Taste of Toronto 2016: The 4-1-1 on summer’s hottest restaurant festival

Taste of Toronto - held June 23-26 at Garrison Common at Fort York - is one of the year’s biggest food events and this year, it’s about to get much bigger.

In addition to the all the restaurants participating in this year’s four-day-festival offering over 60 taster-sized signature dishes, there will be pop ups, a shopping marketplace (with over 80 exhibitors including of wines, ciders and brews, as well as olive oils, breads, meats and cheeses), hands-on cooking classes, live cooking demonstrations, wine tastings and classes and so much more.

Big news this year, celebrity chef Chuck Hughes is coming in town, kicking off opening night to lead a live demonstration at the Taste Theatre, in partnership with Metro and All-Clad.

One of the best elements of the show is the Metro Master Classes led by our own chefs and tastemakers. This year’s schedule includes Chuck Hughes on Thursday June 23. On Saturday June 25, Chef Cory Vitiello of FLOCK and The Harbord Room shows his skills at the stove, and you can learn the tricks of the trade from Chocolatier David Chow on Sunday June 26.

Get schooled on everything there is to do with wine from pairings with food and cellaring tips, along with tutored tastings, from pros such as Charlie’s Burgers.

Neat fact - This year, George Brown College culinary students will be helping chefs/restaurants with the pre-prep for the festival as well as on-site with the restaurants in their back of house. Cooking side-by-side with the chefs, they’ll get unqiue hands-on experience.

Now let’s talk food. We got a sneak peek of a few dishes that will be making an appearance at the show:

Chef Michael Hunter of Antler Kitchen & Bar will have the following dishes available as a pop-up exclusively on Friday, June 24:

-  Harvest Salad and Smoked Salmon with pickled squash, pickled onion, radish, greens, pumpkin seeds and fresh Portuguese goat cheese
-  Spice Ash Crusted Venison Lollipop

 Chef Ted Corrado of The Drake Hotel Properties (The Drake Hotel, Drake One Fifty, Drake Devonshire) will have these savoury selections available at the show.

- Pork and Shrimp Dumplings with Szechuan chili jam
- Salmon Fried Rice with salmon roe and Drake XO sauce

Check out our Facebook page for more photos of the dishes.

Restaurants participating in Taste of Toronto 2016:

- Barque
- Carver
- Drake Devonshire
- The Drake Hotel
- Drake One Fifty
- El Caballito Tequila y Tacos
- Fat Pasha
- Kinka Izakaya
- Kinton Ramen
- Kintori Yakitori
- Little Sister
- Los Colibris
- Mamakas Taverna
- The McEwan Group
- Miku Toronto
- Nota Bene
- Piano Piano
- Rasa
- Richmond Station

Pop-Ups Only:

- Alo (Thursday pop-up)
- Antler Kitchen & Bar (Friday pop-up)
- Kanpai Snackbar (Saturday pop-up)
- The County General (Sunday pop-up)

Tickets are now on sale through Ticketmaster, starting at $19 for general admission. For more information visit tasteoftoronto.com.

p.s. We'll be onsite covering the festival, so stay tuned for more updates and see you there.