It's September again, and another school year started, this time with a laptop stolen from my new office while people were inside the room. I actually saw the thief. He came in to look around, taking advantage of the fact that there are many new faces in the first day. That didn't spoil our annual picnic on the island, which brings me to write about food. To be honest, I am the last person who should write about food, since if you believe my grandmother I am not eating anything. My culinary sense had been shaped in a military dining room. I am used to look at food merely as biological fuel. Therefore I'll focus on the cheap side of the spectrum.
Every wave of immigrants brought here food from all around the world. One good thing is that they retain the original names of everything that didn't exist in English. You can find here all the Mediterranean stuff, like pita, humus, falafel, shawarma, sambousik, etc. Some food is imported under different name. Guess what "mini-croutons" are (also called "mini-mandels"). In general food in Toronto is cheap, so people go eating out a lot. As a result, there are countless eating places. There is a group in Toronto, called the serial diners, which go every week to another place picked from the yellow pages in alphabetic order. They started in 1989 and are now at letter "H".
In a similar spirit, two years ago a group of student started the spadiners. The plan was to have lunch each week at a different ethnic restaurant on Spadina street. It took a year and a half to complete. I went only a couple of times. The food was tasty, although I cannot tell you what it was since, as I said, they retained the Asians names. But I can tell you that mini-croutons are Osem's "soup almonds".
Below restaurants in the food chain there are fast food chains. I was once in a car with students on the highway, and we were debating where to stop for eating. They have "MacDonald's", "Harvies", "Wendies", "KFC", "Burger King" all over (there is no "Burger-Ranch" though). I said there is no difference. They said "What? Of course there is" and started to elaborate all kind of differences in the materials and food preparation processes that I couldn't care less about but they seem to be very important to them. Every chain has its own philosophy of making money, which means using different colors or boxes in different shapes. Some tried to differentiate themselves a bit harder. At "Subway" or "Mr. Sub" you get the same thing in a baguette instead of a bun. At "Pita Pit" you get the same in a pita. At "The bagel stop" they offer similar stuff on a bagel. It is all about the bread. That brings us to pizza. Canadians really love pizza. Every tenth corner downtown sells pizza. If you consider the fact that every junction has four corners, you realize that there is no place downtown whose access time to pizza is more than two minutes. Pizza is also known as programmers' food.
One possible reason is that only programmers can order one (try).
Except eating there are places on earth where food has other usages. For example, when a high political figure gives a speech, and there are discontent people at the audience, they may throw eggs, tomatoes or even a birthday cake at the speaker. I was told that in Canada there is a different tradition, to throw at the speaker a teddy bear. Cute, isn't it? Now go explain to them that due to security reasons Israelis had to find other ways to shut a speaker.
(To be continued)
