This took me a while to sit down and start. I find the divide between food and the cultures that consume and create it intractable, similar to how food and medicine is impossibly linked in Chinese cuisines. I vacillated between taking a high view of food and culture, talking about the how, of course they reflect one another, a a culture develops and changes based on what food is available and how the people in a given region change themselves to better suit the meals they can contrast, but it felt overly academic and pompous, neither voices I prefer to take on. Food and the act of eating is both blessing and curse to me and to tackle the entire subject reminds me of a middle school essay: summarizing all of an epochs accomplishments and follies in three paragraphs, plus intro and conclusion, thesis of an age in the first line, please.
I was sitting in a Little Nicky’s, watching a pile of fresh mini-donuts being tossed in powdered sugar and cinnamon when I stumbled to a more personal approach. My culture of food is much more wonderous and terrifying than other cities. How I eat in Toronto is hard to mimic in different cities, and almost impossible in smaller towns.
My breakfast was eggs mixed with Korean spice pepper paste and chopped, Chinese green onion. I jump continents to Vancouver for a London Fog (earl grey tea latte) as a while away my morning. I walk past dozens of countries as I walk up to lunch, dim sum at Sky Dragon, so back to China, or westernized China. My roommates bring flat-crust pizza home from Queen Margherita, so off to the Mediterranean I go for a snack. I experiment making beef tartare, but my seasonings of lime, cilantro, and chillies strike me as distinctly more south than I’d intended.
This corroded rainbow of food we choose from isn’t available everywhere. We in Toronto are uniquely suited to trying so many more styles of cooking than other cities. You’ll probably find a sushi place of dubious quality in most other cities. There will be a pizza place, a fast food chain of burgers, a place that does faux-Irish pub food, and a coffee shop that demands better of its customers than whatever Starbucks offers. Walk along Queen or Bloor and your nose will hop country to country as aroma after changing aroma pours out from each restaurant.
Ours is a smorgasbord of a city, taking bits and pieces of everywhere, keeping some piled on a cocktail napkin while we reach for more as it passes. While I can’t pin down an essentially “Toronto” meal, I can easily point to a Toronto day of food: you’ll try the cuisine of a half-dozen different countries and walk past two dozen more before sunset. Ours is a culture of variety when we eat rather than extolling specific dishes above the rest.
Or maybe that’s just how me and friends and I eat, deciding what’s for lunch or dinner based on what we’ve had recently. No ramen, had that yesterday. Not Indian curry, had that twice this week. Jamaican roast? Brazilian fry? French mussels? We can always go for Korean, but KBBQ might be a bit much.
It feel insulting to call this city’s restaurant’s a buffet, but it feels apt; a bit of everywhere, likely not as good as where it’s from, but holding its own against everything else the global community creates.