Restaurant Industry in Canada during Covid 19

It's hard to believe that it's been just over a month since I went to my last big Food Industry Show.  At the beginning of March I visited the Restaurant Canada Show at the Enercare Centre in Toronto.  This show is one of my favourite shows of the year. I look forward to it so much because it's a chance to check out what's new in the Restaurant Industry and I also get to hang out with many fellow foodies and people I have met in the industry over the past almost 10 years of blogging.

I meant to write this post a whole lot sooner but everything blew up just after the show with the shutdowns of businesses and people including myself moving to working at home for continued services.

Sadly the whole Restaurant Industry changed in a matter of a couple of weeks after the show.

A little bit about the show before I move to the reason I am posting this now.

At the show this year there weren't any glaring trends that I could see but there was a lot of focus on more gluten free, and keto focused products.  There was a lot of meat and fish with a whole area focused on Seafood.  My friend Matt Dean Pettit had a booth for his Matty's Seafood brand so as I was whipping around the show I had a quick hi and then dashed off to a last minute Sea-cuterie platter workshop at the other end of the show.  I did a post about it previously on the blog.

I went to the show 2 days in a row because there are so many workshops and talks and things to sample.  It's really hard to sample all the food you want to try in one day.  I had to skip things I have tried before and looked for favourites like of course the Oysters because it's something I don't eat often and all of the new products are what I generally look out for.

I didn't see anything that stood out as innovative this time but there was more of quality and sustainability.

This year the country that was spotlighted was Peru.  We got to sample a delicious Peruvian breakfast that included some incredible Ceviche.  Yes ceviche breakfast was the first thing I tried on the first day of the show and it was great

These artichokes were one of the more interesting things I tried.  I wish I could remember the booth it was at though.  I was really rushing to see and try as much as I could.

I tried fantastic Procciutto, empanadas, tostadas and so much more but for some reason I didn't get photos of everything.  I didn't actually eat as much as I have in the past so there were less photos.

My friend Vicky was busy sampling at the Unbun booth, where I tried the samples that the Pro  what the chef had whipped up at the booth while Vicky was busy telling people about the Keto friendly buns.

Let's chat about the people at the show.

Besides Vicky and Matt there were a bunch of other people that were there that I want to shout out.


Fellow food blogger Joyce from Joyce of Cooking was joined by Joanna Sable for a talk about Influencers in the food industry (bloggers and others).  It was a very informed talk.  Joanna Sable's mom has been a food producer for many years and Joyce worked in restaurants and is now a restaurant marketing consultant.  I learned a few things I didn't know about even.

Emily Richards was doing cooking demos for as she called it "fluid" dairy products or what you would call milk type of products for Savour Ontario.  I just missed her demo but stopped to see what she was cooking and it sounded very interesting.

I also sat in on a Harassment in the Workplace talk presented by Workers Safety and Prevention Services who provide Joint Health and Safety Committee training among other food industry educational training.

Christine Manning of Manning Canning was there with her healthy Soda's.  I tried the one with Ginger since I figured it was the best one for digesting all the samples I was wolfing down that day.

The booth that I kept going back to a few times over 2 days was the Pluck Tea booth because I fell in love with their Verbena Blues iced tea.  Check out the color when mixed with lemon juice.  It was so refreshing.  I need to get some for the hot summer days if we ever get any.

I also loved the Coconut Cold brew at Station Cold Brew.
Kraft had a Peanut butter sauce. I guess meant for Thai cooking.


But mostly I loved running around with my foodie friends trying to see and try everything.  It's hard to believe this is the last time I got to hang out with my blogger pals.  I hope that Covid 19 doesn't last too much longer and the Restaurant Industry can get back to providing the much needed delicious food and for us it's a way of socializing while doing what we love.   We all want to thank all the people that work in the Food Industry.  We appreciate and Love you and miss you all and hope that you can all get back on your feet very soon.

So back to the reason I am posting this Blog Post today specifically.

Today is the 1st day of #TAKEOUTDAY.  Every Wednesday from today until it's not needed anymore the Restaurant Industry in Toronto want you to support your local restaurants by ordering Take Out food so keep these restaurants going.

You can find your local restaurant through Restaurant Canada's - Canada Take Out website at  https://canadatakeout.com/

While we want you to stay home we also don't want to see great restaurants have to close down because of lack of business from the self isolating practices.   Be careful how you get your take out and if you can have it delivered even better.

