The Women's Post thinks The Edible City is 'good enough to eat'
I bet you thought Paris was the undisputed culinary capital of the world, right? Not so fast, Madame, says journalist and bon vivant Andrew Braithwaite. One of the contributors to an intriguing new anthology, The Edible City: Toronto’s Food from Farm to Fork, Braithwaite and his fellow gourmand and wife left our fair city for France’s gastronomic mecca a few years back. Since then, the cosmopolitan couple have found themselves – as well as their highly refined palates – more than a little homesick.
The sheer breadth of our pan-cultural cuisine leaves Paris in the dust, he writes. Despite France’s colonial history there, Toronto offers Vietnamese dining at a superior level. From Jamaican patties to Sri Lankan hoppers, from Korean bulgogi to Greek souvlaki, our cadre of international chefs do “a great many things very, very well.” Braithwaite’s essay reinforces one of the key messages of this informative book – part of the uTOpia series of books celebrating Toronto – when it comes to food, our city has a lot to be proud of.
And as almost 50 contributors attest over the course of 300 pages, Toronto’s world-class capabilities extend far beyond the elite realm of haute cuisine. When it comes to making healthy and nutritious food affordable and available to as many people as possible, we’re light years ahead of many of our peers around the world. According to the Toronto Food Policy Council’s Wayne Roberts, our city’s strength is the ability to collaborate – organics-loving foodies, radical vegetarians, activist chefs, and environmental stewards have all learned to cooperate in ways rarely seen in other large cities.
Editors Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox assembled short articles addressing almost every aspect of Toronto food culture into a volume whose eclecticism works in its favour. Cleverly, they sorted the contents in a manner mirroring a ristorante menu, from antipasti to dolce – inviting readers to pick and choose their own full-course meal based on personal appetites. For example, history buffs can learn about Toronto’s early Jewish Market and the first salt wells in the nearby Niagara region from writer Sarah B. Hood, or read Chris Hardwicke’s account of the recent return of St. Andrew’s Market, which first opened to the public 150 years ago.
People passionate about the politics of dining will discover the potent results of local school-breakfast programs, read about the pleasures and dangers of clandestine shopping for illegal free-range eggs, and get the scoop on Canada’s secret shame – the abuse of the migrant fruit pickers who make your delicious peach cobbler so inexpensive. If you need a bit of comic relief or a fantastical moment after some of the book’s heavier revelations, turn to Kathryn Borel Jr.’s hilarious treatise on sex, drugs, and how to truss a roast chicken; or poet R.M. Vaughan’s manifesto told from the point of view of an enormous and very opinionated rat scurrying through our city’s streets.
Whether the focus is activist ardour or personal memoir, a very high percentage of the book’s contributors dig deep and offer touching results. Rea McNamara, for instance, provides more than a surefire roti recipe; she serves up a heartfelt remembrance of family, community, and the many meanings of home that takes the reader from the shores of Trinidad to the corner of Dupont and Bathurst. All in all, anyone hungering for food for thought will come away from The Edible City richly rewarded and heartily satisfied.
