Kultura Filipino Arts Festival

Event:  KulturaTO Festival

Location:  Dundas Square and other locations

Date:  Aug 9, 2015.

Website:  www.kultura.ca

This past weekend Kultura TO a Filipino Arts Festival celebrated their 10th Anniversary with events around town including Food and Music at Yonge and Dundas Square on August 9th.  I went down to check out their Street Food Battle where their food vendors put up $3 dishes for judging in competition for the best street food.

I didn't try all of the foods that were in competition but I did try and try as much as I could from most of the vendors onsite.

I tried the Pork Belly Pao or Bao as you may know it which is a rice flour bun with arugula, torched pork belly and hot sauce in the bun.  It was pretty good but I think I would like it a little more rendered.

All of the dishes were priced at $1 $3 $5 which is very reasonable as compared to some other street food festivals.

At the media preview I tried the calamansi ice tea and the Talo which is a sweet soft tofu dish.   Calamansi is a sweet lime that is common in the Phillipines.

One of my favourite things was also one of the least expensive and fastest to get.  It was the Lechon bites.  Roasted pork that is shredded and put into cones and served with a slaw.  Really great taste on the pork.

There were a couple of really long lines, one was for the GUSHI chicken which was odd because Gushi is a Japanese thing but whatever.  I had some of the chicken and it was pretty good but I would suggest going to the GUSHI shipping container on Dundas to avoid a lineup.   The other long line was for the Sisig fries.  Sisig is made from the pork parts that are leftover that I won't go into detail about.  It's a pretty big deal for Filipinos and I have had it before at Casa Manila.  The fries were ok but I didn't finish it. I got 3 little Deep Fried Sweet Turons at the same booth.  Turon is banana wrapped wontons deep fried and coated in a caramel sauce.

I think that's pretty much all I tried and I spent about $14 in total for it all.  Pretty reasonable prices but some of the lines moved very slowly.  I think I spent about 2 hours in lines waiting for food in total.

A couple of things I would love to change if I had the power.   The design of Yonge Dundas Square.  You have to stand out in the open sun on hot cement while waiting in line for food so it get's pretty exhausting.  There isn't enough seating once you get your food and it's on the other side of the square where people just sit for hours.  I would love to see the food vendors flipped to the other side where the seating is and the other vendors to where the food vendors were and then at the back of the square the tables  close to Yonge Street so that people could stand in front and sit at the back and still listen to the music and eat their food.  I don't know how this would work but flipping the food vendors would put them into the shaded area so at some point in the front of the line you would be covered.  I doubt this will happen but that's how I envision the square.

I would also love to advise the food vendors not to make food with a million ingredients that have to be assembled at the time of service.  This slows down the lines.  That's why there wasn't a long line for the Lechon and slaw because it was made in advance and just plated quickly for service.  The deep fried items a super popular but with the small fryers that are in each booth they can't fry food fast enough to keep those long lines moving quickly.   If you are going to fry foods then have other foods that are ready to go so people have a choice and the lines can move a bit faster.

As you can see my comments aren't about the actual food because most of these vendors do a really great job with the food but it's the rest of the street festival experience that needs some tweeking in my humble opinion after spending a whole lot of time standing around in the sun at these summer street festivals.   More shaded areas with seating is always welcome on a hot day.

There were also a few arts vendors and lots of musical acts all day.  I am not familiar with any of the acts that were presented but I must say that a couple of the ones I heard while waiting in line were very good.

I like to go to these cultural festivals because it's a chance to sample foods that you may not get the opportunity to try anywhere else and also be introduced to music and culture of a different culture than what you are normally exposed to.  I always encourage people to check out cultural festivals and see what's going on in different communities.  It's like travelling in your own country and Toronto is one of the few places in the world that makes this pretty easy to do.  Get out and explore some new cultures, you never know what you will learn.

Great Canadian Cheese Festival road trip to Picton

It was a beautiful summer weekend this past weekend with the sun shining and the skies so blue and the perfect time to take a road trip to Prince Edward County the new mecca of Artisanal food to attend the Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend to go for a drive to sample a whole lot of Ontario and Quebec cheeses, wines, chocolates, preserves and pickles, cider, craft beer, honey and all kinds of other treats.

The festival was located at the Picton Fair Grounds in Prince Edward County, Ontario  I have to tell you that we were kind of lucky that we found it with the directions I had.  A few more signs would have been helpful.

Admission to the Festival is $50 for the day but I had a weekend pass although I only went on the saturday. You could purchase drink tickets for 10 for $10.

