Toronto's Sustainable Dim Sum Festival

Sustainable Food has become a top of mind thing lately because at the rate we are consuming our food sources we will run out of food to serve the World by 2020.  We must find other ways to sustain our food industry.

I was happy to attend the 1st Sustainable Dim Sum Festival at Toronto's City Hall on March 8th.  It took place in the Rotunda of City Hall it was kind of fun walking around the large column in the centre of City Hall with a passport in hand trying all of the various foods with a sustainable aspect to them.  Whether it was a dumpling that mixed cricket powder with pork to meat and eggs provided by Organic local farms, to ingredients not used extensively.  

It wasn't all Dim Sum though, there were fantastic soups, an Asian meatball soup and a great chowder,  and from my Pork Ninja friends a meatball wrapped in bacon.  My other favourite restaurant Hawthorne Food & Drink had tea smoked devilled eggs and there was Tuna poke from Daniel et Daniel catering, they had a huge line up for their poke.

My favourite Dim Sum bites of the night included new restaurant Lake Inez's fantastic dumpling, I loved the flavour of it.  I also loved the legendary PIG MAC from Dailo.

Food Vendors:
Cafe Belong, DaiLo, Daniel et Daniel, Kana Snack Bar, Lake Inez, Hawthorne Food + Drink, Bruce Wine Bar, Saturday Dinette, Pork Ninjas, C-fu Foods, Centennial College
Meat, poultry and eggs are provided by Rowe Farms and Yorkshire Valley Farms

Beverage vendors:

401 Cidery

Beau’s All Natural Brewing Co.

Brickworks Ciderhouse

Mill St. Brewery

Muskoka Brewery

Walter Caesar

George Brown College (Mocktails)

There was also a Silent Auction and live painting.  The silent auction benefiting the Environmental Defence which all of the proceeds of the event were going to.

There was a lot of fantastic artworks on display at the event.

It was a fantastic event for the 1st Sustainable Dim Sum Festival and it was organized by experienced organizers Drink Inc. Events.   As you may know from reading many of my event posts I notice the attention to details at events and at this event I really liked that there was a free self serve coat check.  No waiting and no tickets.  They also gave you a wine glass, passport and wooden chopsticks when you arrived.  The chopsticks were for you to keep and the glasses were returned to the rental company so there wasn't a lot wasted.  There were volunteers ready to keep things tidy at the stand up tables.  The only thing I would have like to see would have been an area to sit down.  We were all dying to sit on the stairs by the column but there was limited space so I can understand why and it was only a couple of hours but it was tough juggling the wine glass, passport, plates of food and of course trying to take photos with my phone.  I think I need more hands.  

Overall it was a fantastic event and it was great to see so many local restaurants participating in creating sustainable food.  This must be the trend of the future if we want to have enough food for everyone.

For more info about sustainability:

http://environmentaldefence.ca/