Amico means friend in Italian. Although definitely related to the Latin word for friend Amicus, its believed to have entered the vernacular as the short form of an omen name such as Bonamico meaning Good friend. It appears now in the Italian language as Amico del cuore which is Best friend, and Amico d’infanzia which is Childhood friend, and commonly, Amico intimo which means Close friend. I had all three with me yesterday for lunch in Parkdale.
On Tuesday the 11th of April 2017, this author’s own amicos met with Frank Horgan our mutual friend and the owner of Amico’s Pizza at 1648 Queen St W where we all sat down for a picture-perfect Italian lunch. It was a working lunch however because the pictures had to be perfect as each plate was prepped and lovingly presented for menu portraits.
On that Tuesday in April, we three amicos were there to help Frank Horgan make Amico’s Pizza look good for posterity.
Although we did eventually get to eat for free, first we each had to play a small part in the machinations of a major food marketing organization that was on site to photograph Amico’s fare, and they needed to see people eating the restaurant’s food in the background.
Dine Palace is Ontario’s ultimate restaurant guide and offers its users a friendly interface to find the food they’re craving in their neighbourhoods. Helmed by Markus Altiparmakyan, the online guide is always expanding; Amicos is their first Parkdale restaurant with more to follow.
One of the advantages of using Dine Palace is their ordering app which streamlines payments and makes little paper printouts that help kitchen staff and even make the business bookkeeping easier. I’m not exactly sure how it all works, but the restaurants that switch to use the Dine Palace system are quick to praise the process.
Roger Metiever is the senior producer at Table of the Week which is a restaurant video production company connected to Dine Palace as evidenced by the way Markus and Roger are constant companions. Markus shoots still photos of food while Roger rolls video on the same subjects.
Holding the white light bounce board is John Macintosh the CEO of Hashtagio which is a social media aggregator that offers a brilliant Instagram scraper with corresponding page feed perfect for making travel and tourism collages of UGC or User Generated Content. Hashtagio is licensed and well used by some big players in the hospitality industry, and now more recently real estate developers, specifically new condo marketing firms are exploring the program.
Lastly there was my old pal Jason Nadler who writes here on this magazine when time allows and runs Hogtown Wrestling in Toronto. Jay has known Frankie for years and the two are well known Parkdale personas.
With only a limited amount of time to make and shoot as many meals as possible, Frankie chose to start with his venue’s signature menu items. Here’s the twelve ounce Rib-eye Steak Dinner which retails here in Parkdale for $25.75
In total we ate about seven or eight great meals
And afterwards each of Frank’s amicos took home many slices and delicious treats.
