Latest news with #Canadian-raised
Cision Canada
09-07-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Mary Brown's Chicken Celebrates Canadian Farming Roots Through Local Partnerships
TORONTO, July 9, 2025 /CNW/ - Mary Brown's Chicken, Canada's largest Canadian-owned and operated quick-service chicken restaurant franchise, is deepening its celebration of Canadian heritage by shining a spotlight on the local farmers who grow the ingredients that define the brand's beloved comfort food. From the rich soil of Prince Edward Island to the expansive fields of the Prairies, Mary Brown's Chicken is proud to partner with Canadian farmers who provide the core ingredients behind its famous meals, namely 100% Canadian-raised chicken and farm-fresh potatoes. "For me, it's not just about growing potatoes. It's about feeding Canadians with food that's grown right here at home," says Jamie Thompson, a potato farmer in Victoria, PEI who has worked with Mary Brown's Chicken for over 17 years. "Knowing our crops end up on the plates of Canadians across the country means a lot." The commitment to Canadian-sourced ingredients goes beyond potatoes. Chicken served at Mary Brown's Chicken locations is sourced from free-range chickens raised by the Chicken Farmers of Canada. "We take pride in the standards we uphold," says Marvin Patience, a chicken farmer based in Oxford County, Ontario. "We follow rigorous guidelines prioritizing animal welfare, sustainability, and quality. It's reassuring to know that Mary Brown's Chicken values that too." Founded in Newfoundland and proudly 100% Canadian-owned, Mary Brown's Chicken has built its reputation on quality, community, and staying true to its roots. By working directly with Canadian farmers, the brand ensures its food tastes great and supports local economies and farming traditions across the country. "We've always taken great pride in our Canadian roots and the strong relationships we've built with farmers across the country," says Greg Roberts, Owner of Mary Brown's Chicken. "We're excited to shine a light on these connections and share the stories of the incredible families who help bring Mary Brown's Chicken's 'Made Fresh From Scratch' promise to life. These conversations were honest, heartfelt and deeply inspiring. We are looking forward to continuing to share more stories like these." Through its ongoing partnerships with Canadian farmers, Mary Brown's Chicken continues to prioritize freshness, quality, and Canadian pride in every meal it serves. About Mary Brown's Chicken: Mary Brown's Chicken has over 280 locations across Canada and is growing. The brand is 100 per cent Canadian-owned, being first established in St. John's Newfoundland in 1969. Mary Brown's is renowned for its Big Mary®, named Canada's Best Chicken Sandwich, and made-fresh methodology including hand cutting and hand breading its Signature Chicken and Taters from farm-fresh Canadian ingredients. Mary Brown's Chicken has achieved 19 consecutive years of same-store sales growth, earned the Canadian Franchise Association's Franchisees' Choice Designation for 15 straight years, and holds a Platinum designation with Canada's Best Managed Companies. The company's first international locations opened in 2024, and outside of Canada, Mary Brown's Chicken operates in Mexico, the UK, and India. Connect with Mary Brown's Chicken on social YouTube: @marybrownsofficial Instagram: @marybrownsofficial Facebook: @marybrowns TikTok: @marybrownschicken SOURCE Mary Brown's Chicken
Cision Canada
03-07-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Mary Brown's Chicken Marks National Fried Chicken Day with Fan-Favourite Deal
TORONTO, July 3, 2025 /CNW/ - Canadians, get ready to bite into something special! Mary Brown's Chicken, Canada's #1 fried chicken quick service restaurant, is once again serving up a deal for National Fried Chicken Day on Sunday, July 6, offering its beloved 2 Piece Chicken & Taters for just $4.99 plus tax. The 100% Canadian-owned and operated quick service restaurant is known for its craveable comfort food, made fresh from scratch daily. And on this special day, Canadians can celebrate with a meal that's as affordable as it is delicious. Available for one day only, guests can choose from Regular, Spicy, or Honey BBQ Signature Chicken, that's always hand-cut, hand-breaded, and cooked fresh in-store, paired with golden, seasoned taters. Mary Brown's Chicken uses only 100% Canadian-raised free-range chickens and farm-fresh potatoes. "We look forward to National Fried Chicken Day every year. It's a celebration of what we do best," said Kala Patel, Vice President of Marketing, MBI Brands. "Our fans love this $4.99 deal, and we're thrilled to bring it back for our guests to celebrate National Fried Chicken Day." This offer is exclusive to orders placed in-store or through the Mary Brown's Chicken App. Mark your calendars and bring your appetite! July 6 is all about fried chicken, taters, and unbeatable value, only at Mary Brown's Chicken. About Mary Brown's Chicken: Mary Brown's Chicken has over 280 locations across Canada and is growing. The brand is 100 per cent Canadian-owned, being first established in St. John's Newfoundland in 1969. Mary Brown's is renowned for its Big Mary®, named Canada's Best Chicken Sandwich, and made-fresh methodology including hand cutting and hand breading its Signature Chicken and Taters from farm-fresh Canadian ingredients. Mary Brown's Chicken has achieved 19 consecutive years of same-store sales growth, earned the Canadian Franchise Association's Franchisees' Choice Designation for 15 straight years, and holds a Platinum designation with Canada's Best Managed Companies. The company's first international locations opened in 2024, and outside of Canada, Mary Brown's Chicken operates in Mexico, the UK, India, and Pakistan. Connect with Mary Brown's Chicken on social YouTube: @marybrownsofficial Instagram: @marybrownsofficial Facebook: @marybrowns TikTok: @marybrownschicken SOURCE Mary Brown's Chicken