Support restauranteurs like Trevor Lui seen with us crazy bloggers on the first day of the Show.  Trevor has been responsible for many restaurants like Kanpai and recently Popa at Bayview Village.

Restaurant workers work really hard and don't make a lot of money and they provide us with delicious food and are a source of good times and community for all of us.

Please support them and thank them because they are struggling to keep their doors open at this time.

Covid 19 cancels events in Toronto until July

Today the Mayor of Toronto announced that all events and Parade permits are now cancelled until July 2020. 

Will the Food, Events and Entertainment and Travel Industries survive the effects of this COVID 19 pandemic?

The last large event that I attended was the Restaurant Canada Show  it is one of my favourite annual shows and I haven't gotten to my blog post yet because there were so many things that I want to write about and need to have the time to do it.   But I mention it now because I had no idea that it was to be the last big event that I would be able to go to at the time and how it would affect all the people that attended that show.  It was only a couple of weeks later that so many Restaurants in the city had to shut down because Toronto is now in a state of emergency and people are told to stay home.  Restaurants had to let their staff go and either convert to pick up or delivery or shut their doors.

With Bloggers Mary Tang (Marys Happy Belly) Jenny Roger (Ice cream and Knishes) and restauranteur Trevor Lui

I worked at Sunnybrook Hospital when Sars hit in 2003 and it affected the Restaurant industry and many restaurants lost money and some closed but not to the extent that it has hit the industry in such a short time frame.  Restaurants workers work long hours for minimum wage or less in some cases and don't have a lot of the benefits some people enjoy. 

I have gotten to know many people in the food, events and entertainment industry over the past 10 years while writing this blog and my heart breaks for them now.

If you have been reading my blog you know that I volunteer for the Toronto Film Festival who's building on King Street has now shuttered until an undetermined time and the next festival could be up in the air at this time.

I also have an events management background and know how hard it is to organize events in this city and how long it takes to organize a festival or even a small event.  It requires many people getting together to plan and execute which is not possible at this time.

For the first time in my life I am working from home.  I am lucky that I can do that at this time but I can't do all of the tasks of my job so I don't know what it will be like when everything is back on track.

The Mayor has cancelled the Pride Parade,  the Hot Docs Film Festival, Comicon, the Juno Awards, the Green Living Show, The Canadian Screen Awards and too many more to mention have been either cancelled for this year or have been pushed to a much later date.

This will affect my blog but it won't silence it because I have been writing about events for almost 10 years but it's not the only thing I write about luckily.   I had already reduced my attendance at events and had less restaurant invites.  I have been spending more time at home cooking my own food and trying to reduce my waste.

But here is the thing that I am concerned about.  What will happen when this Social distancing and State of Emergency has lifted?  Will people go back to life as normal?  Will we lose a lot of great things for good?

While I love the fact that people are now having to embrace cooking at home and you see loads of people making bread on Instagram I also miss meeting up with friends at restaurants or going to food events and meeting the chefs and vendors making the food.

Will they persevere or give up and be forced to do something else to survive?

After Sars lifted there was a huge Concert at Downsview Park.  What will we do this time?

I wish I had unlimited funds to be able to order food from all the places that have been able to adapt and stay open during this time to keep them going.  If you have the means I would urge you to order food every other day maybe.  Build your cooking skills and appreciate the people that cook the food for you.  They may not always be there to make your favourite foods.

Sial Canada 2019 - Food innovation

SIAL CANADA 2019

https://sialcanada.com/en/article/sial-toronto-kick-off-2019-edition/

I had the privilege of attending this year's Sial Canada Show at the Enercare Centre in Toronto.  I attended the 3 day Food Industry trade show on May 2nd, 2019.  Sorry for taking so long to get to this post but there was so much there that I took loads of pics and have lots to write about here.

Samples,  there are so many samples that I have to strategically choose what I want to try because I can't possibly try it all.  I learned after the 1st year when I stuffed my face on the massive quantities of cheese available from mostly the Quebec region and after the cheese indulgence I had no room to try anything else.  So now I try and look for things I haven't tried before or things I can't resist.  The 2 items above fall into the things I couldn't resist category.  The spinach Spanokopita were so light and flaky if there weren't a thousand other things to try I would have ate a whole lot more of the.  The arancini on the right were gooey cheesy rice goodness.  These 2 things are the kind of things I would buy myself to keep in my freezer for guests and for myself for time saving snacks.  Both Spanokopita and Arancini are labour and time intensive and these were as good as homemade.

