Starving Foodie

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Toronto Food Truck Festival

This past long weekend the Toronto Food Truck Festival happened again on Aug 1 & 2nd at Woodbine Park. It was a nice sunny sunday and I didn't have anything to do so I decided to meet up with a friend that lives in that area and go and hang out at the festival. We went last year but last year I had my car and drove down. This time I had to do it by public transit. It took me over an hour to get down there. I mistakingly got off at the wrong bus stop to meet up with my friend so I had to wait for her to meet up with me and head over to the park so I don't know exactly how long it would have taken to get there if I went straight there.

I think at this point I have gone to too many street festivals, food truck events and trade show events that nothing seemed all that new to me. I have seen almost all of the trucks at some point around town. But I decided to try a couple of the newer trucks food.

I tried the wonton shrimp $9 and the lemongrass chicken dumplings $9 from the Dumplings truck. It was good but I don't think it was worth $18 for dumplings. You could go for a ton of dim sum at a good Chinese food restaurant for less. It tasted good but I have frozen dumplings in my freezer that taste just as good. I just wanted to try them to see if they were something different. They were good but I just went to Susur Lee's restaurant Luckee recently so they can't compare to the food there.

I also tried the Baked Chimney Stax Cinnamon flavour with a cream cheese icing. I waited probably about 15-20 minutes for this and I am not sure why because there wasn't a huge lineup. There were 2 trucks doing this type of hollowed out baked bread with fillings and toppings. For the cost of $6 for some hard bread sprinkled with cinnamon I wasn't that impressed with it. I could have gotten some better Churros or Beavertails from the other trucks. I would go with that.

My friend isn't a foodie and only eats chicken and is pretty fussy about not eating certain foods but she decided on some Mac & Cheese. It was a pretty large portion and she said that was her dinner. I tried a forkful of it and didn't like it at all. It was on the runny side but also had some kind of sweet bbq sauce on top of it and the cheese tasted like some cheap flavourless cheese. I was glad I didn't order it.

The food truck festival is a good idea with it being free to get in and there is live bands but there are also a lot of long waits for a lot of the trucks and never enough chairs to sit and eat your food and not enough shade in the park so you get pretty hot waiting around in all of the lineups.

I think I enjoyed the food a lot more last year in my choices but it was a day to hang out and get some fresh air and sun, maybe a little too much sun but we only get sunny days for a short time during the summer so it's ok.

But the thing that made it not worth going to the festival in the end was the trek home. I walked up to Queen Street to get a streetcar to Yonge Street. We waited about 15 minutes and then 1 stopped but wouldn't let anyone on it. Then we waited again and the next streetcar was out of service. Then another 15 minutes later another streetcar came by and it was packed but we got on it. It started to pour rain about half way to Yonge Street so everyone closed the windows making it very hot in the streetcar and I might add very smelly. Then some guy has to delay it even more by trying to get on the streetcar with his bike and after the driver told him it was too full he walked to the back door and got on there. He got mad when people were trying to get off at the back door and he was in the way and he said "I am not going to ride my fuckin bike in the rain" so excuse me Mr. bike rider you just inconvenienced a packed streetcar full of hot sweaty tired people while you tried to manoeuvre your bike around the back steps. When we finally got to Yonge street we all had to squeeze around him to get off the streetcar. Well 2 hours after I left the festival I finally got home.

Was it worth it? Not so much. I spent $27 plus TTC fare and 3 hours of commuting for 3 mediocre dishes and half a lemonade.

I think if you are in the area it's a great thing to do if you can walk or ride a bike over but if you have to commute more than an hour to get there you should probably find something closer to home to do because the TTC just can't handle a lot of these summer weekend events very well.

Also of note. I only tried a few things because a lot of the trucks had things like burgers and fries and a lot of similar things that I wasn't really in the mood for. There was a corn truck but corn is so cheap right not that you can get half a dozen for the price of one at the festival. One of the longer lines was for grilled cheese and it looked good and might have been worth it but lining up for grilled cheese for 20 minutes doesn't seem worth the time to me.

If you don't cook or just looking for an outing with friends then this is the festival for you. For me it wasn't worth the 3 hours of TTC commute time but if you are closer then I would recommend checking it out but expect to wait for some of the food you want to try.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Pan American Food Festival

Event: Pan American Food Festival

What: Food, dance and vendors

Location: Daniels Spectrum - 585 Dundas St. E.

Date: Aug 1-3, 2015

It's a long weekend in Toronto and as usual there are a whole bunch of things going on in the city. The Caribbean Carnival, The Food Truck Festival, and all kinds of other things going on.
It was such a beautiful sunny day on the saturday so I decided to check out the Pan American Food Festival at Daniel's Spectrum in Regent Park.

This festival is curated by local writer and self proclaimed "Food Geek" Mary Luz Mejia. It was great to see her and also fellow Food Revolution Day Ambassador and local chef Mary Catherine Anderson who was helping out with the demos.

This is their 3rd Annual Festival. I attended it for the first time last year. It seems like they changed the focus and the set up quite a bit since last year. Last year most of the food demos were inside the building and there was a stage for music that was the food demo stage this year. They built a bigger stage at the end of the laneway with room in front for dancers and spectators. It made a lot more sense this way I think. There focus this year shifted to a lot more musical acts and dancers and 25 visiting Pan American Chefs doing demos and competitions. But the only thing that didn't seem expanded was the number of booth vendors. There seemed to be a lot more food vendors last year but the few food vendors were pretty regular contributors to local food events.

On the saturday I checked out 2 of the chef demos. The first one was by Ryan Wilson-Lall from FRANK restaurant at the AGO in Toronto. He made my most favourite dish that I tried at the Festival and tried for the first time. It was his version of Chili en Nogado. I have seen it made on television but never had a chance to try it before. It's a pretty labour intensive dish with many different ingredients and layers of techniques and flavours. Chef Ryan's version was a Poblano chili stuffed with a great balance of seasonings on pulled chicken and then topped with a white cheese sauce and then garnished with pepitas, cilantro and pomegranate seeds. I don't know if I would ever spend that kind of time making it but I wish I had picked up the recipe because there were so many layers of flavours that you can't figure it out from just tasting it. It was fantastic.

The next demo was from Master-Chef Columbia Chef Federico Martinez who is a young up and coming and very popular chef. He made Posta Negra. I am not sure why it's named that but possibly because the meat is turned almost black from the Coca-Cola, molasses, red wine and ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce marinade and cooked in a pressure cooker or slow braised.
It is cooked until tender and shredded like pulled pork. It is served on corn tortillas and topped with a pico de gallo that had coconut milk in it and also topped with an avocado mousse and some grated Mexican cheese. I could smell this dish before I even tried it and it tasted just as good. As you can tell from the picture above it was a bit on the runny side so the tortilla didn't hold up that well. I would say to make sure you use a slotted spoon when you serve it or use a double tortilla shell.

There was also a few various vendors like jewellery, and clothing and musical instruments.

There is a lot of musical acts that unfortunately I am not familiar with so I don't know if anyone of them are well known but there was a Latin Grammy Nominee Caloncho who I hears is very good but I didn't hear him so I don't know much about him. There are all kinds of dancing from Mexican folk dancers to salsa dancers and all kind of different costumed dancers to entertain the crowd.

It's a great festival to bring the family. It's not too crowded and it's a great cultural experience and there are photo opps galore. The selfie takers were kept busy.

If you read this in time I hope you can go and check it out and try some great food and dance up a storm with the beautiful dancers and musical artists.

For more info: www.panamfoodfest.com
Twitter @PanamFoodFest
Facebook PanAmerican Food Festival
Instagram @panamfoodfest

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

August Food Events in Toronto 2015

AUGUST is a really busy month full of Stuffing Your Face opportunities. So many street festivals and events to choose from. I compiled a list of some of the bigger public ones but I am sure I probably missed a few too.