T&T Waterfront Night Market

In my  recent post on Globe IMC’s Blog, I talked about Taste of Asia, one of this summer’s first night market/street festivals. If there is anything that I can tell you about these events, it is that Asian Night Markets are the best places to go when you’re looking for a place to try out new foods and take your date (or friends) for an affordable price!

If you are planning to go somewhere this weekend, the T&T Waterfront Night Market is taking place again this weekend. Opening its doors to the public this past Thursday night, tonight will be the third night of the 2011 night market. Located in the parking lot of T&T by Lakeshore on Cherry Street, the event will be attracting approximately 10,000 visitors per night to its night market.

Starting off with a performance by Danny Fernandes on Thursday’s opening night and a Live Graffitti competition in the parking lot, the Waterfront Night market will continue to have many other performances this weekend (tonight and tomorrow night) taking place centre stage. Tonight, the stage will be joined by Kraft Kitchen's Chef Oliver Li, who will be giving a live cooking demo (and off stage, Kraft’s Chef Sursur Lee will offer yummy cheeseburger spring rolls at his booth!)

Tonight the Glow & Shine Custom Car Show will also be taking place. It will feature custom modified cars from all over Toronto – where car owners will engage in a friendly competition and showcase their cars at the festival for the public to see. If you’re a fan of modified cars, this will be something to see.

Coming Sunday will be the 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament throughout the day.

Compared to Taste of Asia & Night it Up, the T&T Night Market is one that is of a much smaller scale. With its debut in July of last year, the T&T Night Market was created not long after Loblaw bought T&T Supermarket. This year, the President Choice booth is handing out free ice cream and PC sausages – if you are planning to get your hands on these free samples, beware that you will probably have to stand in line for a good half hour before you can get anything at all.

The best way to go about a Night Market is to plan it out. If there’s anything I learned from going to Taste of Asia, Taste of Lawrence, and Night it up, it is to bring a group of friends. Why? Strategy. With the vast number of people that you will have to first get through and stand behind in line, it will take close to thirty to fourty minutes per booth to get the food that you want. Annual returning vendors that have never failed to make a great snack and attract many visitors to their booth include: the fresh, juicy, extra plump oysters from Diana’s Seafood, Smelly Tofu Booths, Tornado Potatoes, Chicken/Beef/Lamb Skewers, and of course Takoyaki (Squid balls). If you plan on hitting up any of these booths and trying everything, here’s some advice from both myself and Angela:

1)      Go with a group of friends (4 to 5 people, ideally).

2)      Set up a meeting area that all your friends will recognize and easily find.

3)      Assign an item for each person to go out to hunt for and split up.

By assigning and splitting up food hunt duties, you would have saved yourself hours of line-ups and being up close and personal with many smelly, sweaty people.

For a full schedule of T&T Waterfront Night Market’s Event Schedule, check out: http://www.waterfrontnightmarket.com/features.html

Looking to get there tonight? You can check directions on : http://www.waterfrontnightmarket.com/directions.html

Shuttle Bus information from assigned parking areas will also be shown on the website.

Have fun & don’t forget to leave us a message after you’ve gone this weekend to tell us your favourite food or favourite experience of the night market!

Taste of Asia - July 2, 2011.

The following post was written by Callie, one of henhaochi's co-bloggers on the http://www.globeimc.com/ 's iBlog.

This post is dated July 2, 2011.

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Summer is here and that means food festivals to help celebrate Canada’s cultural diversity will be popping up all over the city! Just last weekend, Toronto hosted its 9th Annual Taste of Asia Festival, Canada’s largest Asian Street Festival.

Located in the parking lot of Pacific Mall in Markham just on Kennedy and Steeles, its East meets West. The Taste of Asia Festival is a cultural food festival that aims to bring as many unique dishes from the far east corners of Asia to the local streets of Toronto.

From the showcase of famous dishes like Taiwanese stinky tofu to Malaysia’s delicious murtabak, the festival included over 100 food vendors, clothing/accessories/electronics booths, and a variety of musical and cultural acts. Kung-fu demonstrations wow’ed the crowd and an on-stage cooking competition hosted in an Iron-chef style had competitors creating unique dishes within a set theme and a given ‘secret’ ingredient that must be used.

Toronto’s Taste of Asia is definitely the place to be to celebrate the summer alongside with food, art, and culture. Being a foodie myself, I can assure you that if you love food, fun, and partying too, street festivals are the way to go. The many vendor booths offer a generous amount of food for a very affordable price.

Plan on going to a night market sometime to celebrate Toronto’s international foods? Some interesting dishes that are worth trying:

• Taiwanese Stinky Tofu
• Korean Spicy Rice Cakes (Duk Bokki)
• Malaysian Murtabaks
• Japanese Takoyaki
• Assorted BBQ/Satay skewers (lamb, beef, chicken, octopus, squid, eggs)
• Tornado Potato
• Sweet Tofu Dessert Pudding
• Fresh coconut juice / pineapple juice
• And much more!

If you’ve missed this opportunity to taste the many international delicacies last weekend, Night it Up! Will be taking place in a weekend’s time, followed by T&T’s Waterfront Night Market in the last weekend of the month.