A few midday showers didn’t keep the crowd away from good food and family fun on Day 2 of the 9th annual Jerk Fest. Organizers transformed the base of the Centennial Park ski hills into an old-fashioned county fair.

Two-year-old Christina Thomas went to De Caribana Lime party at Ontario Place and, oh yes, she brought the cute. Big brown eyes, brown dress down to chubby knees, hands in the air, distracted only for a moment by the puddle a few feet away.

ROB RAINFORD CERTAINLY knows his way around a grill. As host of The Food Network Canada’s License to Grill, the Jamaican-born chef has kept the sizzle in backyard barbeques for more than 100 episodes. “Low and slow,” says Rainford over the phone, “at least three to four hours.” He’s referring to the best method of grilling tender, succulent ribs. Apparently it’s all about sustained heat at low temperatures.

It’s not your imagination: children today are getting heavier. And like many other conditions, childhood obesity tends to affect black children more.

Dr. Miriam Rossi, a professor at the University of Toronto and a former associate dean in its medical school, cites the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey — Nutrition, which looked at weight gain in children and teenagers from 1978 to 1979 and 2004. In that period, the rate of young people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds aged two to 17 classified as overweight or obese grew from 15 per cent to 26 per cent — the number classified as obese, meanwhile, more than doubled to 8 per cent.

I think we have a lot of people in the community who love spice and who can enjoy products with jerk, from white Canadians to Asian and South Asian communities.

We want to include the rest of the Caribbean population like Barbados, Trinidad and Grenada. We want to start implementing a few dishes that they carry,” he says. Flying fish and cou-cou, a traditional Bajan dish as well as shark and bake, Trinidad’s roadside favourite, are just two of the many additions with which Moore is planning to spruce up the Ritz menu.

End of an Irie
Carl Cassell takes his food joint underground
BY: Felicia Carty
Many Torontonians reminisce of late summer nights at Irie, a restaurant just west of Bathurst on Queen Street, in Toronto’s downtown core. Whether for poetry jams, live music or just a plate of hot food, it held its ground for just about a decade as one of the city’s premier social spots for the urban crowd.
But according to its hip owner, Carl Cassell, change is the one constant in the universe.
“Irie served its purpose for an entire generation …

Offering the perfect balance between great food and a comfortable, intimate atmosphere, the quaint restaurant has a relaxed environment that’s perfect for business, pleasure or both — a fact not lost on co-owner and head chef George Washington.