Pop Up Festival City in TO

I am writing this post a little differently today.  My computer seems to have given up trying to keep up with all the pop ups and festivals that I have been trying to go to lately and it won't even start up, just like a stubborn child.  Yeah I know computers don't last long anymore but I think I just overloaded it with way too many festival images.  Anyway, for this post I am typing with one finger on my IPad while lying in bed.  Why?  Well because my body is tired but my blogger brain won't shut off.

I don't want to fall too far behind and leave out posts I wanted to write so will see how this goes for now until I figure out how to solve my computer issues.

This past weekend I attended 2 festivals.  One was a community street festival that seemed more like a flea market on a Main Street.  That festival was Big on Bloor.  Spanning from Dufferin to Landsdowne on Bloor Street it closed down the streets for 2 days.  I decided to check it out because I was close to the area looking for a new computer and on a crazy hot day I get the. Bright idea to walk on Bloor in the sun and sweat my face off.  There wasn't much food vendors but there were activities and a lot of jewellery vendors.  I basically just walked from Dufferin to Landsdowne and took some pics and hopped back on the subway.  Not much there for me.

On Friday after work I went to the Toronto Festival of Beer with my blogger friend Shuang.  It was insanely hot and you had to walk from the Princess Gates to past the Better living building.  I don't think it was the best day for us to go. We were tired and sweaty but once again I went to check it out for you.  Beer festivals are not my thing because I don't drink beer and not interested in getting drunk to the point of the next day being a write off.  This was that kind of festival with more beer vendors than food vendors in a close proximity with loads of 20-30 somethings looking for a good time.

Yeah I'm probably too old for these things but Shuang isn't and she just turned into an old lady too.

I walked around to check everything out but since I don't drink beer it kind of felt a bit useless for me to be there.  I will leave the beer description up to some of my fellow bloggers and beer lovers that I know attended the festival.  I will just tell you what else was there.  There was a Le Grille grilling tent where a few of Toronto's popular chefs were doing demos.  Some notable like Ted Reader and the Chefs from Antler, camagnolo, Raca Cafe, and Pizzeria Libretto and many more.

Other food vendors included the energetic Matt Basile with his Fidel Gastros food truck.

There was hand pie from the Pie commission and Poutine from Smokes Poutinerie and even some Swedish food to go with Swedish Beer.

There were even games to play and some big music artists there like Maestro Fresh Wes and many more.

I didn't eat or drink anything and we didn't stay long because it was just too hot to wander around.

I know lots of people with less clothing on had a really great time there but I went from work and was wearing black pants so that should explain why I didn't stay long.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the TO Food Fest at the Chinese Cultural centre in Scarborough.  What I like about this festival is that it has an indoor and outside setup.  With washrooms available inside. It's only $2 or a food bank donation to get in which I think is a good idea.  They had an area for kids to play and there is a small lot with free parking if you get there early.

It's pretty much all food but the diversity is amazing.  There was Filipino, Japanese, Brazilian, Cambodian, Jamaican and a whole lot of other ethnic and new trend foods.  From the Sushi Burritos to the Ice Cream Rolls to the Raindrop cakes.

I have seen a lot of these things before but it's a good place to try all kinds of food in one convenient location with less walking than the CNE and you will see stuff here before it hits the CNE usually.

I have said it before, there is a festival r popup for everyone and everything in Toronto.

Have we reached the limit yet or is Toronto's appetite for new foods and festivals not going to end anytime soon?

There are a few more food festivals I will be writing about soon so stay tuned,  there's more to come.

President's Choice Holiday PopUp

President's Choice has created something really new and fun for a large grocery retailer.  They created a Holiday Environment Pop Up on King Street West at Blue Jays Way.The really great part is that it runs for a couple of weeks before Christmas and it's totally FREE to check out and to sample bites of their special holiday PC food items.It's closed on mondays but open until 7 most nights and there are also special events there in the evenings that you have to sign up for.  I stopped by after I attended another event to check it out.  When I got there I was immediately drawn to the Nutcracker's in the window display.  It's located on the corner of the block in a pretty large space.  There is a red carpet style entrance and when you walk in you are asked to sit on a large bench while they organize a certain amount of people for the tour.  It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to go through it in groups of about 8 I think.  The entrance is beautifully decorated in holiday decor and then when you walk in you are brought to 4 different rooms.  The first room we entered had a moving train set up that moved through the town space and had places of food samples as the cargo.  It was so cool and impressive.  We sampled the cherry chocolate cake and the waffles with cookie butter and bacon maple syrup. We were then let into the Mingle room where it was decorated in greens and lighted acrylic trees displaying the dishes.  The appetizers where from the Thai appetizer collection and we also sampled some Gochichang chicken wings, butter chicken poutine and 3 of the different Thai appetizers which were all very good.

The next room was the Dinner room where we sampled a beet pasta, a piece of country ham, brussel sprouts and a potato stack.  Then we had the vanilla bean cheesecake with raspberry sauce.  We were pretty full by this time.  The last room was the Gift Room.  I thought this room was really cute with wall to wall colored boxes and were given the choice of their chocolate covered popcorn in a little clear box and another sweet treat but I can't remember what it was unfortunately.

