“As a global event organizer, you look at the heat map of where foodies are congregating in North America,” and that’s Toronto, says Suresh Doss, Toronto food truck advocate and event organizer in his own right (Doss, who also brought the Zagat guide to Toronto, has mounted festivals dedicated to ramen and, most recently, pinxtos in Toronto, aside from his regular food truck rallies.) “When everyone’s talking about Toronto right now, what they’re thinking is that Toronto has evolved into an amazing culinary city in the past three to four years.”

It’s an evolution, Doss notes, that already has a boldfaced tinge to it — Toronto’s celebrity chef quotient is rising, as Jamie Oliver has recently announced plans for a restaurant in the city, with Ivan Reitman building a 280-seater downtown and David Chang’s Momofuku empire already entrenched in the city’s culinary identity.

“There’s a lot of interesting things going on in here … it’s not just sheer number of restaurants,” he says. “There isn’t a city that is showing a growth spurt quite like Toronto’s.”

So for a city with a culinary identity that has, until recently, been obscure at best, Taste of Toronto is at the very least a serious vote of confidence.

Source: National Post. July 2015