As a kid, my favourite kind of day would be spent with arts and crafts and snacks. Maybe some construction paper, popsicle sticks, glue, a palette of water colour paints that run into each other with one swipe of a wet brush, and a few animal crackers.
Fast forward several decades later and a grown up version of that perfect day now exists with independent music company Arts & Crafts, who will celebrate their 10th anniversary with an event called Field Trip Music & Arts Festival, taking place Saturday, June 8th at Fort York and Garrison Common. And the snacks on this field trip will be unlike any you’ve experienced before.
With a lineup of artists that includes Broken Social Scene and 11-time Juno Award winner Feist, Field Trip promises to be a celebration of arts, culture, and gourmet food. “When you think of Toronto, we’re a world-class city. I want the food at a festival in downtown Toronto to feel like downtown Toronto,” says Jeffrey Remedios, co-founder and president of Arts & Crafts.
To move beyond your standard hotdogs and cardboard pizza, Jasmine Baker (For the Love of Food) will handle food, beverage, and hospitality for Field Trip. And who better to bring on board than the team behind the very popular Toronto Underground Market, whose regular events give food entrepreneurs, chefs, and home cooks a chance to test out their culinary ideas and creations to a hungry market of food enthusiasts. This past Saturday was the TUM “sample day” — where hopeful food vendors audition the dishes they would like to sell at the event and a team spends the day eating, making notes, and whittling down the list to select a group that is varied, and offers the kind of food that Field Trip patrons might like to eat.
This particular day was a bit different than regular TUM sample days. One potential vendor commented that the larger group made him slightly nervous to pitch his dishes. Jeffrey, Jasmine, Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene) and two Live Nation reps were tasting and making notes. Ice cream sandwiches were aplenty. Perogies, peameal bacon sandwiches, dumplings, short rib stuffed buns, and duck quesadillas all made their mark. The most common comment around the table was, “This is really good.” Followed by questions like, “Do I want to eat this on a hot day?” and “Can I eat this if I’m carrying a drink in my other hand?”
In addition to the 20 vendors chosen for TUM Square, there will also be 6-8 vendors in Mini Tum — featuring kid friendly and nut-free vendors (kids attend the festival for free) — and the VIP area will house 4-6 food vendors. The hopefuls will find out on Wednesday if they secured one of the coveted festival spots.
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