Back when it was held down at the Exhibition grounds, I used to go to the Good Food Festival every year. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was the place to find new and interesting foods that were just coming on the market, to try cool stuff by local independent companies and to get amazing deals on interesting products that I already loved.

Then the festival moved to Mississauga, and as a die-hard downtown gal who is proudly car-free, the trek to the festival seemed too arduous to bother.

This year, we sat down with Go Train schedules and maps and figured out a way to get there. Having never ridden the Go Train in all of my twenty years in Toronto (I said I was a downtown gal!), I was excited at the prospect of an adventure. An adventure with food – even better.

In retrospect I can honestly say that the Go Train ride was the best part of the day.

We arrived at the Malton Go station to discover that the International Centre is likely one of the most poorly designed convention spaces ever created. Like a giant strip mall, designed to be accessed almost exclusively by automobile, we found ourselves walking, walking, walking, like characters out of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, only to discover we had headed in the wrong direction. I guess nobody ever thought to put a directory by the exit from the Go Station walkway, likely because the number of people who actually come to the centre via public transport is miniscule.

After more walking, walking, walking back the way we had come and then around some more parking lots and loading bays, we came across a large group of people at the “group entrance”. This was all teenagers, and we heaved a sigh of relief that they appeared to be going somewhere else.

Alas, the teenagers were headed to the Good Food Festival. I know not why. But once we made it inside, the teenager to adult ratio appeared to be about 2-to-1, and they seemed to take great glee in standing around in front of the most popular booths, and blocking the way for everyone else, ideally while eating samples of free pudding or ice cream and tossing the containers on the floor.

The space seemed smaller than it used to be when it was held at the Automotive Building at the Ex, and there seemed to be more space taken up by areas for demonstrations as opposed to exhibitors (there were seven different stage areas). We had a hard time getting to the front of the actual booths, so great were the crowds, and we bypassed many places that were giving out free samples, because the lines were far too long.

We witnessed people pushing others out of the way to get at the free food samples, we saw many of the teenagers taking over the few benches available for seating while seniors with canes and walkers wandered the hall looking for a place to rest, and we saw people get told off for saying “excuse me” as they tried to get through the groups of kids clogging the aisles.

The much-touted events such as the Whole Foods sponsored “My Mother is a Kitchen Goddess” contest seemed like a confused mess when we reached that booth, and there were some entries in that butter tart contest that I’d have been ashamed to put my name on. Okay, to be fair, some looked amazing and were really creatively displayed, but there were some of those oh-so-Canadian buttertarts that could have filled in for an oh-so-Canadian hockey puck.

We did manage to find a few things to sample and to buy that saved the day from being a total bust, however…

• Irie Spices had most of their product line available including their amazing coconut curry sauce
• Olive-it Canada offered a selection of their many varieties of stuffed olives
• There were delicious candied nuts from Horse and Buggy Brands, a candy company out of Cambridge, Ontario
• We got a super amazing deal on blueberry juice from True Blue (yeah, you can get it in supermarkets, but it’s great stuff, and is made with cane sugar, not corn syrup)
• Everything Maple offered a selection of really wonderfully creative (and yummy) products ranging from salad dressings to mustard
• Crossing Cultures offered unique teas and a unique approach - 50% of their staff are people who are on the Ontario disability support programme
• We loved the spice mixes from Arvinda’s where they were giving out samples of awesome, authentically-made chai
• The cranberry products from Terra Beata cranberry farm rocked our world, especially the cranberry mincemeat.

And although there was no huge line-up of people rushing to get their free seafood guide, one of the most important booths at the festival was definitely the Sea Choice display where they were handing out pocket-sized guides and other information on making informed choices when buying seafood or ordering it in a restaurant.

So while we did find a few things to try and buy at the Good Food Festival, the venue, the crowds and the event in general really detracted from what we had expected to be a fun experience. Someone with a higher tolerance for rude teenagers and long line-ups might enjoy themselves more, but for us, it really wasn’t worth the trip all the way to Mississauga.