A Taste of The World Walks

01/04/2020

If you’re in Toronto, try to catch this fantastic exhibit that’ll be on until January 19th, 2020 at the Gardiner Museum !

Food and dining were transformed in Europe during the age of Enlightenment. These profound changes continue to resonate today. What many of us eat, the way food is prepared, and how we dine continues to be influenced by radical changes that occurred in France between 1650 and the French Revolution i...

12/12/2019

For food history buffs.... Enjoy!

With the holidays fast approaching, two interns at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University's Rubenstein Library turned to the center’s collection of vintage advertising cookbooks for inspiration.

11/26/2019

An insightful article by

I’ve been an active member of Tourism Toronto from 1994-2004, and witnessed firsthand, the beauty and power of three levels of government acknowledging tourism’s value and worth, the financial support that stem from the perceived value, and then sad decline with subsequent cutbacks, leading to skeletal staffing.

Hope that we see changes in 2020 and into the future!

A new study shows the true power of tourism in Toronto. As anyone who checks in on this site now and then can attest, I’m a big believer in tourism as an economic driver, and it’s a con…

10/29/2019

Halloween falls right in the traditional cabbage and kale harvest season.

The leafy green once foretold the future.

09/05/2019

Who can still recall getting a whiff of durian’s aroma (if you love it)/stench (if you hate it) when the wind switches as we approach one of our fav Asian grocery stores along our Toronto’s Second Chinatown Food Tours? Definitely no fence sitters, each and every occasion! 😋 😷 🤤 🤮😋

How a clever Malaysian farmer has made a fortune off the durian, the pungent tropical fruit that attracts equal parts adoration and revulsion.

09/05/2019

Cassava or Yucca anyone? Countless times along our Kensington Food Roots Tours, we would stop by Caribbean Corner and handle this waxy tuber. Folks might recall, my tongue-in-cheek quips regarding one of Agatha Christie’s favourite method of murdering an unsuspecting person. Killer dish takes a whole new meaning here....

Cassava is very dangerous if not prepared properly, so how did people develop and share that knowledge?

08/28/2019

End of an era. Toronto’s second Chinatown Food History is slipping away at an accelerating rate...,.

I still a much cherished architectural piece from Bright Pearl Restaurant thanks to owner of Moonbean Coffee Company .... I guess it’s time, once again, to grab my iPhone and dash over, to snap Archival photos. Who would like to go for a Last Dim Sum ?

John Higgins Christine Walker Patricia Wong Scott Greenwood Anita Stewart Sarah B Hood Sally Dutru Kelly Len Senater Karen Bekker Karim Bhaloo Helly Flowers Lori Gibson Angela Wood

The developer behind a proposal for a 13-storey mixed-use building hopes the longtime dim sum restaurant will return as a tenant in the future development.

06/27/2019

All aboard! Adieu Toronto and here we come Montreal on VIA Rail Canada !

No private/bespoke tours/chocolate tastings in Toronto from today, June 27th to July 2nd, 2019 as I’m off for wee bit of R&R, belated wedding anniversary and birthday celebrations with hubby over the Canada Day long weekend.

06/01/2019

Ironically the original plaques (both sans pictures, one in Chinese characters, other in English) were nearby where the woman is seen strolling in the background of this photograph.
I snapped a colour photo, taken back around 1993-5 just in case something happens to the plaques (somehow someone managed to ply away the English version). These plaques were obscure partially due to the fact that they laid flat, in a shaded area with wood chips and young trees. Anyway, since 1993 on they were highlighted along our Food History walking tours called Toronto’s Lost First Chinatown Food Tours (formerly called Toronto’s First & Second Chinatown Tours). We traced where the seeds of Toronto’s First Chinatown were first planted, and then uprooted several times, to drift north and west, ending up in what folks now dubs, “Old Chinatown”. Talk to any surviving old timers aka “Low-Wah Cues” who emigrated from the Canton (Guanzhong) region of China in the early 1950s, they remember very well, a thriving Chinatown, once on the present-day grounds of Nathan Philip Square.

04/26/2019

On April 24, 1942....

On this day in 1942, Lucy Maud Montgomery passed away in Toronto, Ontario. In memoriam, this is her poem “April Evening” that was published in the Canadian Magazine in April, 1911.

03/15/2019

Portrait of Charles Dickens, painted after his trip to the America and Canada (Halifax, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Port Hope, Kingston, & Montreal) and while he wrote A Christmas Carol !

Miniature to go on show as part of effort to raise £180,000 needed to buy it

03/12/2019

02/26/2019

I’m having a flashback to my mom’s Cantonese style dumplings made in my childhood as I read this....

As for her mom's signature dumpling recipe, for which the animated short is named? Shi says that her family likes to keep it old-school. "She won't use a food processor or a meat grinder for the pork filling," Shi says. "She'll use an old-school cleaver and just chop everything, throw in chives and garlic, mince everything together, and chop for ten minutes."

Who else would like to join me when Bao gets screened beginning June 15th? Perhaps, movie and a Chinese dinner with chocolate tastings?

🎥 🍿 🥟 🥟 🥟 🍫🎥

The animated short will hit the big screen alongside 'The Incredibles 2'—and Food & Wine caught up with Director Domee Shi to get the scoop on her family's dumpling recipe. Here it is (it's adorable!).

01/26/2019

Who remembers the annual multi-course banquets I curated?

Go all out for Chinese New Year and plan a gathering at a Chinese banquet hall—don’t worry we’ll tell you how.

01/12/2019

Kensington is changing. Noticed the changes in the type of awnings now allowed by the City? The sudden disappearance of produce bins in front of shops like Salamanca ? Read to stay updated. What’s next?

