Thanks to the heaping piles of bureaucratic bullcrap that seem to fill every nook and cranny at City Hall, Toronto won’t be getting any new street food vendors this summer as hoped, meaning that hot dog carts and chip trucks will still rule the sidewalks and roads for at least another year. There is, however, some consolation available in the form of a couple of weekly street food festivals that will be running through the next few weeks at two city-owned public squares.
Downtown at Nathan Philips Square, the popular Tasty Thursdays series returns this week and runs until August 28th, featuring lunchtime treats for 5 bucks or less served up by a number of the city’s restaurants from 11am to 2pm, plus a live band performing at 12 noon. Vendors for the month of July will include Dangerous Dan’s Diner, Green Mango, Kathmandu Restaurant, La Cocina de Dona Luz, La Fiesta Restaurant, Lone Star Texas Grill, Purple Pig Smokehouse and Tapas by Personal Touch. Next month, a couple of vendors will rotate out and be replaced by Big Daddy’s Crab Shack & Oyster Bar and Satay on the Road.
Meanwhile, last week saw the launch of the International Street Food Festival at Mel Lastman Square in North York. The brainchild of John Filion, the city councillor who got the whole street food debate rolling last year, the festival runs on Friday nights from 6pm to 9pm, and features a wide variety of food including “Korean BBQ, fresh fruit shakes, mango salad, jerk chicken, Persian chicken kabobs, beef kabobs, vegetable sushi, grilled vegetable wraps, chicken and rice, Manto dumplings, authentic tacos, fajitas, quesadillas, and burritos, as well as organic fusion”. Currently, the series is only scheduled to run until the end of July, but perhaps a strong turn-out will encourage an extension, so head on up there if you can and show the powers-that-be that Torontonians are still hungry for more food variety on our streets.