Hidden Gems and Quality Cuisines: A Guide to Eat More of Scarborough
Stories of immigration, colonization, encroaching gentrification, and despair, but also love and hope. All can be found along the Scarborough blue line, especially in the food, according to food enthusiast, Howard Tam.
Scarborough seems vast and empty. When I spent my first summer in Toronto this year, I sought out to explore pockets of the city for new kinds of food.
While on the hunt to try more hidden gems, I came across a collaborative project between non-profit organization, Scarborough Arts, and a food tour group called Eat More Scarborough. This tour is called, “Up and Down the Line: The Scarborough RT is Really Tasty!”
The premise of the tour is to take people along the blue line and discover hidden food gems near each station. From Kennedy to Scarborough Town Centre, Scarborough’s culture is entangled in its food scene to the point where it shapes the Scarborough identity.
One of the most bizarre takeaways is the ‘Warden patty’. This tour led to my discovery of the locally famous Jamaican patties that have claimed to reign supreme over any other patties in the city. Locals idolize the patty to the extent where an Ontario candle shop created a scented candle that smells like the station’s patties. A Scarborough local even posed with the ‘Warden patty’ during his graduation photo.
Photo Courtesy of Spacing
The ‘Warden patty’ is only one among the diverse food cultural icons of Scarborough. Alongside Danish pastries, Hakka spicy chicken, Lebanese manakeesh, and many more cuisines, there are plenty of stories, identities, and cultures to learn from simply exploring food around Scarborough.
I spoke with the founder of Eat More Scarborough, Howard Tam, on his journey to show people the beauty and importance of Scarborough’s food scene.
What was your earliest memory of realizing the cultural importance of food?
Tam: When I was a really young kid, I think I, like a lot of other kids, loved to eat fast food. It was easy, it was tasty, not necessarily knowing any better. It wasn't until I was like ten or twelve, when I started getting more into my cultural cuisine, like Chinese food and dim sum and things like that. And I grew up eating a lot of either sort of Western food, Chinese food or Westernized Chinese food.
When did you start becoming interested in discovering food?
Tam: Once I started doing a lot more traveling, I became intrigued by the food. And that's what I think it's a culmination of different things that just piqued my curiosity about food and how it really tells a lot of stories about cultures. Especially, through travel, you learn a lot about that. Because people in different places will tell you stories about food, or how food came to be, or how a dish looks the way it does. So, you pick that up over time.
So, I’m very much a cultural traveler. I spend a lot of time trying to observe and understand different cultures and why people do the things that they do, and how people live their lives in different places around the world. So I think that really ramped it all up. Being in Toronto and watching as these diverse options start to pop up and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve actually had that dish in that country.” So, you keep going out and trying more, and doing more, and eventually, you find a lot of different restaurants in your neighbourhood and realize a lot of that is here as well. It just makes you feel really good that you can access that in such close proximity to each other.
How would you describe Scarborough’s food scene?
Tam: I always tell people that the quality can rival any restaurant—any Michelin restaurant even, on the planet. But that is the big story about Scarborough’s food. It’s a high-quality experience. We definitely do not win awards for fine dining experiences. We don’t win awards for really amazing, memorable, flashy lights and things like that.
What we win on is quality. What we win on is an experience of discovery, of feeling like you’ve found something really amazing because it just seems so out of the way from any other restaurant you’d possibly go to. And of course, the diversity and array of options.
It feels almost endless and almost every major culture is represented to some degree. That’s actually what’s really unique. The selection, diversity and quality are second to none. The quality is not sacrificed at all. There is no ‘watering it down.’ There’s no changing it to suit anyone’s needs because of the economy of the situation. There are enough people from that culture here that it can be supported. It doesn’t have to change its ways to meet a population. That’s the special ingredient here.
Do you remember the moment that you decided that you wanted to show people Scarborough’s foods?
Tam: It was actually just to take my friends out because a lot of them would ask me questions about Scarborough and I’d give them recommendations. Over time, I thought maybe I could do this as a thing. So I did a couple of test tours with some friends. Gathered a bunch of friends together and tried out different formats and ideas, just to see what they might like.
Soon, I started offering them as a paid [tour]. None of the tours were full, but I got some sign-ups and whenever I talked about it, people would resonate with the idea. That’s what kept me going, some people saw value in it and a lot of people liked the idea of somebody trying to do this.
I think what really kept me going too is the idea of telling better Scarborough stories. It’s got such a bad reputation in the eyes of Toronto that I’ve always wanted to change the way people saw the community. I thought food is one of the best ways to do it and I hooked onto that. Even at times when I’m not running a food tour, I’d use it as a platform to tell another story about Scarborough. Even if you don’t want to come on my food tour, that’s totally fine. Just come to Scarborough and see it for yourself. It’s that pride and loyalty of [this] place that has driven me through this whole journey.
What else makes Scarborough’s food scene unique?
Tam: We have a different landscape. Very spread out, very scattered. A lot of restaurants look very unassuming. If you just drive by, you wouldn’t even notice it’s a great place. That’s kind of what’s fascinating, being able to expose their story to a greater audience through the tours. Showing that you can’t judge something by how it looks. You have to really experience it and hear the story to know how to appreciate it. I think that’s what makes us different.
