[URBAN NOTE] "U.S. economist touts Scarborough as 'best ethnic food suburb'"

[rfmcdonald]

I linked to Tyler Cowen's blog post on the excellence of food in Scaroborough not long after it came out. More recently, the Toronto Star's Lauren Pelly has followed up on his statement. Toronto's internal divisions play a key role in Toronto's lack of awareness of this, many convincingly argue.

Over the phone from his office at George Mason University in Virginia, Cowen noted that people in Toronto seem to perceive the new, hip restaurants to be elsewhere. “But it seems to me, you don’t come close to this part of town,” he said.

Rick Halpern, dean of UTSC and Cowen’s tour guide last Wednesday, agreed that most people are fixated on the downtown core. “No one goes east of the DVP,” he lamented.

Cowen’s post is making the rounds online, and sparking discussion on blogs and Reddit. Scarborough is “a foodie’s best kept secret,” as one commenter put it, though it’s no secret to locals.

“I would say that people who are into food, and who have a car, explore Scarborough and other suburbs,” said Jennifer Bain, the Star’s food editor, who has highlighted many of the area’s offerings over the years — including Uighur fare from Scarborough’s Chinese Muslim community, sweets from local Filipino bakeries, and the global flavours of Hakka Chinese food, to name a few.


But many people and publications focus on the downtown core, and west end in particular, she noted, which can give people a “skewed look” at the geographic and cultural diversity of the GTA’s food scene.