Black carrots are the latest craze, Madonna hates cheese, Prohibition feud heats up

Black carrots are the latest craze, Madonna hates cheese, Prohibition feud heats up

Oprah dined at Sotto Sotto while in Toronto for TIFF (Photo by Karon Liu)

• Feuding continues at Queen Street East bar Prohibiton. Ex-manager Joey McGuirk published a letter from his lawyer on Prohibition’s old Web site this summer, which detailed how he came up with the concept of the bar and demanded compensation after McGuirk was fired. Some of his cutting-edge ideas include serving “high-end pub fare,” focusing on customer service, offering more than 15 kinds of beer and being “fun and sexy.” We hope he patented those, because they’re restaurant gold. [BlogTO]

• When Madonna told David Letterman that she’s never had a slice of New York pizza, the host got her a slice with olives but no cheese. Madonna reports that she’s “not a cheese person.” (A body like that doesn’t happen by eating cheese.) We’re just happy she’s no longer a fake-British-accent person. [Grub Street]

• Local food is a gigantic business in Canada, with sales at farmers’ markets topping $1 billion annually. Leading the purchasing are huge grocery chains, hoping to cash in on the trend. Loblaw has been airing ads with Galen Weston Jr. visiting various farms across the country and imploring people to buy their local produce. Unfortunately, Loblaw’s definition of local means anything grown in Canada. A note: our country has just over 400,000 square kilometres of arable land. [Globe and Mail]

• Our mother used to tell us to eat our carrots so we’d have good vision, but we couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw the new black carrots from Cookstown Greens. Like many other fruits and veggies, heirloom carrots are prized for their distinct colour and taste. The black carrots, which are actually more of a dark purple, usually retail for around $7 a pound. [Toronto Star]

• Like Toronto’s Sotto Sotto, Vancouver bakery Butter Baked Goods just had a brush with Oprah. Staff at O magazine called for samples of their “oreo” cookie: giant chocolate biscuits filled with vanilla cream. Unfortunately for the bakers, the cookies didn’t make the final cut. [National Post]