LIVE ORGANIC FOOD BAR, 264 Dupont, at Spadina, 416-515-2002, Saturday and Sunday 11 am to 3 pm. Reservations accepted for groups of six or more. livefoodbar.com. $$ Rating: NNNNN
The unequivocal queen of raw cuisine, Jennifer Italiano has come a long way since she opened a tiny vegetarian takeaway in the Annex almost 10 years ago.
Since then, she’s moved into far fancier digs a few doors down, branched out into wholesale – her line of Live veggie chips and crackers is carried in more than 40 local stores, including Whole Foods and Noah’s – and she’s come up with Hogtown’s first raw vegan brunch.
Her recipe for uncooked crepes – created with the help of ex-Fressen chef Sarah MacDonald – is pure genius. If you didn’t know that everything involved had never seen an oven or a stovetop, you’d swear you were eating some impossibly rich dessert at a five-star resort.
Live’s preservative- and gluten-free take on crepes starts with flapjacks configured from a dehydrated purée of bananas, dates, apples and fair-trade cocoa. They’re filled with a blackberry-cashew cream, house-made multi-berry jam and marshmallow fluff made with whipped coconut milk. Plate with almond-walnut biscotti, cranberry-apricot marmalade and a toss of edible nasturtiums ($15) and watch jaws drop. Is everything really organic?
“Our customers would kill us if it weren’t,” quips Italiano.
