Notebook On Cities And Culture

In Toronto's Kensington Market, Colin Marshall talks to Corey Mintz, author of the Toronto Star column "Fed" and the book How to Host a Dinner Party. They discuss what makes a dinner party a Torontonian dinner party; the city's "uptight" reputation; how he bottomed out in his initial cooking career, winding up working the kitchen at a dinner theater; how he converted to writing and also found a way to take a friend's advice that he "should host dinner parties for a living"; the time he made lunch for Ruth Reichl, and what his editor appreciated more about the blog post he wrote about it than the actual column he did; his dinner party with the disgraced head of the District of Toronto School Board, pre-disgrace; what it means when some like what you do and some dislike it for the same reasons; the art of mixing personalities at the table; why to recognize that "important people can be blowhards," and indeed that blowhardiness often makes them important in the first place; how he keeps the smartphones in people