(QMI AGENCY PHOTO)

Toronto the hungry, meet Toronto the good.

Once again, residents of Canada’s biggest city have been confronted with the issue of food carts.

Do we set them free or keep the current tight operational rein through licensing and health restrictions?

Members of a group called Food Forward want a definitive answer.

They went to City Hall last Wednesday with an “illegal” food cart of fruit to “shine a light on Toronto’s ridiculous restrictions” on street food.

“Torontonians want to end the delays that prevent food carts and trucks from selling from streets and parks so they can enjoy diverse street food this summer,” said Darcy Higgins, executive director of Food Forward.

“We are asking why Toronto residents or tourists can’t even enjoy a healthy fruit stand downtown.”

It’s a good question on a needlessly vexed issue for city fathers — and presumably mothers.

Needlessly vexed because it’s not the first time we’ve been here.

Back in 2007, Ontario eased a regulation that limited street vendors to just selling hot dogs, sausages and a handful of other pre-cooked items. The aim was to bring the world to our streets on a sizzling plate and expand the range of edible options available.

It was a great idea that was strangled at birth by official meddling.

Rather than let a new street food scene flourish and be governed by the simple laws of supply and demand, former mayor David Miller and his council thought they knew better.

Remember the A la Cart program? It was a centrally-controlled experiment that forced vendors to buy bulky standard-issue vending carts that required significant capital outlay before a single sidewalk burrito could be sold.

Epic fail.

Vendors struggled under the combined weight of the official carts and red tape. The project was the quietly killed with its creators running as fast as they could from the scene of their culinary crime.

The pressure to do something at City Hall — anything — about Toronto’s lack of street food alternatives has returned ahead of a staff report due next spring expected to bring with it a host of recommendations.

Before then, perhaps, a few sets of councillor eyes could be cast towards Singapore.

Next Friday, the tiny island nation will be holding the inaugural World Street Food Congress. It will be 10-days of eating and debating the future of this truly global cuisine style in a city where eating out isn’t so much a hobby as a national sport.

The congress will acknowledge that an overwhelming majority of the world’s population relies regularly on the biggest, most loved, yet most unstructured culinary culture for sustenance.

From curbside jeepneys in the Philippines, the kaki limas of Indonesia, falafel stands in the Middle East, food trucks and burger stalls in the U.S., street stalls in Bangkok, taco stands in Mexico, pie carts in Australia, street food inns in China and hawker stalls in Singapore and Malaysia, eating on the street is part of the pleasure of life in major cities the world over.

Singapore especially has an affinity with the food style that draws visitors from around the world.

Street food started there in the 1900s out of necessity because there was a 10:1 male-female ratio in the city.

Lacking anyone to cook their meals, the hungry but hopeless male population was forced to go outdoors and seek sustenance. The solution was on the curbside — hot, comforting and cheap.

Anyone who has been to modern Singapore knows that the food cart vendors are now offered more permanent homes at places like Newton Circus or in air-conditioned, under-cover hawker markets.

They are regulated for health and safety but still allowed to flourish with a minimum of bureaucratic interference.

Given that robust capitalism and personal endeavor form part of Singapore’s DNA, it’s no wonder food carts find a happy home there.

The city makes Toronto look positively provincial by comparison.

Here’s a list of the current food cart fare which can be sold on Toronto’s streets:

• Pre-packaged cut fruits and vegetables using only vinaigrette dips

• Whole fruits and vegetables, including corn on the cob

• Pre-packaged fruit salad

• Bagels with individual serving containers of butter, margarine, peanut butter or jam

• Pre-packaged nuts and seeds

• Pre-packaged salads containing only vegetables and/or fruits with all dressings to be pre-packaged and not requiring refrigeration

• Pre-packaged Tabbouleh salad and pita bread

• Soups

•   Pre-cooked veggie burgers

•   Coffees and teas

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/19/torontos-street-food-provincial-compared-to-other-cities

Food Forward Toronto wants more food selection on the streets. (Peter McCluskey/CBC)

The issue of selling food on the streets of Toronto has been a thorny problem for vendors and politicians over the past few years.

