If you’re lucky enough to be in Toronto this week, I hope you’re catching some great movies at the Toronto International Film Festival. This year’s celebration of new films runs through September 18.
I’m afraid I can’t tell you where George Clooney or Madonna or Brad Pitt are going to eat. Or the best spots for spotting other celebs (although the Huffington Post has some ideas for seeing stars).
But I can tell you about a few low-key Toronto joints, where the atmosphere is far from glam but the food is Oscar-worthy.
Chinese dumplings are one of my go-to comfort dishes. And Mother’s Dumplings, in Toronto’s original Chinatown, makes first-rate jiaozi, the steamed or boiled dumplings native to northeastern China.
The speedy staff stuff and fold fresh dumplings all day, starting with classics like pork and cabbage or shrimp, egg, and chive. They even make an unusual variety with a whole wheat dough and a pork-and-pickled-cabbage filling.
Be sure to order an assortment of cold plates, like spicy kimchi or garlicky cucumbers, to accompany your steamers of dumplings. My favorite is the “tofu strip salad,” bean curd with peppers and fragrant cilantro.
If “cafeteria” and “Persian food” don’t seem like a star-studded pairing, give this offbeat script another reading. Camros Organic Eatery is a cheery cafe (off the radar behind the Bloor-Yonge station) serving Persian-influenced stews, rice dishes, and salads — just the place a vegetarian starlet might hide from the paparazzi.
Among the rotating selection of dishes, you might find gheyme (a lentil and potato stew scented with limes and plums), cabbage rolls stuffed with minty brown rice, or an excellent fresh kale salad with slivers of beets and a lemony dressing.
You don’t have to be a film-industry fat cat to eat at the Fat Cat Wine Bar, a laid-back neighborhood bistro out near High Park. You just have to appreciate nibbles like gorgonzola crostini with kale and raisins, pork belly confit paired with apple slaw, or shrimp baked in a piri piri-garlic butter sauce.
Many of their wines, including lots of Ontario labels, come in three- and six-ounce pours, the better to sample different types and still make it to the theatre before the lights go down.
If you go…
The Toronto International Film Festival screens more than 300 movies from over 60 countries every September. This year’s event continues until September 18.
Mother’s Dumplings, 421 Spadina Ave., 416-217-2008.
Camros Organic Eatery, 25 Hayden St., 416-960-0723.
Fat Cat Wine Bar, 331 Roncesvalles Ave., 416-535-4064.
For more information about things to see and do in Toronto, check out Tourism Toronto.
Do you have any good celebrity spotting stories? Please leave a comment and share (especially if they have to do with food)!
And if you’re a food blogger, here’s how to link your post to WanderFood Wednesday.
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Photo credits:
Winona Ryder at TIFF in 2010 by karon.liu (flickr)
Lentils by mote (flickr)
All other photos ©Carolyn B. Heller