And here's Chuck...... Chuck Hughes is now a Brand.  He has a new line of products like Antipasto's, oils,  and a few other products.  I have tried the oil before and it's great, it's from Greece I believe.  I tried the antipasto at the show before having a great chat with Chuck about his new APTN show about Indigenous cooking traditions.  Looking forward to seeing that soon.

After chatting with Chuck we went over to the Chef Demo stage where we sat through 3 demos which familiar Chefs like Chuck who was with his sidekick Tracy Winkworth who does most of the prep work while Chuck does his stand up routine in front of her then he adds the finishing touches and everyone claps.  Yes Chuck is the fun but Tracy brings the food.

Brad Long is the owner of Cafe Belong at the Brickworks and he has also spent many years cooking for Elite Chefs for MLSE organization.  Now he has a new book about butter so of course he was making a dish that featured butter so we caught most of the demo and my friend Jenny was chatting up the woman next to her and it turns out she was the maker of the butter that was featured by Brad.  After the demo she gave my friend, myself and our other blogger friend Carol some of her Thornloe butter.  We were all very excited about that because it's great butter and really expensive too.

It was also good to see Emily Richards who made an Onion soup and a crostini dish.

The unique thing about this show is the Sial Innovation Award for the best new products.  One of the ones that I loved was the ICE coffee which won one of the awards.  I also took home a container of the tofu spread.  It does not taste like tofu.  I didn't try all of the Innovation Award nominees,  just too many things but I tried a bunch of them.  The other interesting one was the Yummy doh.  Pre mixed cookie dough. 

I also enjoyed this Pear hazelnut spread,  definitely an elevated dessert spread. I think I remember them saying they were from Quebec as well.

I didn't try this but this Cauliflower quick meal looked kind of interesting.

I tried this Iceberg water.  I admit that packaging gets my attention and I liked the bottle and of course the Water was very good too.

There was LOTS of meats this year,  With Keto going strong Meat is back.  There were lots of cured hams,  massive steaks and more.

I also had to stop and take a photo of this guy from Bad Dad Tea.  He gave me a nice little sample pack and I told him I loved the branding.  It stands out from most of the tea brands.

I don't know what this thing is called but it was pan fried kind of like shreds of phyllo with pistacio's on top.  I think it's a Persian dish kind of like a Baklava type of thing.  Because I was in a hurry I just blew by as much as I could and didn't take the time to find out more about it unfortunately.

Chef Stefano Failto also entered the product market with his line of sauces.  I wanted to try these but by this time I just didn't have time to wait for a sample and was really full but I hope to get a chance to try these in the stores soon.

The one product that had myself and fellow blogger Carol Nelson Brown stop dead in our tracks were these flavour spheres.  The grapefruit one on the left was a game changer.  I took home a honey one.  These things have the texture of fish roe and just burst with fruit flavour or honey when they hit your tongue.  This would make your appetizers literally POP.

I missed so much because I was only able to go to 1 day of the 3 day massive show and would have loved to have more time to explore more.  I found out later that my friend Vicky was representing another Sial Innovation product the UnBun.  I passed the booth but didn't see her and didn't stop to check it out because it was the end of the show.

You really have to have time and a strategy at this show.  If you are in the food industry you focus on making connections and sales.  For myself and my blogger friends we try and see as much new food and chef demos as we can.   It's also great to run into people we know at the show after going a few times you become familiar with some of the people who do the show often.

It's not open to the public but I hope that I gave you a peek at what's coming to specialty food stores, grocery stores and restaurants in the future.  I hope to have more time next time to showcase a lot more products.