Another piece of it is the people. The food entrepreneurs who run these restaurants. Some of them are the most passionate and dedicated people to their craft. They love making food and they love making it really well. They want to impress you. They want to show a bit of their culture because it’s their livelihood.
But also the most humble food entrepreneurs. The reaction I get the most from restaurant owners when I approach them and go, “I want to feature your restaurant on my tour!” They’re like, “Really? Me? This place?” You get a lot of those reactions because nobody ever believes that their restaurant is up to snuff or at that level that could be a part of tourism.
What can people learn about Scarborough and its community through its food?
Tam: You can learn a lot. You can learn about the neighbourhoods in Scarborough at the very basic level. It is very much tied to the community that lives in that area, the people and the customers who come in.
You can also learn a lot about different cultures and who they are. What kind of food they bring and why does that food exist the way it does. Which then gets into [the] history and stories about migration and colonialism. Stories of hope, love, despair and everything that’s related to humanity. It can [all] be expressed through the food and [conversations around food]. All of our best triumphs and all of our worst shames, it all comes through that. It’s a good reflection of who we are and of all the different cultures that come together to make who we are, who we are. So that’s what I love about it.
Photo by Atelier Mave
You can also talk about ongoing Scarborough issues and challenges. Restaurateurs are facing the same challenges that many other people are, but in Scarborough it can be different and more pronounced at the same time. You can talk about things like affordability. Everybody is facing the same supply-chain challenges and inflation challenges, but how does it work in Scarborough where, traditionally, the rents have been low [which] has allowed restaurants to focus more on quality. In a high rent environment, you have to be able to return profit quickly. As that’s changing, does that change the way that food is prepared?
Also we’re experiencing our own development pressures in Scarborough. Gentrification is coming. What does that mean for these restaurateurs? Does the quality suffer? You can talk about these issues because it has a very direct impact on your taste experience.
What have been your favourite moments discovering foods around Scarborough?
Tam: When I experience somebody taking a dish to the next level, trying to distinguish yourself in a way. But also, because you’re experimenting through the love of creating food, you’ve actually done an amazing job at taking things to the next level. I’ll give you a couple of examples of that.
Chris Jerk is a restaurant in Scarborough, at Birchmount and Huntingwood. [The owner] is a Jamaican chef [that] worked at a Middle Eastern restaurant where he learned how to make shawarma. He decided he’d combine it with something that he really loves, which is jerk. And so, he actually makes this thing called jerk shawarma. Chicken marinated in jerk sauce and then made on a shawarma grill.
Chris Jerk // Photo Courtesy of BlogTO
But he wasn’t doing it because he was trying to make a gimmick. He was doing it because he really wanted to create something new and unique that had amazing flavour. And it shows.
The uniqueness of cultures coming together to create food is a very Scarborough story. Different cultures that you didn’t expect working together to create food.
SumiLicious is an example of that. The guy who serves Montreal smoked meat. He’s a man from Sri Lanka who had never tasted a smoked meat sandwich his entire life until he immigrated to Montreal. He worked at Schwartz’s, [a] famous smoked meat restaurant. Learned how to make smoked meat. He got so obsessed with it that he made his own recipe. Then he moved to Toronto and started selling that recipe. It’s crazy because it’s traditionally a Jewish dish served in Montreal delis. Now it’s [being] served in Scarborough by a South Asian man to mostly Asian customers.
It’s that cultural mixing that makes it a very Scarborough story. That’s also what I love about restaurants [here].
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how the people of Scarborough shape the food scene.
Tam: I think it’s a sort of scrappy, hustler culture. Everybody in Scarborough just wants to make a living. You get a lot of them as restaurateurs who are doing all that they can to make something really awesome so you can have a good experience. Despite the fact that we have terrible surroundings or not [being] at the most beautiful restaurant ever. Making do with what [we] have.
Jessie Jr. // Photo Courtesy of Yelp
One of my favourites is a restaurant called Jesse Jr. at Sheppard and Brimley. It’s a Filipino restaurant but it’s in a former Harvey’s. What I find hilarious and great about it is that they actually didn’t change much of the internal décor of the restaurant. Sure they painted the walls, but they kept all the chairs, counters and [even] the original Harvey’s garbage can. So you walk in there and you’re like, “oh, right. It used to be that.” That’s an example of making do with what you have. Why should I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating this place when I can use this perfectly good equipment? It’s utilizing the resources available to you. That’s a uniquely Scarborough thing.
How do you see Scarborough’s food culture shaping the city’s future?
Tam: I hope that long term, we can actually create a place where Scarborough is almost like Toronto’s food incubator. It could be a place where restaurateurs come to try out new things, or if you want to open your first location here before opening it in downtown because you don’t want to take that kind of risk. That could be a cool role in the larger city.
Special thanks to Howard Tam, Muryani Kasdani, and the Eat More Scarborough team for making this piece a reality. Find out more about Eat More Scarborough through their Instagram @eatmorescarborough
