The Fight For Better Street Eats
Posted by Greg Clow in SOLE food, events, events upcoming, politics on April 3, 2007 at 8:01 am
In a city like Toronto where so many of our residents come from countries with strong traditions of cheap, tasty, and unique street food, it’s a crying shame that City of Toronto bylaws limit our open-air street vendors to “the reheating of precooked meat products in the form of wieners or similar sausage products to be served on a bun“. After all, even if you’re down with eating a road dog now and then, wouldn’t it be nice to have some variety available on those rushed lunch breaks or when you’re looking to satisfy your munchies after last call?
Well, as first reported in the Star back in December, there are lots of people who are trying to change this. Amongst them are Multistory Complex, a group that “aims to democratize urban planning processes through public education and engagement in urban planning issues and decision-making.” Their latest endeavour, which they are running in partnership with Ryerson’s Faculty of Communication and Design and the Alphabet City arts collective, is the Street Food Vending Project.
At the heart of the project is a competition to design a new street food vending cart for the City of Toronto. The winning designs will be prototyped and displayed as part of a Alphabet City’s FOOD festival in October. More importantly, though, the organizers hope to “introduce tasty, affordable, healthy, culturally diverse and locally sourced food to Toronto’s streets” by bringing together vendor advocates, food security advocates, restaurants, planners, designers, City divisions, and social service organizations to participate in a series of monthly “Snack Chats”. These events are open to the public, so if you’re interested in attending, email info@multistorycomplex.org to receive info on dates, times and locations.
Photo by patrickshuyu from the Taste T.O. Flickr pool
