‘Bigger, better, braver … wiser’: Celebrating a rock star chef and a Toronto fashion legend

The solace of food, and the sentimentalism of clothes.
Just two of the thought-clouds in the ether at two separate book events in town over the last week.
The first: a grand welcome for Yotam Ottolenghi, aka “the philosopher chef,” as The New Yorker once dubbed him (not to mention, serial cookbook champ!). The second: an un-small bash held to celebrate the new memoir of the one-and-only Jeanne Beker, whose voice boomed from the TV show “Fashion Television” for nearly three decades, and who remains one of Toronto’s most indelible characters.
The Ottolenghi-fest, filling up most of Roy Thomson Hall — befitting his rock-star status — was, as expected, a journey into aubergine, the promise of pomegranate … a drumbeat of tahini. Here to promote his 11th book, “Ottolenghi Comfort” — a holistic take on the concept of home recipes, and generational nostalgia — the London-based chef was all charm and quip last Sunday. Here with a patter as crisp as a savoury crepe (one of his obsessions, as it happens — “a vehicle for flavour”!)
“I’m evangelical about cumin,” he punctuated at one point, in the span of an onstage talk, and demonstration, with local luminary Donna Dooher. After which, he launched into the glories of this “cross-cultural spice” — seeing that it appears in North Africa, in Mexico, in certain Chinese dishes, and is, of course, a base of Indian curries.
The only chef, probably, who is a qualified Pilates instructor and also emerged from the worlds of academia (he has a masters in philosophy and literature), Ottolenghi has had quite the personal arc, all right. The Jerusalem-born guy who now owns nine restaurants in Britain with co-chef Sami Tamimi, a Palestinian: part of the lore. And has — I have long thought — done more to influence menus, the world over, than any one person over the last 15 years. Herb-strewn and free-form and veggie-glam, his ouevre — an impact found in all the charred brussels sprouts you see in restaurants, the cauliflower everything, the growing mainstreaming of ingredients like sumac.
At home, of course, he’s just Dad, which prompted the most amusing part of his talk this day.  He calls the picky-eater ways of kids a combination of “palate and power-struggle,” and his theory is that they are so used to being bossed around in every other aspect of their little lives that “the only agency they have is to refuse food.”
His advice: not to sweat it; let it play out. Having noticed a natural evolution with his sons’ likes and dislikes, he laughed: “Now, they critique my food … like, this was better the last time.”
Ottolenghi, by the way, did manage to get fed himself while in Toronto. Stopped into that Kensington Market fixture, Sunny’s Chinese, I hear.
A whole other kind of menu, meanwhile, held around the corner, just days later? A sartorial one! Held at that Toronto institution and bastion of vice El Mocambo — if these walls could talk — it was where champagne-toting guests had come to fete Beker’s new memoir, “Heart on My Sleeve.” One that the local icon calls not just a memoir, but a “wardrobe of memory,” given that the book is structured in a way that each chapter swivels around a piece of garment, or accessory — each one informing, and/or acting as a touchstone, for a moment in her life.
“Bigger, better, braver … wiser.” That was Beker getting teary-eyed, when taking the stage, at one point, and while reflecting on her past decade. One that’s seen the highest of highs and lowest of lows: she found love again, but also found herself battling cancer. And what compelled her to write this new memoir (it’s not her first!)
It was, though, the first book launch I’d ever been to where the author appeared with a slew of mannequins, donned in blasts from her past. Even her wedding dress, inspired by Margaret Trudeau’s own hooded wedding gown when she wed Pierre – “my first wedding,” Beker winked. Noted: a dress that Karl Lagerfeld once gave her – when she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant! Another: a frock that once belonged to her mother, made by a German dressmaker.
“Lots of stories about rock stars in the book,” Beker was also quick to add, which includes her encounters with the famous and the infamous. “Including Keith Richards,” who, of course, famously played in the very space we were in – the El Mocambo.
“Most of all, what I would love to happen with this book,” she went on to the room,” is that it will inspire you to look at your own wardrobes anew. And really appreciate the sentimentality. We sometimes only have a picture of those clothes, but they are so vivid in our mind’s eye.”
And just one more reminder this week about the power of memory — in all matters of taste.