Happy Birthday!

Here in Canada we don’t have much in the way of food mag­a­zines, no Saveur or Food & Wine, no Martha Stewart Living or Cook’s Illustrated. No, we might not have those big glossy tomes, but we’ve got some­thing better.

Small, inde­pen­dent and local mag­a­zines like Saltscapes in the Maritimes, Occasions in Alberta, Eat Magazine in British Columbia, and a grow­ing num­ber of Edibles pop­ping up (like our very own Edible Toronto –recently nom­i­nated for a 2010 Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Award. Congratulations Gail!) show­case the unique cuisines of each province.

Instead of one Holy Grail that every chef, cook­book author, restau­ran­teur & som­me­lier aspires to get their name into, we have many. As read­ers we are able to read a slew of dif­fer­ent writ­ers with vastly var­ied opin­ions and voices, rather than a clique of five or six pat­ting the same peo­ple on the back month after month.

Today we want to con­grat­u­late one such pub­li­ca­tion, City Bites, the lit­tle local mag­a­zine that could. Five years in and still going strong. Through the worst era in print the world has ever seen, this lit­tle rag kept on pub­lish­ing. Every few months there would be rumors of it’s demise but then you’d bump into the edi­tor, Dick Snyder, at some charcuterie-laden schmooze-fest and he’d be all smiles hand­ing out copies of the lat­est edi­tion hot off the press.

With superla­tive con­tent pro­vided by the bril­liant minds of John Szabo, John Gundy, Konrad Ejbich, Signe Langford, Malcolm Jolley, Maia Filar, Eric Vellend and many oth­ers, Dick has man­aged to pro­vide this city with a mag­a­zine that speaks hon­estly and pas­sion­ately about our food and wine scene. It is not spon­sored by Hellman’s or depen­dent on ad rev­enue from MacDonald’s, and while the con­tent may be skewed to our neck of the woods it still main­tains a fin­ger on the pulse of the food world at large.

Celebrate with Dick and the whole City Bites fam­ily tonight at the Drake Hotel. Everyone is wel­come, free h’or d’ouevres pro­vided by Hall’s Kitchen, the Drake and Madeleines, Cherry Pie & Ice Cream.

Related posts:

1. Ontario Food Heroes– Farmer
2. St. John’s Bakery
3. Ontario Food Heroes — Chef
4. St. John’s Bakery
5. For the Love of it — your chance to win a framed print!