New York Times showcases Toronto’s ‘ethnic buffet’
Posted March 9, 2014 3:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The New York Times travel section ran a lengthy piece last month discussing our city’s vast array of multicultural food and neighbourhoods, comparing it to New York and noting that the food is in and of itself enough of an attraction to warrant multiple trips to the city.
“The truth is that what I really like to do in Toronto — besides walking around and exploring — is to eat,” Francine Prose writes.
“One paradox of Toronto is that even as the city enables new arrivals to assimilate into Canadian life — people talk about how a certain neighborhood was originally home to immigrants from one area, who then moved on to a more prosperous district, making room for the next wave of people from somewhere else — its ethnic neighborhoods are strongly evocative of their residents’ countries of origin, and the shops (and most notably the restaurants) seem more authentic than they do in other cities to which immigrants have imported their culture and their cuisine.”
Beyond this, the article notes that the food in Toronto echoes that of our diversity and heritage.
It explores Kensington Market, our many Chinatowns, Little Portugal and Koreatown, and points out emerging food hubs in the surrounding area.
“Had I eaten in Little Iran, up in North York, or visited Mississauga, the near-suburb that has become home for a huge variety of Toronto’s ethnic groups, and where the food — people kept telling me — was even better than it is nearer downtown? Had I been to Markham, where there was a newer Chinatown, and an Indian neighborhood that outdid the Bazaar?”
To which the reporter says, “I’ll simply have to do all that, the next time I return.”
Read the full article here.
