The Dog's Breakfast

(The Dog's Breakfast's Bourbon and Cigar Ice Cream with figs, black cardamom, vanilla bean and cinnamon)

The Dog’s Breakfast is the playfully named eight-month-old blog from Montreal-based Rob Lee and David Rollins. The idea is pretty simple: They live together and every Saturday night they cook together, and when one of their recipes fails (yes, it happens to the best of us) it becomes their dog, Max’s, breakfast. The pair, who met when they worked at the same ad agency, flag recipes from the web, their cookbooks and magazines, and the prescient Max helps them decide which ones to prepare and photograph, giving two barks to those with potential to make it onto Tastespotting. All kidding aside, Rob and David cook what excites them, be it dishes with novel ingredients or flavor combinations (David’s inspiration) or those that explore new techniques and presentations (Rob's inspiration). Their shared goal is always to have fun. And they do. With absolutely stunning photographs from Rob, they have documented their experiments in taste — cornmeal blini layered with smoked salmon and mango-jalapeño cream, cigar and bourbon ice cream with figs and cardamom and fudgy chocolate chipotle brownies. Rob and David want visitors to The Dog’s Breakfast to feel like they are sitting on a stool in their kitchen. While the food has never looked quite so perfectly good in our kitchen, we are happy to pull up a chair and learn whatever we can from these two.