2007 has been a truly remarkable year for Toronto’s food culture. In the early part of the year, conferences and gatherings such as Slow Food Green Link, Terroir: A Sense of Place, and the Canadian Organic Growers Conference allowed local food producers, suppliers, chefs and consumers to come together and foster an increased sense of community, and the success of Harvest Wednesdays at the Gladstone and the recent Slow Food Picnic at the Brickworks showed that the momentum continues.

Over the spring and summer, the number of farmers markets within the city expanded dramatically from previous years, and a campaign for better street food led to an astoundingly successful lunchtime event at Nathan Phillips Square and a change to provincial legislation that should hopefully lead to a bigger and better variety of food being available from Toronto’s street vendors starting next spring. And in the media, the mainstream press jumped on the local and organic food bandwagons with an abundance of coverage, while the grassroots food media grew with newcomers like Taste T.O. and Edible Toronto joining stalwarts such as City Bites and Gremolata.

One might expect this flurry of activity to slow down now that we’re entering the cooler months, when the season’s bounty runs dry and the markets and festivals pack up for the year. But for the next few weeks at least, food will remain at the forefront of many people’s minds, as one of Toronto’s foremost arts collectives, Alphabet City (AbC), has made food the theme of their latest book - Alphabet City: food, published this month by MIT Press - and the accompanying multidisciplinary FOOD Festival which kicks off this weekend for a three-week run.

According to AbC founder and director John Knechtel, having the book release and festival occurring in the midst of Toronto’s food renaissance is a coincidence, albeit a happy one. “We set our topics a couple of years in advance,” he explains, “and to be honest we did not know what a gigantic topic food would be in Toronto this fall. But as we worked with the topic and tuned into what researchers and chefs and artists were working on, we began to see the scale of interest. So we were lucky to have the right topic, and learned a lot from local communities about the remarkable diversity of action in the field.”

As might be expected from a group of artists tackling the topic of food, there is a strong political bent to much of the material in the book and many of the events taking place during the festival. Knechtel’s introduction to food touches on the massive problems facing our food production and distribution systems, and the politics of local, organic and sustainable food are explored in essays by Nina-Marie Lister, John Feffer, Wayne Roberts and others. During the FOOD Festival, which is sponsored by Ontario Greenbelt, several events will be taking place at establishments that provide food to the less fortunate such as The Stop Community Food Centre and FoodShare, and there will be a symposium at Ryerson on World Food Day, October 16th, to discuss food security, sustainability and diversity.

On the other hand, the sensual and enjoyable side of food is also well-represented, especially via the visual art present in the book and displayed at several galleries throughout the festival. From interior designs made with pasta and cold cuts (Sian Bonnell’s “House Beautiful”), to images of food delivery trucks (Diana Shearwood’s “Behind the Mall”), to a photographic catalogue of a year’s worth of meals and drinks (Dean Baldwin’s “Attempt at an Inventory”), food is not without a sense of fun. And as for the FOOD Festival, after a few affiliated events this weekend, it officially kicks off next Wednesday, October 3rd with a gala dinner at the Drake; ends with the sexy Amuse-Bouche Cabaret at the same venue; and includes many other dinners, exhibitions and family-friendly community events throughout its run.

When asked about how easy or difficult it is to strike a balance between the intellectual and the irreverent, Knechtel suggests that this is just one aspect of the AbC’s constantly morphing multidisciplinary existence. “Alphabet City’s premise is that by addressing topics from many perspectives simultaneously, we can create something unique and valuable in an era where we are often divided by specialization, demographics, and so on. In that sense we are kind of old-fashioned about building public space. It has taken us [over 15] years to build our ability to present top-notch visual art, policy research, literature, music and so on together, and we are continuing to extend the range and excellence of the work we publish and present every year. It is difficult to develop a balance of sources, but with the topic of food we had a tremendous array of fascinating work from which to draw. I just wish we had more resources to bring more of that work to light.”

Given the diversity of events and artistic creations being featured in the FOOD Festival, I was curious to know if Knechtel had one overarching thought or idea that he hoped would be communicated to people who read “food” and attend the FOOD Festival. “The most important idea of both AbC generally and the FOOD festival in particular,” he replied, “is that there is a tremendous amount of delight and cultural value to be unlocked when we bring down some of the barriers between disciplines and perspectives.

“Not that we want everyone to agree - quite the opposite! - but it can be tasty and thought-provoking to have the chance to think through central issues such as food for yourself amidst a diversity of ideas. AbC represents a new way of thinking, a new kind of book, and a new format of arts and ideas festival. With FOOD we are bringing these capabilities to something we all share.”

The Alphabet City FOOD Festival will be taking place from September 28th through October 20th at venues throughout the city. Full details about the festival, including complete event listings, as well as excerpts from the “food” book and more, can be found at http://alphabet-city.org

All photos taken from the Alphabet City: food book:
Top photo from “Foodshed: The Globalized Infrastructre of the Ontario Food Terminal” by Pierre Belanger and Angela Iarocci
Front cover with detail from “Smarties” by Christine D’Onofrio
Excerpt from “Attempt at an Inventory” by Dean Baldwin
Bottom photo from “Behind the Mall” by Diana Shearwood