Worldly Tastes Close to Home

This weekend we were lucky enough to dine on delicious Korean kalbi beef ribs, try Afghani style spiced fish, and re-connect with the tastes of Peru. The best part? All of this was within comfortable driving distance in our diverse city of Toronto.

To recap...

On Saturday night, we visited our local Korea town. Its a short little strip between the Bathurst and Christie subway stations that has an abundance of authentic Korean establishments. Here you can find restaurants that specialize in soondubu (Korean tofu stew), proper Korean barbeque (and not the unauthentic all-you-can eat style), Korean bar food (I must try the friend chicken!), little dessert houses (bite-sized redbean walnut cakes are our favourite), and even a supermarket specializing in Korean groceries! We often frequent this area when we have a hankering for some spicy Korean food.

Then on Sunday for lunch, we visited a flea market in the suburbs of Mississauga. Here we found a little food court that offered us a wide variety of flavours from around the world. In no particular order...there was*deep breath*... Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Indian, Carribean, Latin American, Fillipino, Middle Eastern cuisines and a bubble tea stand thrown in for good measure!

I ordered the pan seared fish from the Afghani counter since I had never had anything from Afghani cuisine, while Deb ordered some fried corn tortilla chicken wraps from the Latin American counter. The fish was nicely spiced with a nice hot sauce and flavourful chick peas on the side. The rice that came on the Latin America was spiced with Aji chili which was a flavour we had become very familiar with during our Peru trip. And topping all of this off was a nice refreshing...Inca Kola! Very satisfying...

I have always been told that Toronto is a very culturally diverse city, but I never really took time to think about it. While we sat in this little food court surrounded by the tastes and smells from around the world, I began to have a better appreciation of what our city has to offer. We may not have the best transportation system, the most famous arts and culture scene, or even the tallest building in the world anymore, but I can't think of another city in the world where I could sit in a small little food court with that many tastes from around the world.

ADW signing out!