Vancouver Sun
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
Travel eats: Exploring Canada's connection to Hong Kong's innovative cuisine
When it comes to Chinese food, Metro Vancouver prides itself on its expansive traditional Chinese restaurants. But how do we fare, comparatively? As I found out on a recent trip, Hong Kong trounces us. For starters, it has seven three-Michelin stars, 11 two-stars, and 38 one-stars, as well as 64 Bib Gourmands. This year, two Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong scored second and third spots at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. When it comes to innovative modern Chinese cuisine, we're barely out of the gate. Two cutting-edge Chinese restaurants I dined at in Hong Kong are run by Canadian-raised chef-owners. One, chef Vicky Cheng (Auberge du Pommier and Canoe in Toronto and Daniel in New York), operates Wing restaurant, which placed 11th in the World's 50 Best Restaurants last week and placed third on the Asia's 50 best list earlier this year. He also runs the one-Michelin-star VEA. While VEA offers Chinese food with a tweezered French personality, at Wing he focuses on China's Eight Great Cuisines with an haute approach — and sometimes eye-popping, as with a vibrant Harbin-style apple-wood smoked braided eggplant dish I had — a visual knockout. Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Innovative Chinese cuisine is relatively new to Hong Kong, too, Cheng said. 'It's a culture that embraces tradition. It's got such a rich history and such respect for the masters that chefs don't dare change.' But since Cheng didn't train under Chinese chefs, he did dare when he opened VEA 10 years ago. 'I call it boundary-less Chinese cuisine. While it is not 100 per cent traditional, it is 100 per cent Chinese. When I opened VEA, it was very controversial. We were the first to do Chinese and French together. But now, it's getting more and more popular.' He's blown away by ingredients from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. 'In my mind, Hong Kong's a better place for ingredients (than Toronto or New York). The amount of variety is insane. Some of the best produce I've ever had is from China. Most people have never had blueberries from Yunnan. Most haven't had a mango from Sanya, a small island we call the Hawaii of China,' he says. And now I have, thanks to my dinner at Wing, and I can tell you the blueberries gave me actual thrills! Big as marbles, sweet, and humbling. Ditto the cantaloupe, mango, and lychee, all seductively sweet and at their peak. At Hong Kong's wet markets, Cheng says 'there's always a sense of discovery.' A favourite ingredient is dried seafood. 'It's a true representative of Chinese cuisine' he says, holding a large, dried collagen and protein-rich fish maw (the swim bladder). 'It's been aging for 20 years and almost has a texture like mochi (when cooked),' he says. I had it in a dish with yellow fungus and rice with abalone sauce. He also showed me two giant dried sea cucumbers covered in white ash. 'After soaking for a week, it'll almost double in size,' he said. A braised version appeared later tucked inside a spring roll, marinated and moist, with a slight chew and elevated with a glossy sauce. The tasting menu at Wing included dishes with firefly squid and bull kelp, oysters, house-made transparent 'golden crystal duck egg,' 'drunken' abalone, silver pomfret with mandarin peel with fermented black beans, king crab with crispy cheung fun (steamed rice roll), white asparagus with shrimp paste cured pork. The wow! dish was a glazed, crisp-skinned smoked pigeon, dry-aged 43 days and smoked over sugarcane, served on hay, along with the roasted head, on which my husband crunched and munched. (Call me a coward. I have this thing about eating anything with eyes that stare back.) Chef Alvin Leung, a.k.a. Demon Chef, is another Canadian making a difference. He shocked and astonished the traditionalists with his two-Michelin star Bo Innovation (three-Michelin for a few years). He also runs Michelin-recommended Cafe Bau in Hong Kong, and other global restaurants, including R & D, an Asian fusion restaurant in Toronto. You might remember him as an outspoken judge on MasterChef Canada. When Bo Innovation opened in 2017 with its provocative 'X-treme' Cantonese cuisine, he enlisted molecular gastronomy moves and bad-boy creations such as — blush — Sex on the Beach, an edible condom filled with honey and ham. (Proceeds from the dish were