Eat More Scarborough is a food tour group. We do food tours throughout Scarborough. We’ve been running them for about two years. We’re based right here in Scarborough.
We run tours mostly in the summer but because of the pandemic we’ve pivoted to virtual tours and we’ve been doing these amazing videos. They’re up on YouTube. We actually did one with Karachi Boys so I met Taha a few weeks ago. I just wanted to open up with this wonderful spread. This is food you can get from Scarborough restaurants. This shows one of the food tours we did last summer and i often get asked where can i get this food.
That’s actually how these food tours actually began. Two years ago I moved back to Scarborough from downtown. A lot of my friends started asking me ‘do you know a good place in Scarborough for xyz dish’ and I would just start telling them ‘ oh you can try this place, this place, this place’ and over time I thought why don’t I just do this for people. There’s so much good food here and of course we all know the Scarborough food story.
Ever since we were declared the best ethnic food suburb in the world many people have been coming to Scarborough. Foodies come to find the amazing dishes here. This has actually grown into this passion product for me.
These are photos of some of the food tours and yes that is Coun. Thompson and Coun. McKelvey. This is one of the sort of social distance tours we did last year in the summertime. we’re going to do more of them this year. We’ve been doing virtual food tours online in partnership with UTSC. that has been going really, really well and we’re just continuing to really push this idea that Scarborough is a culinary destination.
It’s a culinary tourism destination. Come try our food. Come eat here. Make this a thing. Really tell the story of the entrepreneurs and really tell the story of our food scene.
That’s really what i think is important – talking about who are food entrepreneurs. Are these the most humble people that you’ll ever meet? Are they the nicest people you’ll ever meet. This is actually what Scarborough is about. It’s the diversity. It’s the stories. It’s how these food restaurants get started. Everybody is really excited about sharing a little bit of their culture with you, telling you the story about what’s happening there.
I always say there’s also a deep sense of human history that exists inside all of this. The food is the evidence of the history itself. Any of these dishes can tell a story about how it was invented and that tells a story about humanity. That’s what I find is really great about it. It speaks a lot about the diversity of cultures that we have here and gives us a sense to have that conversation and cultural understanding.
That’s what i love the most – seeing people try something for the first time and say ‘this is so tasty’ and realizing this is actually really similar to another dish that I’ve had back home. We’re all human and these foods have traveled all over the planet. It’s not a surprise that every single culture has a dumpling and that that’s the reason why I do these tours. I really just love seeing people get into that space.
One thing I did want to bring up is what the future might hold. We’ve all seen the headlines. Restaurants aren’t doing great. We’ve talked a little bit about that here but there’s also a lot of pre-existing conditions about the food industry that we really should be talking about like race, diversity and inclusion. These have been an issue and this has been brought up with inclusion being on the agenda for many corporate organizations. I think the food industry is not immune from that. The city has been going through gentrification and displacement and many restaurants have had to shut down because they can no longer afford the rents. This is going to continue.
Scarborough is not immune from gentrification. The developers are coming here whether we like it or not so we really need to think about what is the future of the food industry. We need to look at things like ghost kitchens – that’s a model that’s now popping up. Look it up if you don’t know what it is.
What is this new normal? I really wanted to think about recovery and the future of Scarborough food. We need to know that when this pandemic is over we can push play on a whole bunch of programs that will help with recovery and we need to think about that today. Food festivals take a bit of time to organize so we need to actually get the logistics for that now.
I was thinking about should we have a Scarborough restaurant bucks program and get people to go out to eat again. It’s important they trust that they can actually go dine in in restaurants and it’s safe. Thinking a little bit further into the future maybe Scarborough needs a food BIA connecting all the restaurants together so that we can cross promote and actually really promote this as a culinary tourism destination.
What about a food incubator hub? How do you actually start a new restaurant in Scarborough? What does that actually look like we have a really diverse marketplace where you can test any kind of food item? I think it’s actually a really good opportunity and the last thing is to consider is what is sustainable and responsible food businesses. What is that going to look like as a business model?
Those are the thoughts I want to leave us with because I think that is important to think about the future of the food business industry in Scarborough. Of course as always if you want to experience it yourself that’s my website. Feel free to get in touch with me. I’m here anytime so good to see you all good to chat and also happy lunar new year to those who are celebrating. Thank you.