A quick taste of Toronto

I don’t know if Toronto has an official tourism tagline, but maybe they should consider stealing IHOP’s: “Come hungry. Leave happy.”

On a recent visit, Marion and I did just that. I’ll get to the food in a moment, but first here’s how Canada’s largest city fed our urban souls. When we’re traveling, some of the things we look for in cities we visit are great museums [art and otherwise], active gallery and music scenes, cool shops, a diverse, lively street culture, walkability and, if possible, decent public transportation.

Toronto delivered on all counts. We parked our car at our downtown hotel and didn’t touch it again until we were headed back to Chicago days later. Much of what we wanted to do and see was walking distance, down streets that invited and encouraged walking. And day or night, we were rarely alone—even on Sunday morning, downtown streets were bustling. One day when we were headed further afield, we took streetcars and subways, both clean and efficient.

Museumwise, the Art Gallery of Ontario is always a treat, especially its impressive collection of plaster originals by British sculptor Henry Moore. And a real surprise for me was the Royal Ontario Museum, kind of a mash up of world cultures and natural history. Their collection of Chinese artifacts is particularly remarkable, although not surprising—the city’s diverse population is 11.4 percent Chinese. Their dinosaur exhibit feels more like real science and less like infotainment than some other museums we’ve visited. But our biggest “Aha!” of the day was a canoe. Specifically, a Maître canoe [Canot du Maître] , designed by Joseph Le Maître. It was huge—11 meters long and proportionally wide and deep. As Marion put it, it was a truck. Suddenly, the voyageurs’ ability to transport a season’s worth of trapped furs and other goods over great distances and huge, sometimes dangerous bodies of water was explained.

MOCCA, The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, is a smaller museum but no less a treat. The big surprise was that the hockey-themed exhibit on display at the time included some of the most compelling work we saw anywhere on our visit.

Toronto is full of surprises. It’s smaller than Chicago, but at times felt more cosmopolitan to me. The city is more diverse than New York City even; 49.9 percent of its population is foreign born. And this diversity isn’t just measured in demographics. You see it walking down the street, with clusters of teens and young adults more often than not being a mix of Asians, Blacks and Whites. Cool shops, clubs and restaurants abound, particularly along Queen Street where they stretch seemingly endlessly in both directions. And none of this coolness and big city energy seems to come at the expense of civility. People everywhere were unfailingly polite and often genuinely friendly.

But I promised you food, didn’t I? Food is another way we measure places we visit. Toronto scored quite well here too. So did Marion—she tracked down a number of the food highlights of our trip. Here are a few of those highlights.

Niagara Street Cafe. Tucked in a quiet little neighborhood just off King Street, this cozy place offers up a seasonal menu of naturally raised meats, organic produce and dairy, local artisan products and, according to their website, “fish not usually seen on menus.” We ate here our first night in Toronto. Our table wasn’t ready when we arrived, and we wanted to spend some time in the cool night air after our brisk walk from the hotel, so our server set up some chairs for us in the closed-for-the-season patio. From there, we watched the apparently hourly light show on the top of the CN Tower. We took no photos of or notes on our food—I just don’t do that. So I can’t tell you what we ate [there was also wine involved], but it was delicious.

Oyster Boy. We just happened on this place. More accurately, we passed it more than a couple of times on our treks up and down Queen Street. Marion is a huge fan of oysters—I like them well enough. Walking back from some galleries on our way to the hotel, with plans to dine out later, I saw Marion hesitate for a nanosecond as we passed the storefront oyster bar. That was sign enough for me.

Soon we were seated at the bar of this clean, contemporary, unpretentious place, with the owner shucking and plating oysters right in front of us. Vague plans for a couple/few oysters morphed into a dozen or more, washed down with crisp, cold pinot grigio. The oysters were briny fresh and delicious and included varieties not always found here in the Midwest. Oyster Boy also has sandwiches, soups, salads and even steak frites on their menu. But that afternoon, the oysters were why we were there.

The Black Hoof. Blame this one on mado. The Chicago restaurant dedicated to locally sourced food, housemade charcuterie and all things meat has driven us to Google “charcuterie [city name]” whenever we travel. We struck gold in this black-walled spot with a loud soundtrack [that actually provided a “cone of silence,” blocking conversation from other tables, even though they’re squeezed close together in the narrow room], enjoying the best meal of the trip. Chef and co-owner Grant van Gameren literally cranks out charcuterie with a hand grinder and an electric stove on the premises. Partner Jennifer Agg works the front of the house. She seated us and checked in and chatted with us from time to time throughout dinner.

And what a dinner. The Black Hoof is sometimes called a tapas restaurant, and small plates are meant to be shared. We split a generous charcuterie tray served on a wood plank and arranged from mild to intense, an order of eggplant gnocchi and a falling-apart tender tongue en brioche sandwich. Everything was wonderful. And when it was clear there was no room for dessert, Ms. Agg treated us to glasses of sherry, a perfect dessert-like finish to our meaterrific dinner.

St. Lawrence Market. The final highlight isn’t a restaurant. It’s a food market. I had heard of this market before—heard unanimous songs of praise, in fact. It sounded lovely, but honestly, I thought how good could a food market be? The answer was simple: It. Is. Amazing.

My response to the St. Lawrence Market was immediate and elemental. I was ready to move to Toronto. In St. Louis, I grew up with Soulard Farmers Market, a cherished weekend ritual with a few shops open during the week. And in Chicago, we have seasonal farmers markets on weekends. Apparently, one or two have indoor winter quarters.

But St. Lawrence Market shows what can happen when a city is committed to making good food available to its citizens. Established in 1803, it is owned and operated by the city of Toronto. The north building hosts a farmers market on Saturdays, as the spot has since 1803. On Sundays, it’s home to an antiques flea market.

The south building, the one shown in the pictures in this post, is open five days a week, with two floors of more than 50 vendors selling meats, seafood, cheeses, breads and other foodstuffs as well as kitchen supplies and more. The quality of foods sold was unmistakable throughout the market, as was the rich variety. And the prices, while in keeping with the quality, were reasonable. Every city should have a market like this. Selfishly speaking, they can start with Chicago.