TORONTO — Despite threatening skies and a cool wind, almost 1,000 food lovers paid $250 per ticket yesterday, June 12, to get a taste of the city at Toronto Taste, a fundraiser to support Second Harvest.
Queen’s Park Crescent, south of Bloor Steet, was closed to cars and pedestrians as more than 60 top chefs took up residence under tents to prepare a selection of their restaurant’s top dishes. The event spilled over into the Royal Ontario Museum as chefs, winemakers and brewers highlighted some of their most popular dishes.
The culinary extravaganza featured samples from top toques, including Mark McEwan, Michael Smith and J.P. Challet. Among the dishes featured were fish tacos from Ted Corrado, C5’s chef; deep-fried baccala with tripe ragu and aioli from Rocco Agostino at Enoteca Sociale; and crab cakes with rouille sauce from Ici Bistro, helmed by J.P. Challet. On the beverage side, participants included Southbrook Vineyards, Creekside Estate Winery, Henry of Pelham and Mill St. Brewing.Attendees were treated to a live auction featuring a 24” built-in Freedom Wine Preservation Column from Thermidor, valued at $7,899; the first barrel of wine ever auctioned off in Toronto featuring a barrel of David’s Block Chardonnay 2010 from Tawse Winery (with a yield of 300 bottles of custom-labelled wine); as well as a surreal dinner with the Food Network’s Bob Blumer in L.A. Meanwhile, a Fiat 500 Sport was raffled to cap off the evening
Sponsored by Daniels, Toronto Taste has become a Toronto tradition. Founded in 1985 by Ina Andre and Joan Clayton, the duo realized good food was going to waste while people were going hungry, so they established Second Harvest. So far, the organization has diverted more than 70-million pounds of food from landfill and prevented more than 35-million pounds of CO2 equivalent emissions from entering the atmosphere.