Few things define Kensington Market more than the bins of nuts and fruits jutting out onto Baldwin Street outside Salamanca Dry Foods Store. The l...

01/07/2019

Happy New Year!

What better way to kick off the new year with our first share. A podcast. Tune in to hear NishDish Marketeria ‘s owner Johl Ringuette talk about his journey in creating access to Indigenous Food Sovereignty in Toronto.

On today’s episode I sit down with Johl Whiteduck Ringuette of Nish Dish Marketeria and Catering in Toronto, Ontario. We are sipping on fresh water from the café at CSI Annex and we managed to book…

01/04/2019

Ontario butter scene.... What interesting timing, as I spied some of these butters last month, and wondered who are behind them.... then we get this fabulous article in the National Post.

‘I saw this crazy-yellow product,’ says chef Rob Gentile. ‘And I looked at (my chefs) and said, ‘What the hell is this?’’

12/01/2018

A step back in time.... check out Lost Chinese restaurants and see how many bring back fond memorie!

c.1910: Interior of Diana Sweets Tea Rooms, 187 Yonge St., Toronto. Postcard by Novelty Mfg. & Art Co. Ltd., Montreal. - Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Baldwin Collection, PC 326.

11/21/2018

Who else is going to Montreal before the end of 2018? If you love food history, you might find this exhibit fascinating. Here’s the sweet deal, it’s a free exhibit !

La version française suit The items in this exhibition have been selected from the McGill Rare Books and Special Collection’s cookbook collection. The exhibition presents culinary literature published in Montreal during the 20th century. Eating, in all its facets, changed immensely over the cours...

11/03/2018

Who remembers my Cool Sundae bike tours, curated in the hot month of July? Circa 1993-1999. Lucky folks savoured equal portions of food for thoughts and the palate. I designed and curated each outing. We would explore Toronto’s multicultural cool treats in different neighbourhoods while unearthing the layers of history.
I still have fond memories of us sitting around the table, and sharing a medley of “cooling” treats at the Sicilian Ice Cream: Tartufo, Granita, and Gelato ! Thank Maria Galipo for fond memories!

Another new mural in Little Italy! Check out this one by artist Paul Glynn-Williams in the alley behind Gato Nero at College and Crawford.

10/26/2018

As a food Historian, I’m fascinated with the changes in food practices that will take place....

“The owners of two iconic and high-production bagel producers in Mile End, St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel, have both indicated in the past that wood-burning is not essential to their production and would not change the product.

St-Viateur Bagel, which has eight facilities on the island of Montreal, has been experimenting with a hybrid oven, fuelled by gas and wood, at its Dollard-des-Ormeaux location and owner Nicolò Morena told the Montreal Gazette in June of 2017 that bagels from that oven are indistinguishable for those cooked in wood-fired ovens. “

Beloved institutions will probably have to convert to gas-fuelled ovens in order to adhere to city bylaw targeting wood-particle pollution.

10/18/2018

Fundraiser tour of Kensington. I’m thinking of supporting joining it, once I clear my calendar. Why?

One of the oldest and most distinctive churches in the city, St. Stephen’s-in-the-Fields contains windows created by three Toronto firms: Robert McCausland Limited, Dominion Stained Glass, and N.T. Lyon Studio. The windows are now in a dangerously fragile state. Funds raised by this event will go towards restoration of these windows.

http://www.kmhs.ca/event/a-walk-in-support-of-st-stephen-in-the-fields/

07/06/2018

Thank you Anita Stewart of Food Day Canada for sharing this lovely tribute. I’ve had the pleasure and honour of crossing paths with Carol Ferguson, a Canadian legion, who will be missed.

04/19/2018

Sssssh! Spring Equinox is around the corner... Will there be more haunted toasts as the period around May 1st approaches?

04/17/2018

If we created video like this one, we’d honour Canada’s chop suey connections with the construction of our national railroad and the Chinatowns across Canada.

We’d start in Victoria, BC, the oldest Chinatown in Canada....

04/13/2018

Death and dying.... simply talking about dying, is all so important. Something guests reflect over on, whenever I curate one of our Haunted Kensington, Chinatown & Grange Tours, as we talk about the diverse death rituals, and the cultural taboos....

This is an interesting subject to watch and share.

04/11/2018

"We have to be culinary historians, so that we understand what we eat and where it comes from."- Chef Christina Arokiasamy

Ignorance is exactly what Chef Christina Arokiasamy, host of the Cooking Channel's The Malaysian Kitchen and author of a cookbook by the same name, sees as the root of the controversy. "The judges didn't understand the dish itself," says the Kuala Lumpur native.

What’s the solution?

When a Malaysian contestant was booted off the cooking show because her take on chicken rendang, a classic Malay dish, wasn't "crispy" enough, it sparked a controversy highlighting cultural ignorance.

04/09/2018

For the food history buffs, especially those who attended our Kensington Food Roots Tours and were introduced to Hannah Glasse.

There’s an honorary mention in this fine article.

Hannah Glasse published the first curry recipe in English in 1747 in The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. Her interpretation was more of a "gentle, aromatic stew" than a fiery vindaloo, but it featured curry powder as a key ingredient.

From British colonials who fell in love with "curry powder" in India, to Koreans who encountered the taste in Imperial Japan, the story of curry is one of globalization writ on a dish.

03/08/2018

Long time Toronto residents might recall the sight, sounds and smells of the old Stockyard. Much has changed, and for the better.
Out of curiosity, I went with a friend in mid-February 2018. Both of us are dim sum fans. Pressed for time? Know what you want/like?

Now that's "foodertainment"!