chinese blend of grapes, rice and honey based on the oldest sample of booze ever discovered; Theobrama, a 3,200 year-old Honduran chocolate drink; Chicha, a corn beer with Peruvian lineage; and Ta Henket, an Egyptian ale being released in December with 18,000-year-old components.

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REVIEW: The Virgin Cure

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments

Fans of McKay’s bestselling novel The Birth House are going to love The Virgin Cure, her second story about an unusual girl living in a precise time and place. This time it’s 12-year-old Moth, the daughter of a heartless gypsy fortune teller, navigating the mean streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side around the Bowery in 1871—that’s before galleries, boutique hotels and a Daniel Boulud restaurant moved in.

Moth is introduced to readers by Dr. Sadie, a female physician who tends to prostitutes and the poor (and is based on the author’s great-great-grandmother); she explains in a letter that the proceeding story is Moth’s own and in her words. And that world is seething with evil women: the unlucky child is sold by her “slum house mystic” mother to wealthy Mrs. Wentworth, who’s so wicked she makes Mommy Dearest look like a fairy godmother. Moth escapes from her, only to end up in Miss Everett’s “Infant School,” a chilling brothel that certifies its girls as virgo intacto to gentlemen with the deepest pockets and highest bids.

McKay inserts curious sidebars and illustrations, like pages from Dr. Sadie’s journal, old apothecary ads and excerpts from newspapers that foreshadow and elucidate the narrative. For example, the book’s title is explained via an interview with Miss Everett in the Evening Standard: “None of my girls has ever been hurt, or stolen away, or used as a virgin cure. [That’s] the notion that a man can be cured of French pox or any other disease by laying with a virgin.”

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On Homer, fine-tuning ‘The Iliad’ and being the rock star of translators

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Stephaine Noritz

He Knows Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian and Danish. And his progressive translations include Gilgamesh and The Gospel According to Jesus. Now Stephen Mitchell takes on Homer’s The Iliad—and he cuts about 1,100 lines along the way.

Q: Although there hasn’t been a major new translation of The Iliad in 15 years, there are about 200 in existence—six alone in the previous decade. Did you think the time was right for a new one?

A: Well, it was the right time for me. I didn’t think of anybody else. I just wanted to spend a few years with the vast mind of Homer. I never think of that sort of thing when I begin a project: I have a sense that something is right and I just plunge into it. And I was lucky enough to have had that sense after the very great M.L. West edition was published [in Greek], so I had an advantage over previous translators who were working from the 1902 Greek Oxford Classical Texts. It’s a very defective edition in many ways.

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The NYT’s annual food and drink issue is here!

By Jessica Allen - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 3:58 PM - 4 Comments

Sometimes I flinch when I shell out $8.40 for a copy of the Sunday New York Times. But not yesterday! Inside was the fourth annual food and drink issue and it was chock full of  ”mysteries, riddles and impertinent questions” answered by some of the Times’ most beloved contributors, including Mark Bittman, Sam Sifton, Amander Hesser and Eric Asimov. Despite having so much to do yesterday, I ended up reading the entire thing cover to cover. It took me all morning. Several cups of coffee were consumed. And even though I forget most of the really good ideas that were born as a result of my labours, I have no regrets. (Just a bit of gut rot.)

There are some really great spreads, like Mark Bittman’s Dinner Party Matrix—a guide that promises to deliver stress-free dinner parties. Continue…

My top 5 TIFF moments

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 4:10 PM - 1 Comment

Here's Alexander Skarsgard and me, hanging out like old friends.

5. BREAKING AWAY

TIFF caused major downtown traffic mayhem. It was so nuts that my well-tempered colleague Brian D. Johnson even blogged about how annoying it was trying to travel from event to event. Not for this gal, though. I rode my bike to every downtown press conference, interview, film screening and red carpet and then hauled myself back uptown to the Maclean’s office, sometimes clocking in more than 25 km a day. I even biked to all the parties all dolled up in a dress and heels. And didn’t I feel oh-so-smug while I passed gridlocked cars! That is, until I fell off my bike standing still at an intersection. That’s right, I was stationary before I fell.

4. FREE FOOD! Continue…

Whipping it up at the Butter soirée

By Jessica Allen - Friday, September 16, 2011 at 4:03 PM - 0 Comments

Jerod Harris/Getty images for vitaminwater

What sort of food do you serve at a cocktail party before the gala TIFF premiere of a movie called Butter? Why, buttered shrimp and butter chicken, of course (and a little foie gras on itty-bitty pancakes too!). And to wash it all down? Cocktails featuring Vitamin Water, since the soirée was hosted at the VitaminWater rooftop on Queen Street West.

Party-goers, who otherwise indulged in plenty of drinks, held back from sampling the tasty treats. Save for me, of course—and gossip maven extraordinaire Lainey Lui, who tweeted from the party that she may have eaten enough for five. “Hollywood people are so strange,” Lui tweeted about the non-noshing crowd. She looked every bit as gorgeous in person as Jennifer Garner, who stars in the movie about a quirky Midwestern community that goes bonkers over a butter sculpting competition.

A radiant—and pregnant—Mrs. Affleck wore a short, blush-coloured sparkly number that showed off her baby bump. Co-stars Ashley Greene and Alicia Silverstone were in attendence, too, and were also outfitted in glittery above-the-knee frocks. But taking the fashion cake was Olivia Wilde, who looked like a bone fide movie star and a Grecian goddess draped in a white floor-length gown with a Byzantine-looking bejewelled neckline.