The space is gorgeous and the fact that they sample all of these products at one time to showcase how you can entertain for the season is a great idea.   You can't purchase the foods at the pop up space but they will tell you where you can get them near you if you ask.  

I would totally recommend checking it out while you can just to see how cool the space is even. You can get great decor tips from this space and I would love to see other big retailers do something like this for the holidays.  It's fun and I know it's all marketing and meant to drive sales but it's a fun thing to do.  Be prepared as I heard that there are lineups sometimes and I am sure there will be more as people hear about it being there.  Go hungry and enjoy.

This is not a sponsored post.  I went on my own and the opinions expressed are my own.

Event - TO Food Fest

The TO Food Fest was the best named food festival this past weekend.  It could also have been called Food Feast because there was so much great food there to chow down on in Scarborough.

What made this event great was the luck of the beautiful co operative weather.  It was a hot day but there was a nice breeze flowing through wafting all the grilled meat smells around the parking lot of the Chinese Cultural Centre.  All of the hot BBQ items were set up outside and all of the non BBQ or cold items were set up by the vendors inside the gym of the Cultural Centre.

What was great about this venue was that there was FREE Parking... something that makes me very happy when I go to these events.  The entry fee was a donation of $2 or a non-perishable item of foods that would be donated to Second Harvest, a charity that does great things.  I brought 2 items to donate and their final tally of food collected was 5 large boxes of food.

I ran into a fellow food blogger TheMary_Tang who said it was a bit busier last year when she went and it was a lot hotter too.  She was pregnant last year and returned with her husband and young daughter this year. Her daughter is a foodie in training now.

There was such a great variety of foods by some really friendly and nice vendors.

Some of the foods you could find there were:

• Perogies
• Dutch Frites
• Bao Buns
• Malo Malo dessert
• Pork Belly Burgers
• Ice Volcano desserts                      
• Empanadas
• Rice Balls,
• Oysters,
• Macarons
• Hot Sauce
• Bacon Creme Brule
• Meat on sticks
• Flavoured popcorn
• Paella
• Fried Chicken on a stick
• Smelly Tofu                   
• Squid on a stick
• Tater Tots
• Stuffed wings

and I could go on... food from all kinds of cultures and all kinds of variety.  Even a lot of vegetarian things.  Nobody could walk away hungry from this festival.  The prices went from $1 for a drink to about $12 a dish, but most were in the $5 or $6 dollar range.   Some of the vendors had huge portions that would fill you up pretty quickly.

I was lucky to be able to go early for a media preview so I was able to talk to a lot of the vendors before the general public came in and was there as they were just getting everything set up.

I chatted with the owners of Dutch Frites and was able to sample all of their great sauces that go with their excellent frites.  My mom lived in Belgium so I know great fries and these were as good as my mom's were but she didn't make fancy sauces like curry ketchup, garlic mayo and avocado mayo, she just ate them with Mayonnaise.  When I mentioned to the owner about the fries my mom made he said "you know your stuff".  Yup, I was taught how to make great fries at a young age.   A soggy fry is not a good frites.

One of my other favourite things that I tried was the Vietnamese Coffee from WonderPho.  It was $2 and it was so good that I went back for another one.  Another great drink I tried was a mixed berry iced tea from the Empanada vendor.  The Empanadas were very good but a little salty for me.

I also tried a great ground Pork Belly Burger from Bricks N Morter.  It was served with some nice spicy coleslaw.  Since it was all bacon it was so juicy and delicious.

I was trying to pace myself so that I could try a bunch of things but I got pretty full quickly.  I had to try the Bacon Creme brule since a few people said it tasted great.  It was pretty great with a candied bacon strip stuck on top as a garnish.  I got

Even Mayor Rob Ford dropped by the Festival to take loads of Selfies with all the people at the Festival.  I didn't do a selfie but took this photo to show you Rob and Doug being there.

Someone asked him if he tried any of the food and he said "NO, NO, NO"... I guess it doesn't go with his new diet and exercise program but I bet he would have tried something last year.

I really wanted to try some more food but I only had a little but of money left and a fully belly but I wanted to make sure that I got some  Okonomiyaki pancake to take home for later.  I first tried this at the T&T night market where a very young hard working girl was working away on these great seafood pancakes.  She remembered me from the T&T Market and was so happy that I supported her again.  I love to support young entrepreneurs.  My last job was all about that so I understand how important it is for people to support these vendors when they are first starting out.

I really enjoyed this festival because it had so much diversity, new and interesting dishes and it was so easy to get there and there weren't massive lineups this time around which might not be great for vendors but it was great for the attendees.  It gave people a chance to chat with the vendors and walk around and see what everyone was having.

Because the weather was so great it made it enjoyable to be outside in the great sunshine eating your way around the world through food.

Thank you to the great organizers and all of the vendors for making it a great sunday afternoon event.

Here's a gallery of some of the other foods that were available there.
I plan on going again next year and hopefully trying a lot more food.