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At Xawaash, a Somali food blog-turned-restaurant, owners Leila Adde and Abdullahi Kassim consider their dishes a legacy for the next generation. “It makes us feel very happy, you know. That this has become a gathering place. Because for us, this isn’t just a business. It’s more like family.”
Read MoreDeath metal bassist Miguel Angel Garcia recently expanded his made-from-home churros business into a commercial kitchen in the back of Steadfast Brewing, where he preps killer birria tacos, tamales and other Mexican street-food classics. When he works, he says, he’s always blasting music. “I like to feel like I’m at a party”
Read MoreMy mom learned to cook Jewish to win over her in-laws. In the decades that followed, my dad, a newspaper man, spent decades clipping recipes and assembling them in big black binders for her - the best way he knew to show his thanks.
Read MoreWe work in the sky, in an unfinished highrise. The ground floors are almost ready, but higher up, where there are no windows or walls, the building is open to the sky. We are deep in the belly of the beast, building towers in the financial district, building restaurants we can’t afford to eat in, condos we can’t afford to live in.
Read MoreIn a playful series he produced for WEP, photographer Kotama Bouabane confronts his younger self’s longing for fast food and his older self’s impulse to clean up his act.
Read MoreHas there ever been a greater grab-and-go snack than the glorious Banh Mi? The bright pickled tangle – carrots, cilantro, tofu, pâté – tucked into a killer baguette is well-stuffed and built for strolling. There are many delicious Toronto iterations of the Saigon street food, but WEP readers have voted. Here, your favourites don their crusty, mayo-smeared crowns.
Read MoreA feel-good, nostalgic genre of Japanese dance tunes called City Pop has become the kitchen soundtrack for a community of Toronto chefs – one that sets the tone for a kinder, brighter kitchen culture.
Read MoreThree urban farming projects are working toward making Toronto a food-sovereign city – and showing how almost every bit of space can be made to flourish.
Read MoreWe asked WEP readers what menu item you still crave from a Toronto restaurant that closed its doors, recently or long ago. You gave us all the toothsome details – how it became your special, what else is wrapped in the memory of it, and why nothing can take its place.
Read MoreFormer owner of the Good Egg cookbook shop Mika Baraket launched a publishing company this fall with a recipe book called Blood – one the other publishers wouldn’t touch – that sold out in its first run. Now she’s using the pandemic as a cover, to grow the business deliberately in her own sweet time.
Read MoreElizabeth Rodriguez left Cuba for a freer life in Toronto; she came to make music but stayed for Magdelys Savigne. The two met in a band here, fell in love, then formed their own group – the Latin jazz ensemble OKAN, whose second album, Espiral, was released during the pandemic. Now they’re waiting out the virus at home – cooking, teaching, preparing for virtual award shows and still making beautiful music together.
Read MoreToronto’s restaurant industry had problems well before the pandemic hit. But if there’s hope, says Len Senater, who runs the collective kitchen Depanneur, it’s in a new style of business that puts people ahead of profits.
Read More“The kind of leader a young Somali kid needs.” That’s how a friend describes Asha Ahmed, whose restaurant, Wiff – the heart of Weston’s main strip – is facing eviction.
Read MoreMahamed Aden Elmi has expanded Istar Restaurant, which his mother opened in 1999, into a de facto civic centre, a place where his community not only eats but celebrates, organizes and makes itself at home.
Read MoreEven before restaurants across the city closed their doors, the food industry was a tough one for workers. That’s why Chuck Ortiz started a Wednesday run club for chefs and kitchen staff, to help them deal with stress.
Read MoreMoscow Apartment met in band camp at 13. Now 17, the duo has landed a recording contract and has a new record dropping in May. In the kitchen and onstage, their chemistry is clear.
Read MoreCatherine Tammaro, who grew up Irish-Italian, never understood what drew her to the ceremonies she observed when she was younger – crushing berries for face paint, lining her path in cedar boughs, drumming by the High Park burial mounds – until she discovered her mother was adopted and that another culture had been waiting for her to find it.
Read MoreApril Wozny was in her 20s when she launched the popular monthly queer party Business Women’s Special. But it wasn’t until she got sober that she learned she could really dance, and cook too.
Read MoreLaura Hänsch, the unofficial mayor of her building, is a mother, poet, survivor and cook– rolling pierogies by the hundreds for her neighbours, who are all her friends, and making sure the pantry is full in case anyone’s running low.
Read MoreEach summer weekend that allowed, my parents took my brother, sister & me to Kelso Lake.
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