Trading Up

Just when I'd given up looking for a distress deal on one of the older model trailers recently booted off the grey and pleasant lands of Mississauga, I found what I was looking for. Well it looks like one - or maybe its only my high school portable. Yes thats it, stuck on what the old delivery entrance of the ROM.

Guess one man's eyesore is another man's aluminum siding. But the new owners are so very proud of their Tilt-A-Whirled mobile home that they've given it a fancy name and stuffed it full of their best loved collection.

They want people to stand back, way back - out of the black hole, bereft of ancient lights, so they can marvel how spiffied up is the old place. They have even "invited" the street vendors to take a hike, apparently fearing that someone visiting the venerable ROM might have a childhood flashback to more linearly constructed days of old - when a flotilla of popcorn vendors could be found floating around its much grander old primary portal.

Toronto Cafeteria Matron

Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor v1. London. Griffen, Bohn and Company, Stationer's Hall Court, 1851, which I was commended to read almost 30 years ago in a university level "humanities" course, lists the pret a manger fare of the "The Street-sellers of Eatables and Drinkables" in early Victorian London.

Even then Mayhew reports that London streets were alive with willing sellers and willing purchasers of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep‘s trotters, ham sandwiches, peas’--soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum “duff,” meat-puddings, baked potatoes, spicecakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandy-balls, cough drops.... such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of street-drinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger-beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water.

I can vouch that I have survived eating and drinking most of these items, which are still sold from the curb in some London boroughs.

In its role as Head Cafeteria Matron, the City of Toronto has wriggled out of Victorian food safety shackles and now offers modern Torontonians: hotdogs, sausages, chips and soft drinks.

Locally Produced and Diverse*

Ontario's Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, George Smitherman, was right in saying "Ontarians are at our best when we embrace the diversity of our people and our culture".

His Ministry's bold initiative to amend the Ontario Food Premises Regulation to allow expanded menu options for street food vendors was heralded thusly "By expanding street menus, we are making it possible for our food options to reflect our multiculturalism. We are also helping a new group of entrepreneurs showcase their culture's culinary contribution to their cities."

Yet, as interpreted by the the City of Toronto, Smitherman's well meant changes seem to mean only fifteen new entrepreneurs!

In keeping with its conservative and paternalistic approach to lunch nosh oversight, I hope that the City will use as much care and concern to ensure that what is sold on the streets is locally produced.

They only need to listen to wordsmiths, Oxford University Press, to know that we have all become locavores - and its not just lip-service that made it Oxford's word of the year. Not to mention that is also is a food sourcing policy enshrined in Toronto's Food Charter.

* Egg and spam
Egg, bacon and spam
Egg, bacon, sausage and spam
Spam, bacon, sausage and spam
Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam
Spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam
Lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce garnished with truffle paté, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam
Spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam
© Monty Python

15 Carts Merge from Slow Lane

The Financial Post and the Toronto Star recently reported that the City of Toronto Executive Committee has been urged in a report coauthored by staff from five city departments to roll out 15 street-food carts into parks and public squares this summer as a pilot project.

Five city employees, one executive committee and two years might get you 15 carts.

And we wonder why Toronto founders as a tourist destination.