Reading a column from former Star food editor and columnist Marion Kane nowadays feels like a time warp back into a bygone era of Toronto.
During her helm at the Star’s food section from 1989 to 2007, she wrote dispatches from the long-gone Cookbook Store in Yorkville that was once the hub for chefs in search of inspiration, before the internet took over. There was also the time an action-packed rundown of chefs from Splendido, Gelato Fresco and Scaramouche vied to impress Kane’s friend Julia Child at a Star-hosted luncheon for the doyenne of French home cooking (Scaramouche’s chef had to send in a backup after he came down with the stomach flu). As a Kensington Market resident for the past 40 years, she created a rich archive of recipes, profiles and timelines of a neighbourhood that’s much different now.
Kane died on July 9 at 79 years old. To her friends, family, former colleagues and those in the restaurant industry, Kane is remembered for launching careers of food journalists, being a trusted source on where to eat, as well as a champion of small businesses, all the while being the most fashionable editor in the newsroom.
The cookbook author and self-described Food Sleuth first got into food writing in the late ’70s when her friend at Toronto Life magazine asked her to review restaurants (at the time she also taught English to new Canadians). Her knack for making readers salivate, led her to being a food editor for the Toronto Sun in the ’80s before she moved to the Star.
“Because she lived in Kensington Market for many years, she introduced produce at Perola’s and talked about using certain spices and ingredients before it was mainstream,” recalls the Star’s former restaurant critic Amy Pataki. “She had that bohemian look about her, like with her purple and red hair. She was one of those early adopters of turning this restaurant recipe into a home recipe. She even got Mary MacLeod’s shortbread recipe. She really connected with readers. She would get hundreds of handwritten letters from readers, and this was before social media. She was of the era of opening people’s eyes to the diversity of the city’s cuisine.”
Former longtime Star food editor Jennifer Bain said it was a big deal to get noticed by Kane when she herself was a freelancer. “She took me under her wing. I pitched a story about a caterer for The Tragically Hip, and she approved a food series about multicultural food, so she launched my food writing career for which I am eternally grateful,” said Bain. “She was the queen of Kensington Market and lived there back in the counterculture days and was guaranteed to be the most flamboyantly dressed person in the Toronto Star newsroom.”
A long burgundy velvet dress from the 1940s, with a square neck and nipped-in waist was one particular outfit longtime friend and former Star editor and writer Rita Zekas remembered.
“She knew every chef, every recipe. She’d find these places she loved and call me from the restaurant saying, ‘Sweetie, darling.’ Everyone was a sweetie,” said Zekas. “Food was her blood, and if you wanted to find her, you’d go to the Cookbook Store. Marion made cooking approachable. Who cares if you put in too much salt, you can add something else to fix it. That’s what readers took away from her.”
Before chef Anthony Rose of Fat Pasha and Schmaltz Appetizing appeared on Kane’s podcast, Sittin’ In The Kitchen, in 2018, where the two bonded over their love of Jewish cooking, Rose was an avid reader of Kane’s Star columns as a burgeoning cook.
“That was my Instagram back in the day,” he said. “It was whetting my appetite and getting me into other food publications like Gourmet and Saveur. I treasured that time of my life, the days of real editorial and the plushness of reviewers.”
Irene Morales of Jumbo Empanadas in Kensington Market said she felt energized after Kane wrote about her restaurant in 1999. A yellowed clipping of the article is framed on the restaurant’s wall. “It made me feel like my effort, my work, was being recognized. When a food editor says your food is good, it’s good. Marion, all the time, used to come into the store to get empanadas.”
While most know Kane through her impact on the local food scene, at home, her spouse, Ross Whitney, said she was also a longtime advocate for affordable housing and food security in the city. The couple also shared a love of old-time country western music. The two first met in 2009 when he was in a band in Stratford, as the drummer was married to Kane’s hairdresser.
“We used to go to the upstairs room at the Rivoli to hear a band called the Empty Glasses,” he said, though due to her declining health in recent months she was unable to climb the stairs of the venue. “She also loved the music of Paul Robeson, who was a hero to her and her father.”
Even after she retired from the Star, Kane’s continued love and curiosity over food resulted in her being an early adopter of podcasts in 2012, as she interviewed local chefs, Kensington Market fixtures and anyone who could tell her about the origins of the chicken nugget during a road trip with Whitney to its supposed birthplace in upstate New York.
“I was a willing accomplice,” said Whitney of joining Kane on her food adventures. “The way that she could reach inside of somebody and extract their essence. Her communication ability was superb. It wouldn’t matter how introverted someone was, she could draw them out and get an interesting conversation to happen. She just brought smiles to people’s faces.”
