1000 Tastes of Toronto

This summer has simply flown by, but what a great summer it has been. It seemed like almost every weekend was booked with some sort of event – be it Beer Week, food events, concerts, the cottage, or visiting with family and friends – the summer really is the best time of year. As we busy ourselves now preparing for Thanksgiving and (gulp) Christmas, I look back fondly on the photos collected on my camera to remember the days gone past (I really do wonder if they will ever end up printed and in a book some day…).

One thing I did want to share with you was an event we went to sometime in June – the 1000 Tastes of Toronto, presented by President’s Choice and part of Luminato. The city closes down John Street between Front and Queen and invites restaurants and chefs to open booths for the public to sample some delicious treats. And delicious they were! Some places we had heard of, others were new to us, but for only $5 a dish, Matt and I spent the afternoon tasting a variety of different foods. Some noteworthy dishes included:

Khao San Road (with a close encounter with Susur Lee). This was probably our favourite dish of the day – a pork sausage specially created for the event that you can’t get in their restaurant;

Poutine from Poutini’s House of Poutine (namely because I love poutine);

Pulled Pork Tacos from Milagro;

 Pizza from Queen Margherita (they even brought their own wood oven!);

  

BBQ Shrimp and Black Beans from President’s Choice, followed by an ice cream sandwich;

We stopped eating after that, but there were loads of more choices. It was a two-day event, and I’ll be keeping my eye out for it next year if it rolls around. In the meantime, there have been murmurs of a new event coming to the Brickworks – the Toronto Underground Market (http://yumtum.ca/). A similar concept to this event: “The Toronto Underground Market (TUM) is a social food market for the community to sample the food of Toronto home cooks. It is a venue for budding entrepreneurs to showcase their products. These vendors are not necessarily chefs, although some will be. This is a new kind of community market; not a farmer's market, or a food festival, but something completely unique and new to Toronto.”

You have to purchase tickets to attend, and the September and October events are already sold out, so we better keep an eye on this one if we want to attend the next one.