The new chic-ed up north foodcourt at the Eaton Centre is…unique.
Fast food abounds – Thai Express, cheap burgers, fries, shawarma, Chinese from vats with more MSG than lab rats could handle, New York Fries Poutinerie (since 1976 – the fries on the menu. The poutine is a new addition following Toronto’s latest obsession with fake cheese curds and fake gravy from a mix), and other foodcourt standards aiming at the less-than-artery-clogging type of quick meal fare.
Jugo juice, two jugo juice replicas serving “fresh” juices, and then there are the things that appear at the terminal 1 at Pearson International, just outside Toronto city limits, you know the ones quaintly named after parts of the city such as hogtown and cabbagetown, that serve yet more deep-fried, slightly more expensive, slightly more upscale fare.
And then, there are two oases in the foodcourt desert. Aroma. The espresso bar first opened on Bloor Street east of Spadina. Serving “healthy breakfasts” of eggs, toast, yogurt (yogurt automatically makes it healthy, after all), and a diced salad (overkill, healthwise, according to TO), Euro-style panini, plus light-hearted salads in huge bowls. At this outlet, they even kept the bowls. No Styrofoam here. There are people at this foodcourt whose job it is to take trays, scrape off food waste into appropriate organic waste receptacles, and send the dishes and real cutlery to be washed. Sure, your hamburger still comes wrapped in waxed paper and aluminium, and some places still serve up chow mein on Styrofoam with plastic cutlery in plastic bags, but the food court gem is the second outlet of the Urban Herbivore with nary a petroleum-based utensil in sight.
Yes, I just wrote that. The Urban Herbivore. Kensinton Market vegan, organic, fair-trade when possible, waste-not restaurant whose sweet potato and date muffins rock the morning and whose heaping bowls of create-your-own salads with not-your-generic iceberg lettuce options rock the lunchtime rush. The same place I once walked into in a fake suede jacket and real leather ballerina shoes and felt awful about it. Chimichurri sauce on your house-made bread, topped with marinated seitan, plus sprouts, heirloom carrots, sunflower seeds, beets, and avocado. Sure, a salad comes to just under $10 but for red wine-dijon, lemon-citrus or creamy tahini dressing on mounds of organic arugula it’s worth the price tag. And if you can get there before the soup runs out, a hearty bowl of squash and pineapple or spicy black bean will come to about $5 all-in. Pre-blended juices haven’t been sitting too long, and the organic blends will still give you more nutrition-wise than the freshly squeezed oranges from the juice bar down the aisle that will rename nameless unless you properly read this sentence.
An “urban eatery”. Or many urban eateries. That’s the name of the food court. As opposed to all those other rural mall food courts/eateries, I suppose? A unique step in the right direction, though. Real cutlery, real bowls and plates, even (some) real food. Will the Urban Herbivore pop up at the airport next? I hope so. Just don’t think about the carbon footprint of all the food sent out to Mississauga perfectly prepped. Not quite as fresh as the downtown stores, but better than “from a mix-Timmies”. Sorry dad.
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