Chef Grant Soto is having a grand old time skewering Toronto foodies—but who is he?

Here’s what we do know about “Chef Grant Soto”: he claims he’s bitten Mark McEwan on the shoulder, he says he’s got Paula Deen’s face tattooed on his thigh and, allegedly, he’s had Dan Akroyd call him upset over calling his premium spirit “Crystal Tits Vodka.” What we don’t know is who Soto actually is, because his name is a pseudonym, and all of this (admittedly questionable) information is coming from the Twitter feed that he’s using to poke fun at the Toronto restaurant scene. If you haven’t had the, um, pleasure of following him these last few weeks, he spends a lot of time targeting pretentious chefs and food celebrities, offering now and then some surprisingly sharp media criticism (he called out the way that articles about Yours Truly shamelessly fawned over the chef’s time at New York’s Per Se, about which, well, guilty as charged). There’s plenty of raunchy stuff as well, like talk of sexual favours at Susur Lee’s upcoming restaurant, and a particularly friendly hostess. The Star’s Amy Pataki recently heard from Soto, but she didn’t manage to scrounge up much. He wants to remain anonymous; he’s “been around in the industry”; the Twitter feed isn’t part of some weird marketing campaign; he has a website on the way. And in a Q&A over on Food Junkie Chronicles, the potty mouth has some choice words about, among other things, female food bloggers of Asian descent. If the City Raccoon saga is anything to go by, things will get rather less interesting once he’s inevitably outed. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »