Courtesy TheMarkNews.com
In
Korea, it’s easy to find undeniably Korean street food with all sorts
of accompaniments. In Malaysia, it’s rendang and roti chanai with fresh
juice made that second. Mexico has an incredible variety of tortilla
and BBQ chicken curbside that melts in your mouth. Singapore is so
dedicated to providing great street fare that the city has built
Gluttons Bay, an entire esplanade of food stalls where you can get
grilled fish, chicken wings, fresh juices, and so many other foods – I
want to book a flight there just thinking about it.
Apart from being just dang delicious, street food is affordable, fresh, and as a result, usually very healthy.
So
why do other countries have great food curbside while we marinate in
the culinary dark ages? Torontonians should be lining up for the best
street food in the world with the kind of enthusiasm we normally
reserve for Tim Hortons.
Until recently, the Toronto street scene was ruled by the compelling selection below:
1. Compressed mysterious meat on a bun.
2. Compressed mysterious Polish meat on a bun.
3. Compressed mysterious Italian meat on a bun.
It
was embarrassing. In a city where half of the population was born in a
different country and 30 per cent of our 2.6 million citizens do not
speak either English or French as a first language, one would hope that
Toronto’s street food would reflect that cultural diversity; and in
abundance.
Slowly, the situation is evolving. Last year, the
Toronto Public Health Department introduced a pilot program called
Toronto A La Cart. The plan was to place carts at different locations
around the city: Pad Thai at Mel Lastman Square; chapli kabobs at Metro
Hall; biryani and souvlaki at Nathan Phillips Square; chicken and beef
kabobs at Queen’s Park; injera at Roundhouse Park; Korean bulgogi at
Yonge and Eglington; and jerk chicken at Yonge and St. Clair.
But
from the start, things went bad. The program launched with only four of
the originally planned six culinary adventures. A combination of
unforeseen expenses took out the other two. Right now, none of them are
open because the carts aren’t winterized. How many of them we’ll see
again in the spring is anybody’s guess.
The owners have had a
rough go. They personally have to be there a minimum of 70 per cent of
the time, which means they can’t stay open 24 hours a day like the
street meat vendors. Their costs have been higher because of
extraordinary opening fees ($30 thousand minimum), parking,
transportation of a cart that must be set up and taken down daily, and
the need to replenish product due to lack of square footage.
If
they can’t make enough money to justify these expenses, they shut down.
The cart is theirs and they are free to do one-off catering setups to
service crowds. Apparently some of the owners are doing just that.
The
beauty of a pilot program is that it can be fixed as it goes. The city
gave Toronto A La Cart three years to make things work. With two years
to go, I can still dream of eating roti without it being during
Caribana, drinking fresh Ontario fruit juices at Harborfront, popping
hot arancini waiting for the streetcar, or sipping a hot bowl of pho at
the park.
Imagine our newly minted epicurean metropolis with
cool carts cooking up great food all the time, letting everyone know
who we are.
The Mark is Canada’s online forum for news commentary and debate.
More by Roger Mooking
Audio: Roger Mooking talks about where to find the world’s best street meat
To
become a world-class city, Toronto needs to offer a better, more
diverse cultural output, writes art critic Andrea Carson
Top photo: A Toronto street food vendor. Credit: Colby Cosh via flickr.com. Used under a Creative Commons License.
