Croatia chocolate museum

On Croatia’s Dalmatian island of Korčula, sits cooking school Škatula, surrounded by the sweet scent of lavender and freshly made cookies.

Toronto’s Harbord Village recently welcomed Parquet, a 50-seat French restaurant with warm-toned leather seats, mirror- and wood-lined walls, a black-veined white-marble bar, and a menu that incorporates local products and produce in dishes that riff on those you might find in a cozy bistro in the 14th arrondissement.

Toronto is the first North American city to welcome Florence’s Ditta Artigianale. High design and top-notch coffee are staples at the street-level café, recently opened in the Harlowe condo building on Richmond Street West. Step into the 40-seat space, and it feels like you’ve been transported straight to Florence.

Laura Fulmine, founder of M.A.H Gallery in East London, recently launched The House, an accompanying store that sells one-of-a-kind art, furniture, and vintage collectibles.

With ochre accents, forest green leather, herringbone floors, and art sourced from the Caribbean, were it not for the cold outside, you’d think you had just stepped into the luxe dining room of a Jamaican beachfront property. In reality, this Block Plan Studios-designed space is home to Toronto’s recently opened haute Caribbean restaurant, Miss Likklemore’s, the brainchild of chef Lonie Murdock and Darren Hinds, who opened this King Street West spot as an ode to her Jamaican roots, his Guyanese background, and Caribbean culture generally.

Chocolate maker Guido Castagna’s factory outside Turin smells like freshly baked chocolate cake, roasted hazelnuts, and the chocolatey equivalent of a warm hug. Castagna and Milan’s Pia Rivera are two of Northern Italy’s most internationally awarded, technically skilled, and flavour-forward chocolate masters.

The Italian town of Assisi now houses a beautifully designed retail space for A. Gallo, the luxury paint brand known for combining rich raw pigments with honey, rosemary, and gum arabic to create environmentally friendly watercolour paints. And while the paints are clearly the star of the show, the new showroom’s design also vies for attention.

From the outside, Niagara-on-the-Lake’s newly expanded and renovated 124 on Queen Hotel & Spa looks like a quaint Victorian hotel. Step inside, however, and the former blacksmith’s shop has been transformed into a cool grey-blue reception area with light-oak floors that lead to the newly expanded 72-room hotel. In a town where most of the hotels are a little dusty and faded, 124 on Queen stands out for its clean, modern feel.

Afternoon tea at the recently reimagined Park Hyatt Toronto in the city’s Yorkville neighbourhood is anything but a floral-wallpaper, lavender-scented, draped-in-Victorian-lace experience.

After recent renovation, The Royal Hotel is now reopened to guests. It has 28 guest rooms in the main building and five studio-style rooms in the Royal Annex, once a stable and now a chic Scandinavian-inspired space designed to help city-weary visitors decompress.

Step into the brick-and-beam historic building with its sleek, central bar, black industrial-looking exposed pipes, and sky-high windows—and you’d swear you were in London or Paris.

A pop-up dining experience including geodesic domes and a kaleidoscopic light show lands in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and San Diego.

DE Drake Hotel - March 2019

The Drake Hotel is considered by most Torontonians to be iconic, and it is successful because it hasn’t strayed from its core mission.

Union Summer

A colourful roster of carts, selling everything from churros to fresh flowers, will grace the square daily to ensure that there’s something for everyone—whether you’re staying to watch live cultural performances, or simply picking up goodies to take home.

Daily Edit: France’s Foie Gras Crise

In late 2015, a virulent strain of the H5N1 virus was detected on a farm in the southwest of France—the heart of the foie gras industry. As a result, the French government has temporarily halted foie gras production, and Canadian farms are now in the spotlight.

Re-enactors

It sounds like the set up to a well-worn joke, but what you get when a Spanish soldier, a colonial cook, and pirate walk into a bar, is pretty much every day fare in the historic town of St. Augustine, Florida.