EASY RESTAURANT (1645 Queen St. West / 713 College St. West) After my disappointing experience at Aunties and Uncles, I was hoping that this week’s brunch adventure would boost my confidence in the Toronto brunch scene. I chose Easy Restaurant, as it is another spot with a great reputation and has a location on College Street, a stone’s throw from my apartment. Unfortunately, this may have been...
Greetings from Tokyo! Your correspondent has now landed in Japan for an exchange semester at Waseda Law School. As introduced before, this semester the Obiter Dicta will bring you a special series covering the amazing experiences of fellow Osgoode students who are spending a semester abroad at one of Osgoode’s partner schools worldwide. As for myself, I will be presenting a little slice of the...
AUNTIES AND UNCLES (74 Lippincott St.) For my brunch adventure this week I, thankfully, wasn’t hung-over and decided that it was time to see what all the fuss was about at Aunties and Uncles. I had been hearing about this place since moving to Toronto, but living in Passy meant taking an hour-long transit ride downtown, followed by what I had heard was an extremely long wait prior to getting...
The 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was another hectic ten days in a long line of new beginnings over the last thirty-nine years. It was the first time that King Street was closed to traffic for the opening weekend, and the first time that TIFF took a firm stance regarding Telluride premieres, resulting in the loss of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, among others. It was...
Laugh now, cry later, Osgoode. This is our 3L swan song, our last dance. And we’ve saved this dance for you. After today, we’re handing off the column to our successor contributors, who we hope will continue in our stead by leaving a trail of steaming culinary justice across the GTA. Goodman’s Bistro: Dan: No analysis of campus food options would be complete without mentioning the Aramark...
In my mind, there were two possible options for the topic of my final Obiter Dicta article. I could write a sentimental, well-written article waxing poetic about my nine years of post-secondary education and the great memories associated with my time as a student at Osgoode Hall; alternatively, I could write a review for a 1996 movie that scores a paltry 5.6 out of 10 on IMDb. Having chosen the...
1L student Nadia Klein, whose roots in the arts began here in Toronto, comes from a prestigious background in perfecting the cello. Since playing the cello from the young age of 6, Nadia completed her Bachelor of Music Performance at the University of Toronto before continuing on to receive her Masters of Music Performance and Professional Studies Diploma from the San Francisco Conservatory of...
The sun is shining, and we are finally approaching the end of the law school year. It must be time to break plates and luxuriate! It’s time, in other words, for Greek food! Venue: Kalyvia – 420 Danforth Ave (just east of Chester station) Cuisine: Greek Food Food: Dolmades ($6.99), Prix Fixe Combo ($15.00): village salad, homemade chicken and pork gyros, roast potatoes, rice, Greek cheese...
If there are two words I cannot stand to see in print, they are “sublime” and “Kafkaesque”. There is nearly always a less pretentious way to achieve descriptive accuracy, and I’ve come to regard overreliance on those turns of phrase to be little more than laziness hidden beneath a thin veneer of pseudo-intellectualism – something I have little patience for in general. In light of this, I...
I see a lot of movies in theatre, but I rarely walk out of them thinking about how bad they were or about how I wish I hadn’t spent the money I paid to see them. In the past year, only The Purge (one of the worst and most disappointing movies I have ever seen) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson can legitimately go to hell for thinking it was reasonable to drag this one book...
I wanted to grow an herb or two,
It was spring, and a good thing to do.
I had never gardened before, it’s true.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
I soon found myself at the gardening store,
With soil and seeds and seedlings galore,
Into my cart the items did pour,
This cold weather seems to be never-ending. So, comfort food was back on the menu in a big way this week. Hold onto your butts and give thanks, Osgoode. Meaty buns are front of mind in Midtown at Holy Chuck. Venue: Holy Chuck – 1450 Yonge Street (just south of St. Clair station) Cuisine: Burgers Food: Luke went for “The Big Chuck” ($10.99), which is HC’s take on a big mac, and rounded...
Thinking green is becoming more elusive to the Canadian public, as the day-to-day tasks of life preoccupy our minds and influence our every action. It seems that being environmentally conscious in our lives has become something that must be an active and deliberate choice, as opposed to a way we carry out various aspects of our daily lives on a constant basis. For instance, the purchase of a...
