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Annotated list of websites about food, restaurants, cooking, and eating.
food submenu: food | des moines | london | toronto | venice
Toronto
The city of Toronto is particularly rich in multi-cultural influcences. Eighty percent of the population is immigrant or first generation immigrant. Best of all, the city boasts a healthy mix of world food, accessible to locals and visitors alike, from fresh dim sum in the heart of Chinatown, to raw milk cheese and summer sausage in St. Lawrence Market, from the Taste of the Danforth annual food fair, which attracts over one million attendees over one weekend, to the restaurants run by talented chefs such as Susur Lee or Oliver Bonacini. It should come as no surprise then that Toronto attacts foodies, cooks, food writers, and visitors to try its wealth of food offerings. It's hard to find such breadth and quality of internationality anywhere else.
Major Toronto Food Information Resources
Before my information becomes too outdated, here are the major ways I kept track of the Toronto food scene while living there.
- Toronto Life Eating and Drinking Guide. The best overall guide to Toronto's restaurants. Especially good for the higher end of the market. Comes out sometime in autumn.
- eGullet's Toronto, Ontario, and Central Canada discussion board. eGullet in general is a fabulous place to read up on and discuss food online. A fair sampling of the world's great chefs and food critics hang out there too. From locals to celebrities, the people there care about their food.
- Gremolata. Website updated weekly (and you can have the weekly headlines emailed to you). Good for a sampling of Toronto's overall food culture, from farmers' markets to special tasting meals to interviews with culinary instructors and chefs.
- Toronto Star's weekly restaurant review. One review a week from Canada's major Toronto-based newspaper. You can subscribe to the reviews via email for free. (This is how I follow them.)
- Toronto Life. The monthly high-end culture and gossip magazine offers good analyses of Toronto food trends, major restaurant openings and closings, and reviews. Especially good for the higher end of the market.
- Now. The free weekly magazine offers several reviews every week of the city's restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, and even street stands. Occasionally, there's an inset with news about other restaurant openings and closings and chefs moving venues. I didn't always agree with their reviews, but after a while, I had a good sense of where they were coming from, which meant their reviews were still useful to me. Especially good for the lower end of the market.
- The Livejournal community Toronto Eats isn't very active, but now and again there're some interesting posts to the group.
- I've also been following a few Toronto-based food blogs. Edible Tulip regularly contemplates parts of Toronto's food scene. A la cuisine mentions Toronto things occasionally, but the blog is really more worth following for the spectacular cooking than the local references.
Chowhound also has a lively discussion board for Toronto, but I've never found Chowhound very easy to use.
Also, since I left, there's a new food magazine out: City Bites.
(I originally posted this list here in my weblog.)
Also since I left...
I have written about food in Toronto frequently in the past. Read more of my writings about Toronto food.
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