Most people visit Toronto for its diversity in local culture, neighborhoods, iconic skyline views, and outdoor escapes. But, on a recent trip I was able to implement the fastest way I know (and practice) to actually understand what a city is all about. That’s through its food scene.
In Toronto there’s one easy stop to experience its eclectic vibe and that’s at the St. Lawrence Market.
The St. Lawrence Market predates Canada itself by 64 years. It was established in 1803 by Lieutenant Governor Peter Hunter who designated the site for public trading, and the building has been rebuilt and expanded several times since. Most recently in 1904, but it’s never stopped operating in the same spot. Walk the upper level today and a lot of the vendors have their founding year stitched right onto their signs, which for locals turns grocery runs into a walk through history. For example, Brown Brothers Meats has been in the same spot since 1895, making it the market’s oldest butcher.
The Sandwich Everyone Comes For
If there’s one thing that connects the market’s past to its present, it’s peameal bacon. Brown Brothers claims to have been the first vendor to bring the cut to the market, pulled from an old family recipe. But it’s Carousel Bakery, run by brothers Robert and Maurice Biancolin since the market’s 1977 renovation, that turned it into the thing people actually travel for. Their father cured the bacon himself in the early years, and the sandwich he built around it, thick-cut peameal on a soft kaiser, has since been called Toronto’s unofficial signature dish by locals, drawing everyone from weekend regulars to Anthony Bourdain.
Classic peameal sandwich from Carousel Bakery
(Dream Network Media)The Market Is a Representation of Who Toronto Is
Keep walking and the through-line becomes less about any single vendor and more about how many different countries are represented in one building. Ponesse Foods, run by Rocco and his sons Mike and Mario, has been stacking the market’s best produce for years. A few aisles over, you’ll find Portuguese custard tarts, Polish sausage, Middle Eastern spice blends, Greek olives, and stalls representing cuisines from across Asia, all inside the same 19th-century brick building.
Taking that in with a guide absolutely makes all the diffrence. On the Culinary Adventure Co. walk, my guide Katerina moved us through eight or nine stops in under three hours, timing each stop so we weren’t just tasting food but hearing who’d been running that stall and for how long. The history, the nuanced stories. It’s the difference between eating your way through a market and being handed the map to read it. For a first visit, that context is worth the price of admission on its own. What surprised me most, honestly, wasn’t the food. It’s that a market this size, this old, doesn’t smell like one. No fish smell trailing you between stalls, no cramped aisles. Just clean, wide, and orderly, which after 220 years feels like its own kind of achievement.
Ponesse Foods, run by Rocco and his sons Mike and Mario in the St. Lawrence market in Toronto
(Dream Network Media)The Rest of the City Eats the Same Way
The market gives the history, but Toronto’s newer restaurants bring in the food scene of what Toronto’s diversity brings to the table now. Nobu opened its first Canadian location in the Entertainment District in 2024, and TONO, chef Akira Back’s Nikkei restaurant blending Japanese and Peruvian cooking, took over the rooftop of the W Toronto in Yorkville last fall. It’s a continuation of the same story the market tells: this city’s food doesn’t come from one place; it comes from the world.
Even the city’s cocktail scene runs on the same instinct. In Parkdale, Evelyn Chick’s Simpl Things splits its day between an Italian cafe and an Asian-influenced snack bar, with the same drink menu holding both halves together. It’s a more intimate and innovative version of what St. Lawrence Market has been doing since before Canada had a flag. My biggest takeaway is that if you put enough cultures under one roof, eventually the food stops being a novelty and starts being the actual identity of the place.
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