Businesses are lobbying for more food carts on the streets — but the city says it needs to regulate the operators to guarantee health concerns are met.

A lobby group called Food Forward Toronto wants the city to relax the rules a little and let more and different foodsellers onto the streets.

On Wednesday the group held a demonstration in front of City Hall to make the point that it’s hard to find diverse food from carts and trucks.

One of the biggest problems, they say, is the lengthy approval process and costly permits.

Darcy Higgins of Food Forward Toronto says the city should do a few things.

“One is a moratorium that prevents any new street carts downtown and also food trucks aren’t allowed to be parked or in parking lots,” said Higgins.

Food Forward Toronto says it wants to see more diverse carts, but the city says there are already too many downtown.

“There needs to be a role for the city to say is the food safe, people need to know that … how do you stop people fighting over the same street corner, because some corners are more popular than others. All these issues need to be resolved,” said Coun. Adam Vaughan.

Vaughan says the food containers at Scadding Court near Dundas and Bathurst are an ideal model.

The city has set up shipping containers and turned them into speciality kitchens.

Diona Joyce paid a one-time fee for a business licence and rents her spot for $16 a day.

“A shipping container it looks like a food truck but we don’t have wheels,” she said.

The city says it wants to approve more trucks — but in areas that aren’t as densely served,.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2013/05/15/toronto-food-carts.html

Food truck worker Ronald Cockburn waits for lunchtime customers at the All Class Mobile Kitchen near the corner of Queen Street East and Jarvis Street in Toronto, Monday afternoon, June 25, 2012.
(Aaron Lynett / National Post files)

Piles of plump grapes, oranges and granny-smith apples spilled across a red-and-white checkered tablecloth outside City Hall Wednesday — a food stand effectively banned by municipal regulations.

Local advocacy group Food Forward bypassed the rules by offering the fruits to passersby for free instead of selling them, a demonstration aiming to highlight the absurdity of the city’s controversial limits on food carts.

Councillor Josh Colle, who stopped by to snag an apple, blasted the city for dragging its heels on the file.

“It’s unfortunate that for so long we’ve had this burgeoning industry that really City Hall has kind of kept down,” Mr. Colle said.

“It’s a matter of red tape and overmanaging this… I think it speaks to how antiquated some of our rules are. It’s 2013; puritan Toronto rears its ugly head again. Let’s just get over ourselves and open it up to these entrepreneurs.”

Although council voted last year to allow existing food carts to offer certain healthier items, there is a moratorium on new street food downtown, and rules against parking food carts on streets or sidewalks. A report on Toronto’s street-food program is due out in 2014, but members of Food Forward believe change should come sooner.

“In a multicultural city like Toronto that values different food and health, I’d like to see things like this available,” said the group’s executive director, Darcy Higgins.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/15/advocacy-group-hands-out-fruit-in-front-of-city-hall-to-protest-limits-on-toronto-food-trucks/

BlogTO has added a companion iPhone app to its torontofoodtrucks.ca portal. The locally-designed app allows frequenters of Toronto’s now-famous and ubiquitous food trucks to locate their favourite cuisine, be it cupcakes or tacos, across the city.

The interface is sleek and responsive, and the various food trucks are well distinguished from one another with high-resolution images, contact numbers and other important details. You can add favourites to quickly access the location of your ideal take-out, or browse through the growing list of fare.

Because Freshdaily, the curators of BlogTO and creators of the Toronto Food Truck portal, are pushing for the service to be a bit like an independent social network, you can take a photo or your food or the truck itself, add filters to your image and post it to the relevant section. All comments and photos are linked up to your BlogTO account, and you can share photos to Facebook or Twitter.