If you are a Food Industry Professional and would like to find out more about the show or would like to find out more about the products check out the website for more information:

https://sialcanada.com/en/article/sial-toronto-kick-off-2019-edition/

Restaurants Canada Show 2018

Restaurants Canada Show - RC Show

Enercare Centre Toronto

Feb 25-27, 2018

www.rcshow.com

#RCShow18

Twitter@RestaurantsCA

Insta/Facebook@RestaurantsCanada

The Restaurants Canada Show has been rebranded to the RC Show since 2017 and I have been attending it for the past few years.  I was excited to attend again this year and wonder around the huge Enercare Centre with my fellow blogger friends and try and check out as many of the booths as we could.  It's a huge trade show that brings over 16,000 Food Industry professionals together under one roof.  It's pretty spectacular how many different moving parts there are to owning and running a business and this show speaks to and shows them all.  From the uniforms to the big industrial machines to the time saving food products, there is a lot to see and learn about at this show.

There are demos, panels, and all kinds of interactive and educational things at the show. And then there are the food samples.  Personally that's my favourite part.  It is a 3 day show and I wish I had time to go everyday and pace myself to be able to try it all but I have found a way to strategically do as much as I can.  Because I have gone to a lot of food related shows I am always looking for new things that I haven't tried before.  The first year I went I got hung up on the first aisle of massive quantities of cheese and was too full to try anything else.  Now I just choose cheeses I haven't seen before to try and only eat things that call my name.  Drool worthy foods that you know are going to make you happy.   

Here are 3 of the things I tried and absolutely loved.  This soft goat cheese, these amazing salami's, and the authentic pizza oven freshly made literally right out of the oven Margherita Pizza.

   

There were also panels of interesting speakers and topics.  I sat in on 2 at the speakers stage.  The morning one was from Kitchen to Print about cookbook publishing.  The moderator was from Figure 1 Publishing and on the panel was Greta Podleski from Looney Spoons, a fellow blogger Isabelle Boucher who is also a recipe developer, Joel McCharles who is ablogger turned cookbook author of the cookbook Batch and there was also a cookbook photographer named Ryan Szulic.  This was a very informative panel from independent publishing to blogging to dealing with a large publisher and what it takes to get a cookbook off the ground.

The last panel of the day had Branding and Buzzing PR's head honcho Sean Beckingham as the moderator.  The topic was Social Media and Sean is very knowledgeable in this area as he speaks about this subject a lot and knows many of the top restaurants owners in Toronto.  On the panel was Overbudget Inc's Meg McNabb, Executive Chef Sean MacDonald and Lisa Richler the editor of Canada's Best 100 restaurants.  An interesting of mixed perspectives from Chef to community manager to publication and all the different needs and practices of each one.

There were plenty of well known Chefs wondering around the show and my friend Jenny (IceCream and Knishes) loves to chat with them and had a great chat with both Chef Brad Long of Cafe Belong on the left and Former Dragon Vikram Vij of Vij's in Vancouver and he is also an entrepreneur and Chopped Canada judge.  He recently went to India with Justin Trudeau to showcase Canadian Food with his Indian heritage but it wasn't seen as a good thing by the Canadian press unfortunately.

 

In the middle of the show literally were all the industry machines and tools like this huge Hobart mixer. Can you imagine how much bread and cakes this thing can mix.  Another cool professional machine was this spinning grill.  It smelled so good with the grilled chicken on it.  Outdoor food indoors, yum.

Some of the trends in the foods we tried included loads of Pizza.  This pizza that dissapeared in about 5 seconds was a General Tao pizza. It was a meal on a pizza and was surprisingly good.  There were so many pizza ovens around the show but we chose probably the 2 best pizzas to taste.

There was spices, mixes, toppings, snacks and sprinkles and all sorts of condiments to try.

      

We really liked this natural peanut butter,  I really liked the hazelnut one and want to see it in stores soon.

     

      

     

Oh the desserts were everywhere but I was good,  I gravitated towards the gelato and tried 2 of them. I really loved the Smores Gelato that I tasted.  Once of the more interesting gelato's was the Unicorn flavour as you can see below.  I didn't try it but I bet kids would flock to that one.

       

This year it didn't seem like there were any mind blowing new things but more of things that are popular done well or with slight twists. 

My favourite thing about this show besides the delicious samples and the amazing talks is running into all the food writers, chefs and industry people that I have come to know over the past few years as a food blogger.  It's really a great place for the Industry to connect with different services and just great ways to learn and collaborate.  If you are looking to start up a restaurant business this is the best place to start at to learn what you will be getting yourself into and be prepared before you start.

I will be back as they say because it's a whole lot of fun and delicious too.