donated to an AIDS organization.) It has, at times, been called the El Bulli of the East. But I visited his two-year-old Cafe Bau, which, unusual for Hong Kong is stubbornly a low carbon, farm-to-table enterprise. Over 90 per cent of products including beef, poultry, pork and seafood, are local and nothing is flown in. Wines arrive by sea rather than air. Rice is from an almost one hectare co-operative farm on nearby Lantau Island. The star of the eight-course tasting menu was a whole roasted local Ping Yuen chicken bred for taste, texture and higher fat content. It was brined in coconut milk, dry aged, stuffed with lemongrass, pandan leaves and rosemary. It arrived in a wooden box, whole and steaming. The server ceremoniously opened it as he would a crown jewel. Upon carving, it was served with the local rice and a velvety sauce with chicken marrow and cartilage. Other dishes included blue crab jelly with housemade foamed cheese and heirloom tomato jelly tomato; jinga shrimp gado gado layered in mille feuille; two kinds of housemade ravioli with Chinese stuffing; pan-fried local perch with banana emulsion and minestrone broth; and Pat Chun (a premium Hong Kong soy sauce) pork knuckle zampone with egg confit and stem ginger. Another mover-shaker adding magic to Chinese cuisine in Hong Kong is Vicky Lau. She studied and worked in New York as a graphic designer and brings artistry and French influences to her Chinese menu. She, too, runs sustainable kitchens at Tate, her two-Michelin star restaurant, and Mora, which opened four years ago, earning one star and a Michelin Green Star for its sustainable practices. At Mora, soy is the star ingredient. Lau even operates a soy milk and tofu factory in Hong Kong, using organic Canadian soybeans. (A taster of her silky soy milk was the best that has passed my lips!) Lau, named Best Female Chef by Asia's 50 Best Restaurants in 2015, wows guests with soy's versatility and low-impact soy products. The Mora tasting menu included dishes such as soy mascarpone, with pickled cucumber, green olive grains and soy yogurt foam whipped into a yubu tart shell; geoduck 'noodles' in a soy milk and clam broth, with seaweed and fresh yuba. Deep-fried tofu, even gentler souled than agedashi, was brightened with sesame sauce, dill oil, pine nuts and preserved radish. Chicken roulade got razzle-dazzled with mapo tofu sauce; mushroom rice became addictive with soybean paste, chicken fat, and Chinese ham. But Lau's Tate restaurant is an 'you eat with your eyes' haute experience, each of seven courses, an 'ode to' an ingredient. After three canapés, the Ode to Century Egg course arrives and it's beautiful — a circular presentation of Alaska king crab and century egg covered with rose rice vinegar jelly. Over it, a symmetry of tiny, gelled cubes, aubergine, and croutons. A forestry braised mushroom dish included wood fungus from Yunnan, tree moss and a prized foraged red mushroom from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian province (it grows for only two weeks). A zucchini flower was stuffed with scallop, tofu, abalone, scallop, langoustine and nested on coconut scallop velouté. Ode to Sakura was a meringue shell with fragile meringue sakura blossoms, lychee rice pudding, sakura tea sauce and a raspberry sorbet. A dried lotus flower tea ceremony followed. 'The symbolism of the lotus flower is strength, integrity and beauty,' our server said. 'It's our way of saying thank you. Now I will manually blossom the flower.' And blossom, it did. What a lovely end, we thought. But the actual finale was a Chinoiserie cabinet filled with petit fours (including chocolate hazelnut lollipops, lemon tarts with marshmallow topping, fortune cookies, canelés, choux pastries) wheeled up to us. I hushed the five-year-old in me and asked for just one — the lemon tart, whereas two young women at another table, less worried about waist expansion, chose about a half a dozen each. miastainsby@
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Victoria Mboko: The Canadian tennis talent who can't stop winning is here for the long haul
ROLAND-GARROS, PARIS — Ripping a backhand past a former Wimbledon quarterfinalist to clinch a first Grand Slam win on the opening day of the French Open is a pretty good way to make tennis fans stand up and take notice. Or maybe Victoria Mboko, the 18-year-old, American-born, Canadian-raised daughter of Congolese parents, has been announcing herself for months now. Maybe folks just weren't listening closely enough. Advertisement Everyone is now. As her Roland-Garros debut approached, Mboko played the same brain game she has been playing through a startling climb up the tennis biosphere. She tells herself that what is happening isn't actually happening. 'Kind of just play it down,' she said during an interview after her 6-1 7-6(4) win over Lulu Sun of New Zealand Sunday afternoon, which earned her a second-round duel with Eva Lys of Germany. 