While it may have a limited audience, it’s a loyal one, and we’d love to see it hit Android sometime soon.

Download Toronto Food Trucks for iPhone.

Via: BlogTO

http://mobilesyrup.com/2013/05/10/blogto-releases-iphone-app-to-track-down-torontos-food-trucks/

If the Liberty Village BIA gets its way, Toronto’s food trucks will never operate within the boundaries of the neighbourhood. The Gourmet Gringos truck was asked last week to vacate its spot on the Cinema Nightclub property.

The story largely revolves around a convoluted he-said she-said situation. Lynn Clay, the executive director of the Liberty Village BIA, says it was the nightclub who asked Gourmet Gringos to leave the property. But Krystian Catala, the owner of the truck, says he had a friendly relationship with the property, and they were actually under firm pressure from the BIA to ask him to move.

“They’re saying food trucks take people away from local businesses, but there are studies saying they make people come out to the neighbourhood and make streets safer,” Catala says.

He’s right, Clay does feel that food trucks detract customers from restaurants in the area, and she says many restaurant owners have told her they feel the same way.

“It does absolutely have an impact on business. [The Liberty Village BIA] is not against food trucks, but we can’t endorse them within our boundaries.”

The BIA only controls operations on public property, not private property. So there’s a chance the trucks could still operate in the neighbourhood, if someone offers up the space.

But Clay feels that because the BIA levy its members pay goes toward beautifying the area and making it more desirable, food trucks shouldn’t be able to move in and capitalize on the work that was done without having contributed to it in the first place.

Catala, on the other hand, sees it as a non-issue. He doesn’t see food trucks and restaurants as competitors, but rather as separate entities that can peacefully co-exist.

“It’s not like there’s this mad competition. People who want to go to a restaurant go to a restaurant; they’re not going to go to a food truck.”

He sees food truck set-ups as a good way to foster community and bring more people outside to get to know one another and actually chat each other up, rather than lunching alone at their desks. He says that because food trucks bring more people to an area, they’re actually doing their part to contribute to the community. (They buy produce and other ingredients from local businesses whenever they can, too).

Catala, who has a five-day old baby, says he’s willing to go beyond that level of contribution and work out a fee to be paid to the BIA in order to operate in the neighbourhood. He’s put a major investment into his business, and he’s willing to compromise in order to operate it the way he sees fit.

“These are restaurants on wheels. They’re $100,000 investments. People have second mortgages on these things, it’s our livelihood.

But Clay seems pretty set on her decision not to endorse food truck operations in the area. She says there are bylaws in place defining who can be a member of the BIA, and there’s no classification for food trucks. She says she understands that they need to operate—after all, they’re businesses, too—just not on her turf.

The owner of Fat Bastard Burrito Co., Sal Zahid, is at least one person who agrees with Clay. “From a negative point of view, it does affect revenue. Every dollar counts,” he says.

“But they’re out there to support their families, just like we’re out there to support our families.”

Although Zahid would rather not have food trucks stationed near his restaurant and drawing away potential customers, his tone sounds really similar to Catala’s. It’s clear Catala sees food trucks as a different kind of operation drawing a different kind of customer.

I think Lynn Clay and Krystian Catala should sit down over a beer and some fish tacos and hash this out. It seems like there must be a way to please everybody and let food trucks reign free.

http://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2013/05/why_are_food_trucks_not_welcome_in_liberty_village/

On May 2nd Bloor Hot Docs is celebrating their 20^th anniversary by hosting a free outdoor screening in the Burwash Quad at University of Toronto. The Feisty Jack and Fidel Gastro will be there to offer a pre-screening meal to everyone attending as of 7PM.

Who needs popcorn when you can have gourmet truck food!

The Burwash Quad is located next to Victoria College on the UofT campus, but if it rains, the screening will be moved indoors to the Rogers Industry Centre next to the outdoor venue

http://torontofoodtrucks.ca/food-trucks-at-hot-docs-free-outdoor-screening

Buster’s Sea Cove’s lobster roll is one of the highlights of this truck’s menu.