By now a good majority of the Osgoode community has taken a virtual culinary journey across the world, thanks to our own culinary critic and food-blogger extraordinaire, Annie Chu. Through her blog, Chu on This, Annie’s creativity and inner-foodie has really taken off. Chu on This (www.chuonthis.ca) offers an epicurean voyage, as she documents the sights, smells, and tastes of famous eateries and...
Lunar New Year just wrapped up this past week, and with that spirit in mind your intrepid food sleuths undertook to scout a Toronto downtown dim sum hotspot. Cha Lau is an authentic and budget-friendly option for dumplings, steamed dishes and other “small plate” Chinese goodies. Cuisine: Dim Sum Food: (shared) Beef and Chinese mushroom dumplings, Chinese olive and pork dumplings, ultimate shrimp...
Calling all students, faculty, and staff! Over Reading Week, take a quick visit to your closet, a parent’s closet, a grandparent’s closet, to consider…is there is any professional attire in here that is no longer being worn? If so, the Osgoode Women’s Network (OWN) wants to help you find the perfect place to donate your gently used clothing. Dress for Success (DFS) is an international non-profit...
About fifteen minutes into Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, a presumably troubled man three rows behind me angrily exited the near-empty theatre at Carlton Cinema. I think he muttered “bullshit” before he left. He wasn’t done, though, returning shortly thereafter, only to leave again ten minutes later. This time he was even angrier, saying something like “Fucking home movies” before leaving...
Food Adventure #5 Happy 2014 Osgoode! Having abandoned our New Year’s diet resolutions in favour of something more realistic (flossing?), we’re ready to re-engage with the city’s best (student budget-priced) lunch spots for the benefit of Canada’s legal community! This week features Luke facing down the terrifying dual-headed hydra of travelling to Toronto’s West End and (gasp!) shared...
Growing up, I was always told to treat others the way I wished to be treated. What no one every really mentioned, though, is that I should also treat myself the way I wish to be treated. I’m always quick to offer friends and even strangers compliments, but I rarely offer one to myself. The sad truth is that I easily believe negative comments from others, probably because I actively engage in...
American Hustle (2013) 3/4 Deviously antic, deliriously energetic, and unrepentantly jumbled, American Hustle is a stereotype-drenched piece of cockeyed comedy and a pratfall-ridden work of dazzling showmanship. It’s juicy, relentless, dizzying, diverting, and works from the feet up, leaving you revved and tickled. Writer-director David O. Russell has mashed up a larcenous cast from his last two...
It started with a joke. On our way to Washington Square Park, struck by the startlingly warm – especially for November – air, we saw a falafel stand. I turned to my friend Daniel and remarked to him with complete sincerity – sorry, artificial sincerity, I was completely lying – that it was the best falafel in town. It was probably no more the best falafel in town than the hot dog stand at St...
Kate Cash is one amazing second year student. As a fellow Section D buddy and having seen her perform, I wanted to write about her for the second edition of Avant Garde – but through the process, I learned that my talented friend can teach us about the importance of following your heart, but keeping your brain fed, too, throughout the journey. Kate has been a musician and bartender for much of...
Mid-semester doldrums? Spice it up. Grand Electric, the largely abandoned hipster stronghold of 2011 is past the line-up insanity of its infancy, yet remains an excellent setting to gorge on tacos.
Road House stars Patrick Swayze as James Dalton, a professional “cooler” – an elite-level bouncer – hired to bring structure and sanity to a road-side bar in Missouri that is replete with short-tempered heavy drinkers prone to violent outbursts. This, I suppose, makes sense. The resulting conflict between Dalton and Brad Wesley, the corrupt businessman who provides the bar with its alcohol, does...
Blue Jasmine (2013) 3/4 Delightful, tonally sound, and uncomfortably hilarious, Blue Jasmine finds Woody Allen back in fine form after a schizophrenically inconsistent string of films that ran the gamut between pleasantly diverting (see: Midnight in Paris) and maddeningly sketchy (see: To Rome with Love). Much of the film’s success has to do with Cate Blanchett’s marvelous performance as the...