Toronto is a city that keeps pulling me back. I have been three times now and each time, despite wanting to return to places that I have loved on previous visits, I am drawn to new and exciting restaurant launches. There are so many to discover each time.
If you have never been, Toronto is a city that pulsates. It is bright and energetic, its tall shiny glass buildings tower over slinky trams and older buildings that have survived the test of time. Torontonians are busy and they have things to do, but they know how to eat, and they do that very well. They know good food because they have a lot of it, and standards are very high. Chefs I spoke to as I travelled Canada on my recent trip all referred to Toronto when I asked them where the most exciting food scene is right now.
The restaurant scene tells Toronto's story. Bright and exciting, it is rich with an admirably integrated immigrant culture, established and new. Torontonians form queues outside the best of the restaurants there, at evenings and for weekend brunch. I gathered recommendations from Canadian chefs and food writers and did my own internet sleuthing – by the time I got to Toronto I had a very long list. Visiting on the month of Canada's 150th birthday, I was excited to see how the city had evolved. It was very tough to choose where to eat.
Indigenous Canadian restaurants were top of my list. There are over 1.4 million indigenous Canadians in Canada, many of which live in the north, however twenty-two percent of the indigenous population lives in Ontario (figures from 2011), of which ten percent are in Toronto. In recent years they have made their mark on the dining scene there, opening some of the most interesting places that I ate in.
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