St. Lawrence Market

Yeah, we'll go lasagna.

Yeah, when I was in Toronto, I went by this Italian place at St. Lawrence Market, and I seen lasagna there, and I was just...

Regretting the fact that I just came from, like, lunch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, I was just sort of, um, surprised by the, by, by the pricing back in Australia at that point in time.

But, um, we lived downtown in, uh, Toronto, um, and there was a phenomenal, uh, market just, uh, right nearby called St. Lawrence Market, and it had the fish and the cheese and, uh, all the phenomenal, um- A produce that we were very spoilt to go and, uh, source from every Saturday morning was our ritual.

Um, so that, that was a great, um, experience.

So we spent 10 years in, uh, Toronto, and, uh, at the time I was sort of, um, commuting on a weekly basis to the US doing some work in the US from, from Canada.

experience.

Go to the Keg Mansion in Toronto, the one St. Lawrence market on the Esplanade.

You'll have a different experience.

Enough about the Keg.

You know, all the main things are in the downtown core.

And St. Lawrence Market is definitely not to be missed.

It's like my absolute favorite place.

I go there every Saturday morning just to get like groceries and buy like an apple fritter and some coffee.

You could definitely go out and visit them.

So that's pretty cool.

But if you're in St. Lawrence Market, you'll find like a variety of them that usually came in locally.

But that said, Quebec, they're the ones that are known for the maple syrup.

Yeah

... and then go to the St. Lawrence Market-

Mm

... and go to the Atlantic Ocean.

I love going to visit different places, different cities or countries, and seeing how they treat food, and going into their grocery stores, and seeing what you can buy, and going to farmer's markets, like one of my favorite things to do.

Or if I'm traveling to-- I was in Toronto once and I went to Toronto's big like St. Lawrence Market, and-

Yeah, it's beautiful

... like fantastic, and one of like my dreams, 'cause I was only there for a couple days.

I was like, "I wish I was living here for a week or two weeks-"

Yeah

... "so it made for me to go get ingredients from the St. Lawrence Market and cook something with the ingredients from the St. Lawrence Market." Like, that's how I think about things.

So I really appreciate like you sharing the background on what it meant for you and your family to take food seriously.

I was still nervous about confidence.

I knew in my heart that we wanted to take our VIP early access food tour of St. Lawrence Market and do something different with it.

I'd said that to my experiences manager, Caitlin.

I'm like, we got to tidy this up.

And I think because I had the pleasure of being in entertainment marketing, working with films and cartoons and licensing and stuff, I had a sensibility of sort of what audience will respond to, right? The story arcs, the cuteness, the moments.

And, you know, some of that does get sprinkled into our tours.

We go to this really delicious mustard shop in St. Lawrence Market called Coslick's.

Every other food tour company takes the pretzels that are free at Coslix and dunks the pretzels into the mustard and tries it.

famously open-minded.

What about St. Lawrence Market?

Love it.

Absolute heaving emporium of goodness.

And obviously, Toronto's cuisine spans the globe.

But I think a quintessential city eater would have to be the particular delight that was endorsed by Anthony Bourdain, the pea meal bacon sandwich.

Best enjoyed from St. Lawrence Market.

And it's an enormous sandwich centered around pea meal bacon, which is the sort of wet, cured, unsmoked bacon made from trimmed, lean, boneless pork loin.