At the Chef's Paradise...Kinda krazy kitchen kitsch

Anyone who’s been in the Chef’s Paradise store on Bank Street near Riverdale Avenue knows that it’s a treasure trove of thousands of kitchen items: massive commercial ovens, giant stock pots, baking tools, pizza ovens, glassware, coffee makers, mixers, a multitude of small utensils, and much more. With so many gadgets to explore, I often walk out of the shop with something I never knew I needed.

Recently, I took a stroll through the store with an eye out for unusual or entertaining products. Here are just a few of the items I found on the shelves or online.

Gurgling jug: It’s hard to resist the popular Gluggle Jug ($99.99-$129.99 for the largest size), a fish-shaped water pitcher made by the Original Gluggle Jug Factory in Stoke-onTrent, England. While the colourful display drew my attention, the real entertainment comes from the gurgling sound the jug emits when pouring a glass of water. There’s a Canada model complete with a maple leaf and a collection with a lustre finish reminiscent of fish scales.

Shapely salt: The curvy ”Madame Cheffe” salt grinder ($155) to the right,
manufactured in Quebec by Moulins Tremblay, is a conversation piece with its hourglass torso and chef’s toque. This model is also available in a pepper grinder and Tremblay makes a matching “Monsieur Chef.

Curly cheese: This gadget pictured below, the Swissmar Girouette Cheese and Chocolate Curler ($70), shaves the top layer off a cheese or chocolate wheel to create cheese rosettes or fancy chocolate curls. A little internet research reveals that it is traditionally used with Tête de Moine, a semi-hard, unpasteurised Swiss cheese with a very fine consistency. Scraping the cheese into delicate layers releases aroma compounds and allows its fruity, nutty, sweet flavours to fully develop.

Delicious dogs: Who doesn’t need an electric hot dog steamer for their home? For hot dog aficionados, the apparatus above ($69.99, available to order) from Ricardo can steam up to twelve hot dogs and buns at a time. Fortunately – as I’m not sure most people serve hot dogs often enough to need a dedicated steamer – it can also be used for cooking vegetables, fish and other items.

Wonky wine: The curious-looking wine glass ($115) pictured to the right is made by Zalto and lacks a foot at the base of the stem, resting instead on its side on a flat spot in the bowl. A small ball at the end of the stem allows the glass to be rolled on a flat surface to aerate red wines. According to the manufacturer, “the recumbent shape keeps the aromas more intensely focussed in the glass.”

Easy eggs: The little device pictured above is an egg topper ($15.69) that removes the top of a boiled egg. After puzzling over how it works, I turned to online videos to uncover the method: place the topper on an egg, pull the ball and let it ‘clack’ down on the shell to leave a clean cut around the top. Judging by the number of these gadgets I found online, it may not be such an unusual item for frequent egg eaters, but it was a first for me.