Events « Tastebuds

Toronto: T&T Nightmarket

From August 6-8, T&T held evening nightmarkets at its downtown branch on Cherry Street, and I and a group of friends went to check out the food on the first day.

I arrived right when the market started and before the crowds innundated the place. Thus, initially the lines were short and the foods were more readily assessible. But unfortunately, we somehow managed to miss out on the nightmarket’s best offerings while the chance allowed.

Tiramisu disk ingredients

Tiramisu disk thing

First off, my friend got a tiramisu rice disk from one of the Asian dessert stalls. It was an interesting concept: a sweet rice cake disk topped with some form of tiramisu-ey sauce, fruits, and cream. I didn’t try it but apparently, it was reminiscent of tiramisu.

Mango salad

Next, we had Thai food from Pi-Tom. They had the typical Thai stuff, including pad Thai, lemongrass something, cashew chicken, etc. We got a 3-item plate ($5) with pad Thai, green curry chicken, and mango salad to share. The pad Thai was quite typical in flavour, but the noodles were mushy. The mango salad wasn’t any good for it lacked an amalgamating component. It was as if they julienned some mangoes, carrots, etc., tossed them all together and called it a salad. There was a fish sauce based marinade, but it was hardly detectable. Also, the absence of chopped peanuts took away any texture contrast that may have uplifted the dish a bit.

Green curry chicken and pad Thai

The curry chicken, though, was pretty decent. It had a nice creamy flavour, not too spicy but still slightly tingy. However, the chicken used was factory-farmed, making each morsel floury and texture-less…=(

(Sweet) Curried samosa

After that not-so-great dish, we trekked around for a bit and then decided to get a curry samosa from another Thai food stall. Hmm, the crust of the pastry was pretty crispy, though no longer warm, but the curry inside was strangely sweet. It came sort of as a surprise, the sweetness…and it wasn’t like Japanese curry sweet either. Strange.

Braised fish cake

Later on more friends arrived and they got various foods, including braised fish cakes, BBQ squid, corn on a cob, and bubble tea.

Churro

I ended the night with a churro, which was overly greasy.

So overall, the food that we tried was pretty so-so. But I guess part of the problem was that the most popular stalls selling interesting looking foods (fried yams and stinky tofu, for instance) had these MEGA LONG line ups and me, I’m not much a fan of lines. So perhaps we just tried the wrong stuff. Anyways, it was a fun experience nonetheless, and nightmarkets are often about the atmosphere more than anything else.

Random photos from the night =):