Duck confit with hash browns, poached egg and spiced ketchup. Butternut squash agnolotti covered in a cream sauce, topped with chives. Chorizo tacos and fish tacos. Havana Club sandwich. Slippery Bobkin. Cedar toasted marshmallow. Lavender-lemon crème brûlée.
I’m not ashamed to say that I consumed all of the above on Saturday night. Granted, these weren’t full-sized portions, and I was sharing most of them, but, seeing as how I missed the first two installments of the Toronto Underground Market, I felt like I had some catching up to do.
From the moment we arrived at Evergreen Brick Works, we were bombarded with sensory overload. If you’ve ever been to Brick Works you don’t need me to tell you how the surrounding natural setting (it’s in the Don Valley) and the raw, almost construction-zone like interior combines for an experience in itself (you just have to be cautious not to run into a rusty piece of machinery). Mix in a slew of interesting people – mostly young and into the food scene – and 26 vendors offering tantalizing eats and drinks around the indoor-outdoor venue, and you’ve got an unforgettable night in Toronto.
The Toronto Underground Market (TUM) is the vision of Hassel Aviles, who wanted to create a place for home cooks and budding food entrepreneurs to share and promote their fare to the masses – like her husband, Andrew Richmond of La Carnita, the taco pop-up that’s becoming just as infamous for their line-ups as they are their tacos.
Inspired by the San Francisco Underground Market, Aviles created Twitter and Facebook accounts and a Tumblr, all with the name Toronto Underground Market, and the response was huge. The first TUM came together in September, and they’ve been monthly since.
I’d read and heard so much about La Carnita’s tacos; how people line up for hours and sometimes walk away empty-handed because they run out before the line ends. I wondered: Can these tacos be that good? Well, as soon as I had my first bite of the Voltran fish taco, I was a believer.
I really shouldn’t have started my night this way, because nothing that I ate afterwards really matched the taste of that wild Pacific cod, cilantro and lime crema all wrapped in a freshly baked tortilla. The textures were really out of this world, with the crisp, light batter contrasting with the warm, soft fish. I needed a moment to just revel in what I had consumed.
The line-up for La Carnita was at least 100 people deep for the whole night, until they eventually ran out, and some unfortunate people were turned away. The guys were keeping the line updated all night though, announcing when they only had 80 left, when they ran out of chorizo tacos, when they only had 50 left. And to keep the line dwellers happy, they sent out guacamole and tortilla chips to nibble on while waiting.
As interesting as the food itself, were the people behind it – the vendors varied from well-known Toronto chefs to high school students from Thistletown Collegiate Institute. The culinary arts students from the Etobicoke high school are raising money to travel to Italy in 2013. Their culinary arts instructor, Keith Hoare, was enthusiastically leading the team of 15 and 16 year olds as they served up plates of duck pate, butternut squash agnolotti and arancini (risotto balls), all for $5 a plate.
“What are you having?!” Hoare energetically asked after he revealed the menu options. He explained to us that many of the students at Thistletown come from single-family homes and live below the poverty line. His passion about funding this trip was clear as he bounced between talking with customers and calling orders to his students. They’re looking to raise 70% of the trip costs, to make it a more realistic for the families of his students.
From the agnolotti we travelled to Elle Cuisine for the duck confit dish, then to Fidel Gasto’s for a sandwich. The team were all dressed in T-Shirts reading ‘Rebel Without a Kitchen’, bopping to the music and screaming, ‘Ole!’ every chance they could. Matthew Basile is the man (or shall I say revolutionary) behind this Cuban sandwich ‘experience’ and has been popping-up in the city for about a month now. On the menu were two sandwiches, each for $4. The La Senorita (mozzarella stuffed jalapeo pepper, turkey chilli and radicchio slaw) and the Havana club (pulled-pork, ham, caramelized onions, havarti and chilli aioli).
The La Senorita was full of textures and lots of heat from the pepper, grounds for another trip to the free water station. Feeling rather full at this point, and trying to gauge whether or not we were ready to move on to something sweet, my mind was made up when I saw three guys near the entrance preparing a dessert on someone’s hand.
It was Guy Rawlings, former head chef of Brockton General and now the consulting executive chef at Lucien, and Geoffrey Hopgood, former head chef at the now defunct Hoof Cafe.
While most other vendors were far too busy to chat, these guys were having a grand ol’ time, openly sipping on a bottle of tequila. They wanted to do something different, so they were placing a small piece of cake, a marshmallow-like substance (which they toasted with a mini-torch), strawberry and ‘dirt'(cocoa crumbs) on the surface of your hand for $3 – they call it a Slippery Bobkin.
“We’re just fucking around,” Rawlings said, gesturing towards the old barrel they found on the Danforth that they attached antlers to. The participant would rest their hand on the antler and Hopgood arranged the Slippery Bobkin on it. “We’re not here to make money; we’re making it interesting, playing with different components,” said Rawlings.
After shooting back the dessert and licking off all the sticky remnants, we rounded out the night at Chimney Court, a new section of the third-ever TUM, featuring a bonfire and a wood fired oven. Pizza, homemade cedar toasted marshmallows and warm beverages were on offer.
The atmosphere was buzzing all night, and while it was packed, the crowd was fun-loving and easy going- it helped, too, that it fell on an absurdly mild November evening. It’s clear that these events, that have all sold-out with ease even with a price hike (it cost $5 in September and October, while entry was $10 this month), are in demand in our food-crazed city. The thousands of attendees surely left stuffed, having to maximize the event as the next Toronto Underground Market will not be until February. I know I did.
Photography by Elli Stuhler
