Jesse Ship

One celebrity host, four media personality judges, 10 restaurants, 600 tickets, three winners and 20,000 wings served.

A handful of Toronto's rising top chefs came out to prepare their own personal takes on the ultimate in Asian winter comfort food, the noodle soup.

There was fierce competition that year at Caplansky's third annual Latkepalooza. seven contestants, with 36 latkes each, duked it out on the eighth crazy night of Hannukah.

The Akha tribes of Thailand had their jungle floor swept out from under them when the government banned their traditional cultivation of the opium poppy. In return, they were given a strange brown bean called coffee. Little did they know what a gold mine it would become.

Wherein I quaffed a 100-year-old dram of liquid sunshine, straight from the dusty bottle.