Kensington Market food tour: Toronto, Canada’s foodie neighbourhood

by Lionel Casey

It’s easy to assume that some of the world’s genuinely incredible inventions began as something so familiar. Take the lightbulb, popularised by Thomas Edison. Just a simple filament remoted from oxygen, until zapped with an electrical current, could permit the world’s top-notch towns to be seen from space.

Or poutine. The humble french fry, bland and unappealing until slathered with a beneficiant dollop of warm cheese curd and gravy, is one of the world’s genuinely inspired (drunken) consolation ingredients.

Sat in a leather-based sales space inside Fresco’s, an eating place in Toronto’s Kensington Market area, I’m discussing the finer points of Canada’s unofficial countrywide dish with Leo Moncel, an excursion manual.

food

“There are some guidelines to getting this dish just right,” says Moncel as we stare at a mound of glistening fries served atop crimson-and-white chequered paper in a plastic basket.

“I imply that accurate fries are a given, but you must have real cheese curds and the best gravy hot sufficient to start melting the curds to offer that gooey texture and squeak. I’m not a purist but walk right out if you see an area using grated cheese. And by no means consume this anywhere with a white eating cloth; it isn’t always best dining.”

Moncel is leading us at the Made in Canada meals excursion, celebrating Canada’s culinary icons in the Kensington Market district, the most ethnically numerous region within the country’s most ethnically diverse town.

Settled by waves of European immigrants beginning in the 1850s, it became, to start with, an unwelcoming spot for outsiders, with many suffering to locate employment. Consequently, some began creating accessible organizations selling meals and wares from a table in front of their houses, many of which, step by step, morphed into shops and more big corporations.

By the Sixties, the vicinity had become a longtime launchpad for immigrants, from Cantonese to the Caribbean, Jewish, Latin American, and, more importantly, with each wave leaving its cultural mark. Today, in an area of only some rectangular blocks, it is thought that 87 unique cultural organizations are represented.

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