'Pretend like you're playing somewhere else, that you're not at a Grand Slam. It's another clay-court tournament. That way, I don't put as much pressure on myself and the points. I let loose and I kind of go for my shots a little bit more.' Advertisement If playing make-believe before walking onto the biggest stages in tennis could lead to Mboko taking a spot next to Bianca Andreescu, Leylah Fernandez, Denis Shapovalov, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Milos Raonic and others in the Canadian tennis firmament, then Mboko probably ought to keep doing it. Her performance against Sun showed every bit of what has generated all the buzz about Mboko becoming the latest in a string of Canadians from immigrant families who have made it to the top of the sport. 'We know Canada is a very multicultural country and we are very accepting of everyone,' Andreescu, who has become a mentor to Mboko, said during an interview in Rome. 'I think it's a beautiful thing that we're all from different different cultures, different backgrounds, but at the end of the day Tennis Canada really has built this program in the acceptance of everybody, no matter who you are.' Advertisement The youngest by seven years of four tennis-playing siblings, Mboko has been winning more than just about anyone in professional women's tennis since the start of the year. She finished last year ranked 350th, with her coaches believing fully in her potential but also wanting her to take it slow, given her struggles with knee injuries in recent years. Now they have another problem on their hands. Mboko has won so many matches that she has already played more than she has ever played before. She started the year winning 22 in a row on the ITF World Tennis Tour, two rungs below the WTA Tour. She lost one, then won another five, this time at a WTA 125 event, the next rung up, in Porto. She has won matches in Rome, Ga. and Rome, Italy at the Italian Open. Her record on the year is 41-5. 'That's a lot,' Marko Strillic, one of three coaches she works with at the Canadian Tennis Federation, said during an interview. 'If she keeps winning, you have to figure out a way to manage the schedule so that she doesn't get hurt. This is for the long term.' Advertisement That was three weeks ago in Rome, before Mboko cruised through French Open qualifying to earn her main draw debut, and then knocked through Sun as though she knew she would all along. This is going to get complicated, but to the people closest to Mboko, this rocket ride both is and is not surprising. Her oldest sister Gracia, 28, who played tennis for the University of Denver, said she and her brothers always knew that their baby sister had something they did not. Gracia recalled a local women's tournament at their home club in Burlington, a suburb of Ontario, that she played in when she was 17. At the last minute, another slot opened up, and a pro at the club asked Victoria, who was just 9 and had come to watch, if she wanted to play. Victoria jumped at the opportunity and eventually faced her sister. Gracia won, 6-0, 6-0, but the way Victoria behaved, it was as though she had expected the results to go the other way. 'It's that belief in yourself that the very top of the one percent have,' Gracia, a consultant in private equity, said Sunday after watching her sister win. 'It's: 'not only should I win this match, I'm going to go do it.' And then she does it.' Advertisement At least she does now. For the past couple of years, a knee injury caused by both rapid growth and a bad fall on a tennis court has made that difficult. She spent much of last year based in Belgium at the academy of Justine Henin, the former world No. 1 and four-time French Open champion. She played little for the first six months of the year. Getting healthy was the priority. Even then, she ended the year losing more than she won, dropping three of her last four matches. 'Last year ended very poorly,' said her brother Kevin Mboko, 27, a tennis coach in suburban Toronto who was courtside with Gracia on Sunday. 'I didn't see any of this coming. No one did.' Their father, Cyprien, a retired mechanical engineer who worked nights in part so that he could drive his children to their tennis obligations, was there too. Victoria's mother, Godée, an accountant, was back home, dealing with a heavy end-of-the-month workload, as was her other brother, David, a 25-year-old data scientist. Advertisement The Mbokos moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo nearly three decades ago, to escape the First and Second Congo Wars of the mid-1990s. Visa issues kept the family separated, with Godée in Montreal and Cyprien in North Carolina. Godée then moved to N.C., where the family lived for several years and where Victoria was born, before all moving to Toronto when she was still a baby. Victoria didn't let the losses in the final months of 2024 get to her. 'I just thought new year, new me,' she said during an interview in Rome. She decided to play like the version of herself that she has long believed in: an aggressive, athletic player who likes to take control of points and dictate the action. In Miami, she beat Camila Osorio, a 23-year-old tour mainstay, and pushed Paula Badosa, the No. 10 seed at Roland-Garros, to a third-set tiebreak. Advertisement In Rome, she cruised through the first set in her second-round match against Coco Gauff, lacing backhands and forehands through the court on the Campo Centrale like a seasoned veteran. Gauff turned the match into one of her long-distance track races, getting so many balls back that Mboko was huffing and puffing between every point. But the world No. 2 came away seriously impressed. She 'felt like playing myself,' Gauff said in a huddle after the match, especially with how well Mboko covered the court. 