Toronto Treats: Exploring the City with Tasty Tours

Mmm, truffles. How can you resist them?

One of the things I`ve been up to since getting back to Toronto has been joining Tasty Tours Toronto as one of the guide staff. Tasty Tours is an nifty little company offering walking tours of Toronto that focus mostly on the deliciousness available at Toronto's bakeries and chocolatiers.

Some of the wonderfully delicious treats on offer on our chocolate tour.
This is quite possibly my favourite stop, with chocolates ranging in flavour from lavender and rose to chipotle, tequila and lime. 

Tours are kept small to maximize your enjoyment and run every, or every other, weekend depending on the season. Regular tours include the Kensington Sweets Tour and the Trinity-Bellwoods Chocolate Tour. People keep asking which is my favourite or which they should try first and, honestly, I can't decide. My answer? Do both!

One of the customer favourites on the sweets tour. Know what they are? Good. Then you probably want one :).

Taste testing is offered at all of the stops along the route and, even if, like me, you're a dessert-o-phile, you will find something new and awesome that you've never tried before or an excellently made well-loved favourite at every stop.

One of the chocolate truffles from our sweets tour.
This one was pumpkin spice, but you'll get to choose your flavour.

While the focus of the tour is mostly on the desserts, we don't skimp on the historical info either. Little tidbits about the neighbourhood, sweet making techniques and how to properly eat desserts abound. The guides are all knowledgeable (yeah, yeah, I know, tooting my own horn - but I did do my undergrad thesis on why we evolved to love sweetness and how cultures use and perceive it differently around the world!) and the neighbourhoods themselves are wonderfully unique. Plus, you don't have to be a tourist to enjoy them. Most of the tours are actually made up of locals who just want to better get to know the city and treats available in it!

I bet those who have been to Asia can identify some of these!
Just to keep up some of the suspense, I'll avoid telling which tour this stop is from.

Interested? Check us out at TastyToursToronto.com. Private tours are available for those who can't make the regular ones or, those who just want to spend some quality sweet time with their friends. Special thematic tours are also offered during dessert-heavy seasons such as Christmas and Valentine's, and tours are half-price for those going with a friend during their birth month.

Don't trust me to be impartial? Check out some of our excellent reviews on TripAdvisor.

Happy Eating!

Bibimbap!

So it seems that now that hiking season is coming to a close, I've turned to blogging about one of my other favourite things - FOOD! Or, in this particular instance Bibimbap (비빔밥)!
 

A photo of my school's bibimbap. You may not be able to see all the ingredients, but this one includes rice, fermented radish strips (buried under the rice), mushrooms, bracken fern stems (고사리 - gosari), soybean sprouts, zucchini, seaweed, lettuce, sesame seeds, sesame oil and gochujang (fermented red chili paste) with ground meat. It's delicious, if it doesn't look it, I'll take the blame. I'm the one who prepared it ;).

Bibimbap literally means 'mixed rice' ('bibim' means 'mixed' and 'bap' means 'rice'). It's a dish you will find all over Korea in a number of variations. In Jeonju (전주), Jeollabuk-do province this variation includes a raw egg and is said be how it was traditionally served during the Joseon Dynasty. Another variation is Stone Pot Bibimbap (돌솥 비빔밥- dolsot bibipbap) which is served in a (surprise!) steaming hot stone pot. In the northern province of Gangwon-do, wild mountain vegetable bibimbap is the signature dish, while elsewhere beef may also be added. Here in Gwangju, it is also common to stumble upon spicy seafood bibimbap, which is one of my favourite variations.

The above bowl once mixed. This is making me ridiculously hungry.

Wherever you eat it, there are a few ingredients which will almost inevitably be present. The first, and most obvious of these, is rice, but a good bibimbap will also contain zucchini, cucumber, spiced radish strips, mushrooms, soybean sprouts, seaweed, bellflower root, bracken fern stems, sesame seeds and oil and, of course spicy chili pepper paste (often this is 고추장 - Gochujang, or fermented red pepper paste). Bibimbap is almost always served unmixed, with the ingredients arrayed attractively around the bowl. In many restaurants, the rice will be served in a separate lidded cup. It is up to the customer to mix it to their satisfaction.

Ddeok! A delicious Korean rice-based dessert.

While the above picture is not of bibimbap, it is of an equally typical Korean dish - Ddeok (떡), or rice cake. This particular assortment was given to one of the other teachers in my office as a 'thank you' from one of her student's parents. The giving of ddeok in thanks, in celebration or as a parting gift is a fairly common practice in Korea. In its most basic form, ddeok is made from glutinous rice flour and can take on many forms - both sweetened and not. In the above picture, both forms are intended to be eaten as a dessert or snack. To left is ggul tteok (꿀떡), or honey and sesame filled ddeok, while to the right is injeolmi (인절미), or steamed and pounded rice cake coated with soybean powder. Both are delicious.