It's a Toronto foodie's paradise as two of the city's most popular purveyors of street food have joined forces.
Starting Friday, July 20, and continuing on the third Friday of every month,
Market 707 and
Food Truck Eats are teaming up to host Street Food Fridays.
Market 707, a project of
Scadding Court Community Centre, uses colourful shipping containers re-puposed as miniature shops and food booths to transform a few blocks Dundas Street West, just east of Bathurst Street, into a vibrant food market. Since its launch more than a year ago, the market has become a favourite of Toronto foodies who like its variety of cheap and,
by all accounts, delicious food.
In June, Market 707 tried an experimental team-up with Food Truck Eats, inviting the project to join them on Saturday afternoon. Food Truck Eats, a intatiative started by Toronto food and wine writer
Suresh Doss, regularly holds gourmet food truck events throughout the city.
"We had heard about some of the [Food Truck Eats] events and we thought that maybe coming together on a special occasion would be maybe a fun idea," says Market 707 coordinator Jackie Hall. "It started with just a one-off in June on a Saturday afternoon to see how it would go."
"Some of the concern was either that the food trucks would take away what would be regular sales for our container vendors and vice versa and not everyone would benefit," says Hall. "But it seems that street food events are popular enough in the city that two can come together and it can still be fruitful enough for everyone involved."
Hall noticed that the combined event brought both initiatives a host of new customers.
"A lot of foodies who follow the food trucks around had never been to our market, and a lot of our regulars had never been to the food trucks. And so it was two crowds that were loyal to one or the other, but has never really experienced both. It was really well received and now we've decided to do it once a month and see how that goes."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Jackie Hall, Coordinator, Market 707