The one-of-a-kind party featured an artist dressed like a sexy milk maid carving a giant block of butter into the shape of a Vitamin Water bottle and a photo booth, which nobody was more excited about than I. “Can I go again?,” I asked a security guard. “You can go as many times as you like,” he said. And the organizers even provided a table strewn with big glass bowls of colourful candy and little brown bags so guests, like me, could fill up a loot bag for home time. Garner apparently filled up her purse with goodies, presumably to snack on during the premiere.

I left right before the Butter stars did and saw those ubiquitous black TIFF SUVs on the street waiting for the ladies to take them to their red carpet. As I got on my slightly less glamourous two-wheeled ride, a flash went off from the crowd of eager fans waiting for Garner and the gang to come out. I looked up from underneath my bike helmet, grinned and posed. “Oh, sorry,” said a trigger-happy young lady, “that wasn’t for you.”

Juliette Lewis liked my purse!

By Jessica Allen - Friday, September 16, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Jeff Vespa/Getty Images

A novice navigating Toronto International Film Festival nightlife on the opening Friday and Saturday eves of the festival—the only nights, the pros will tell you, that guarantee spotting gaggles of A-list celebrities—is a comedy of errors. Mistakes are inevitable, like leaving George Strombolopolous’s party at ONE restaurant uptown on Friday night in order to get downtown to Soho House—a pop-up club sponsored by Grey Goose in an old brick building—because Twitter, the all-knowing oracle of TIFF, which was difficult to consult earlier (because there was dinner with Harvey Weinstein to report on), says that the cast of Ides of March, including George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds and Philip Seymour Hoffman, are there, not to mention Mark Wahlberg, who has got behind the bar to make cocktails for himself and his entourage, and Tilda Swinton, who is at this very moment eating dinner. Of course, upon arrival, the stars have left and Swinton is out of sight.

And then at 2:30 a.m., after getting home empty-handed from Goodnight, a back-alley bar that was last year’s hot spot for Toronto elites and Hollywood A-listers, Twitter professes that Jon Hamm, Gerard Butler, Bono and others ended up at ONE, where the night began.

Still, even novices have some successes: at the Vanity Fair-Belvedere-Fox Searchlight party at Scarpetta on Saturday night, where Clooney and Bono enjoyed dinner, Kirsten Dunst sits in a corner, fresh-faced and pretty in a polka-dot blouse and floor-length breezy skirt, sipping on a cocktail and attending to her BlackBerry. A tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed gent in a sharp suit tries to get her attention. But Dunst acknowledges his presence only after finishing her cellular task. “Oh, hey Alex,” she smiles coyly. That would be Alexander Skarsgård, who stars with Dunst in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. Tonight he’s all smiles and happily obliges fans who politely ask for cellphone photo ops. As a woman passes her BlackBerry to her husband, the Swedish True Blood star grins, wraps one arm around her waist while holding a pint of beer behind his back and contorts his face into a smouldering frown replete with puckered lips and a singular raised eyebrow. He’s become his vampire character, Eric. And then it’s the novice’s turn: Juliette Lewis, who is far less severe-looking in person than she is in photos, grabs hold of her vintage sparkly purse and turns it over for inspection. “I like this.”

Continue…

Dirty jokes abound at amFAR Cinema Against AIDS gala

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 4:27 PM - 1 Comment

Courtesy of amFAR

I’ve been told that last year’s amFAR Cinema Against AIDS Gala at The Carlu was one of the most dazzling attractions at TIFF. (No wonder, considering tickets start at $1,000 and tables go for $25,000.) This year, more than 500 guests, mostly dressed in black ties and really fancy floor-length gowns, saddled up to eat dinner (more on that later), watch host Kathy Griffin swear like a f–king trucker, listen to amFAR chairman Kenneth Cole give a fantastic speech on recent advances in AIDS research, try to get a photo with amFAR chair Kim Cattrall and watch a pro (Lydia Fenet of Christie’s) conduct a spirited live auction on Sunday night. By the time it was over, $800,000 was raised for AIDS research. Not too shabby.

Courtesy of amFAR

Leading up to the ballroom on the Carlu’s 7th floor is a long, dimly-lit corridor outfitted in black and purple with touches of old Hollywood glam, like plushy black round settees and pretty ladies dresed like movie confectionary girls from the 1930s. There were plenty of recognizable sorts there, like Suzanne Rogers, dressed in a Kelly Green floor-length gown with a bejewelled neck, and actor Brian Cox, who I watched like a creep in the shadows for ten minutes. Continue…

Ralph Fiennes on directing and starring in ‘Coriolanus’

By Jessica Allen - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Yesterday, as four other reporters and I sat on plush sofas and stools around a leather coffee table in the mezzanine lounge of the Park Hyatt, Ralph Fiennes walked in—no, glided in—and sat at the head of the table. I was the last one to introduce myself: “I’m Jessica Allen from Maclean’s magazine.”  Squinting his blue eyes for a moment, as though he was going through the file folders of information in his mind, he responded in a soft voice, “Ah yes, I know Maclean’s.”

Whew.

Continue…

Cocktails at the Soho House with Jessica Allen

By Jessica Allen - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 5:33 PM - 0 Comments