'On the movement, I would say she's up there with me on that,' Gauff, probably the best mover in the sport, said. Gracia Mboko said her sister came away from that loss both devastated and determined. 'She told me she was so out of steam, that she couldn't believe how Coco was getting every ball back,' she said Sunday. Advertisement 'She kept saying, 'I got to get in shape.' It motivated her.' In Paris, Mboko has also showed off a precocious variety, mixing in drop shots and slices, including a hard, slicing forehand to keep Sun off balance. Her coach is Nathalie Tauziat, who got to No. 3 in the world with a game moulded around variety. But Mboko can also crack her serve at 120 mph. Not surprisingly, she grew up worshiping Serena Williams. Mboko said after Sunday's win that she'd learned plenty from that loss to Gauff. She knew she had let the world No. 2's grit frustrate her, thinking about the last point when she was supposed to be thinking about the next one. Her coaches are onto this. 'They'll start to snap me right back into it,' she said. 'They'll actually say: 'stay present, stay focused, or close it right here.'' Advertisement With 41 wins in a year, Mboko isn't exactly unfamiliar with closing it. Now she has done it on the biggest stage in the sport. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Tennis, Women's Tennis 2025 The Athletic Media Company
CBC
05-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Protesters tee off on Trump, Musk in global 'Hands Off' rallies
Opponents of U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk rallied across the U.S. and around the globe on Saturday to protest the administration's actions on government downsizing, the economy, human rights and other issues. In the U.S., more than 1,200 "Hands Off!" demonstrations were planned by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labour unions, 2SLGBTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists. The protest sites included the National Mall in Washington, D.C., state capitols and other locations in all 50 states. Protesters assailed the Trump administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut federal funding for health programs. Rallies were also held in countries like the U.K., Portugal, Germany and India. Musk, a Trump adviser who owns Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has played a key role in government downsizing as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. He says he is saving taxpayers billions of dollars. WATCH | Elon Musk's Canadian-raised, apartheid-supporting grandfather: Elon Musk's conspiracist grandfather and his Canadian roots 11 days ago Duration 4:16 Speaking at the Washington protest, Paul Osadebe, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a labour union steward, criticized Trump, Musk and others in the administration for not valuing the work federal employees do in creating "a baseline of economic security and power for working people." "Billionaires and oligarchs don't value anything other than profit and power, and they sure as hell don't value you or your life or your community," he said. "And we're seeing that they don't care who they have to destroy or who they have to hurt to get what they want." In Massachusetts, thousands of people gathered on Boston Common holding signs including "Hands off our democracy" and "Diversity equity inclusion makes America strong. Hands off!" In Ohio, hundreds rallied in rainy conditions at the statehouse in Columbus. Roger Broom, 66, a retiree from Delaware County, Ohio, said at the Columbus rally that he used to be a Reagan Republican but has been turned off by Trump. "He's tearing this country apart," Broom said. "It's just an administration of grievances." Hundreds of people also demonstrated in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a few miles from Trump's golf course in Jupiter, where he spent the morning at the senior club championship. People lined both sides of PGA Drive, encouraging cars to honk and chanting slogans against Trump. Archer Moran from Port St. Lucie, Fla., said, "They need to keep their hands off of our Social Security." "The list of what they need to keep their hands off of is too long," Moran said. "And it's amazing how soon these protests are happening since he's taken office." The president plans to go golfing again Sunday, according to the White House. Asked about the protests, the White House said in a statement: "President Trump's position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats' stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors." Activists have staged nationwide demonstrations against Trump or Musk multiple times since Trump returned to office. But the opposition movement has yet to produce a mass mobilization like the Women's March in 2017, which brought thousands of women to Washington, D.C., after Trump's first inauguration, or the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted in multiple cities after George Floyd's killing in 2020.
