TORONTO — Canada’s first-ever outdoor ethnic food-and-wine festival, Spring into Spice, is returning to Toronto on May 11th from noon to 10 p.m. and last week, media were treated to a sneak peak of some of the food-and-wine pairings on offer at the festival.
Held at Sommelier Factory on Richmond St. in Toronto, the media event featured a five-course tasting menu curated by chef Rachel Adjei of the The Abibiman Project, a Toronto-based initiative aimed at using food as a way to bring people together and make an impact that would bring about a positive change.
The event was hosted by Beverly Crandon, a CMS-certified sommelier and founder of the Spice Food & Wine Group, the force behind Spring into Spice. The festival, happening at the Fort York National Historic Site, will give attendees the chance to experience an unusual collision of diverse wines and far-flung food. Caribbean, African, Indian, Thai and Latin American cuisines will all be paired with a diverse range of wines, instead of the tradition of rum – something that may seem innocuous but is quite irregular, according to Crandon.
“Wine is something that when you put it on the table, it brings everybody together and you start to laugh, share stories and memories are formed,” said Crandon. “And that’s what Spring into Spice is about. It’s about discovering, exploring and trying something new.”
Adjei, whose menus feature regional African cuisine, was born in Guyana, West Africa, “but I explore flavours of the entire African continent and the diaspora and beyond. And the idea is really exposing people to the diversity that exists in our food, but also the similarities and crossovers from stories like colonialism and trade and how different ingredients exist in different places.”
She said one of the themes of the festival, and her cooking philosophy, is that in cities such as Toronto where you find diversity, “there are stories that can really be told through food. And Spring into Spice is about the fact that people don’t usually think about pairing ethnic foods with wine.”
Crandon and her team from African-Caribbean and Latin roots aim to destroy pre-conceived and practiced wine-and-food notions through education and while highlighting BIPOC, gender and diversity by including people of colour, female-led wineries and immigrant proprietors all who have a compelling story. The event is a jump-off point for many of the exhibitors, highlighting their international cuisines and pairings, and is the third in a series of GTA events that’ll break tradition and make wine accessible to all.
“Go around [the festival] and build your own narrative around food and wine,” Crandon encouraged.