As the trend grows, food trucks are increasingly becoming an essential culinary experience in many cities. Toronto’s food trucks are no exception.

Click here to see the Toronto’s Best Food Trucks Slideshow!

With a long-time reputation as a Canadian food capital, the city is home to nearly 30 different trucks, and according to some estimates, this is only the beginning.

Some of these trucks are extensions of a permanent location, while others only come in mobile form. A few trucks are open, rolling, and serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus, while some only offer dessert. With offerings ranging from fresh fish tacos to champagne buttercream cupcakes, chances are there’s an offering for every craving.

We’ve listed our top five here, but be sure to check out theToronto Food Truck website for up-to-date info about trucks and their locations. Feeling inspired? They even have a guide to help youstart your own food truck in Toronto.

http://www.thedailymeal.com/toronto-s-best-food-trucks

Sure signs that spring has come to Toronto: west-end hipsters and white squirrels recolonize Trinity Bellwoods; the Toronto Sun starts covering coyote sightings and food trucks dot downtown streets (and Twitter). The newest roving restaurant is Crossroads Diner, a truck serving kitschy diner food, like a cheeseburger homage to Pulp Fiction, chicken Caesear salads and an Elvis-inspired peanut butter and banana sandwich with bacon. Unlike a classic diner, however, the owner David Gleeson is using Ontario ingredients, including grass-fed beef from The Butcher’s Son and Mennonite chicken. Suited-up Bay Streeters beware: a sustainably caught catfish po’ boy is no less sloppy. [Post City]

http://www.torontolife.com/daily-dish/restaurants-dish/2013/05/01/crossroads-50s-themed-food-truck/

1. Blue Donkey Streatery

Mississauga’s first food truck serves classic Greek-Canadian food, like greasy and delicious chicken gyros on a warm pita, stuffed with tomato, onion, tzatziki and, thank Hellas, hot French fries.@bluedonkeytruck

2. El Gastronomo Vagabundo

Adam Hynam-Smith and fiancée Tamara Jensen sell a killer cod taco with smoked pineapple sauce, topped with coconut sour cream. It nabbed the top prize at the inaugural Awestruck food truck awards. @elgastronomo

3. Hogtown Smoke

It’s no wonder Hogtown Smoke draws huge lines—the heady hickory fumes from its smoker encircle two blocks. Each luscious sandwich comes piled with brisket, pulled pork or tequila chicken. Order sides of cornbread and slaw to cut through the rich, sticky-sweet meat. @hogtownsmoke

4. Buster’s Sea Cove

An offshoot of the St. Lawrence Market fish fry, this truck serves an excellent Nova Scotia–style lobster roll. The chunks of claw are tossed with mayo, celery, chives and lemon juice, then stuffed into a top-loader bun. It comes with a pickle and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. @bustersseacove

5. Gourmet Gringos

Krystian Catala, whose great-grandma taught him to make Argentine empanadas by hand, teamed up with his best friend, Terry Nicolaou, for Gourmet Gringos. They fold their pockets, stuffed with beef, onion and egg, just like she used to, and serve a mean Baja fish taco, too. @GourmetGringos

http://www.torontolife.com/daily-dish/restaurants-dish/2013/04/25/best-toronto-food-trucks/

This Saturday marks the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 and six of Toronto’s food trucks will be at Fork York to be part of the celebration. They will be serving up some of your favourites from 12PM to 4PM at Garrison Commons.

Here are the gourmet trucks who will be taking part at the weekend event:

Dobro Jesti
The Food Dudes
The Feisty Jack
Hogtown Smoke
Pretty Sweet
Rome’N Chariot

Garrison Commons is located at 250 Fork York Blvd

http://torontofoodtrucks.ca/food-trucks-to-help-celebrate-history-at-fork-york