We got a little distracted by the Big Apple Shop on the way to the festival so we didn't get to the festival until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon.  I thought they closed at 5pm so I kind of took my time going through the Taste Ontario Pavilion so by the time it was 4pm we jetted outside to try and breeze through the other booths outside and in another building.  I tried a whole lot of cheese and preserves and dips, spreads and other things so by the time I got to the outdoor ones I was kind of stuffed.  We managed to sample a couple more of the vendors that were still closing up shop for the day but we did miss a few that I would have liked to try including Seed to Sausage which I had once at a blogger conference and would have loved to have been able to bring some of that home.

I brought a cooler bag and had a small cheese ice pack, fitting I think.  But I didn't want to buy too much cheese so I only picked up 3 of the ones I really liked that were all different from each other.

I purchased these cheeses to take home

1.  St. Albert 5yr old Cheddar this is an award winning cheese and so smooth

2.  Best BAA Dairy Mouton Rouge - a soft washed rind cheese that melts in your mouth

3. Fromagerie Terroir Bellechasse - Fleur Saint-Michel - a garlic coated cheese that you fry

Some other things I tried that I thought tasted great or were interesting included Dehydrated cheese which will be launched in stores in August.

The lovely Phyllis Cook's Kitchen had some spicy pepper jellies that would really be great pairings with all that cheese.  Phyllis is going to send me some for a giveaway so look for that soon.

After all of that cheese I really needed a thirst quencher and picked up some Very Berry Ice Tea from Pluck Teas.

We tried the Black Garlic in jars.  It was pretty strong but the vendor showed us an appetizer he was going to make for the ticketed events that looked like it would have been a great use for it.  It does need to be mixed into something because it's intense on it's own.

There were a few vendors that were familiar to me from shows I have been to in Toronto and also from the preview I went to last month.  Vendors like Pluck Teas, Jewels under the Kilt, Whisky & Spice mustards, Best BAA Dairy, Seed to Sausage meats, the Shortbread Company and Cow's Cheese and a couple of other cheese vendors.

Can you believe that 5000 wine and cheese lovers hit this little festival in Picton each summer.  It runs all weekend and since I haven't been to this festival before I didn't know what to expect so we didn't book a room to stay over to return the next day and then we decided to stay over and we couldn't find a place to stay except for some guy that had a room in his cottagey house for $150 a night and I can tell you that it was worth more like $25 bucks for the night so we passed on that and decided to drive to Kingston instead and we stayed at the Ambassador Hotel and Conference Centre because we wanted to go on the Thousand Island cruise on the sunday.  The cruise departed at 12:30pm and it was a 3 hour cruise so by the time we finished that the cheese festival had already ended so we didn't have a chance to go back.

We tried to check out a few B&B's in Picton and did a whole lot of driving around Picton.. about 5 times.  We were looking for the Drake Devonshire Inn but for some reason we kept missing the sign but finally found it but it was fully booked and even the dining room was fully booked but we had a chance to check it out and it was beautiful.  I hope to get back there eventually.  Anyway on our stops at B&B's and Inn's we stopped at Merrill Inn and the lady there told us that 5000 people go to the festival every year and they book their rooms a year in advance to get their preferred location.  There aren't any large hotels and only small B&B's and Inns in Picton.  

We decided to wing it this year because we didn't know what to expect and as it turns out we met up with my friend's friends in Kingston for the cruise and that turned out to be a great day as well and if we didn't wing it we might not have done that.  Sometimes a plan is good and sometimes you got to just go with the flow.

I would recommend that you hit up the Cheese Festival early in the day and not dilly dally on the drive there like we did and bring empty bellies ready for lots of cheese sampling.  You have to purchase tickets for the wine but all of the cheese samples and most other samples were included in the pass price.  I did pay $2 for the Ice Tea and of course the cheeses that I purchased.

We didn't purchase the extra ticketed events because we didn't know how long the main festival would take.  Now that I know I would probably go to the festival early and then leave some time for a ticketed event.  

I hope if I return next year the weather is as great as it was this weekend and I have a chance to try a lot more vendors samples.  

I know there was a bunch of food bloggers from Toronto that also went to the festival.  I didn't see them when I was there but I know the were either there before me or after me so I know they will probably have info on some of  the things I missed.  

You know a festival has potential when a bunch of Toronto Food Bloggers drive a couple of hours to Picton to check it out.

There was a big Mac and Cheese festival in Toronto that had thousands of people attend but I am so glad I skipped that one and took in some fresh country air and fresh local products.

Check it out next year but plan ahead and bring a cooler so you can take home some yummy products.

http://cheesefestival.ca/