The Mississauga Rotary Ribfest was on this past weekend. Pretty much the same, though we went in the middle of the recent heat wave (feels like high 30's!) we were experiencing, so we didn't have much time to linger. This year, too, they blocked off Duke of York Boulevard next to the Living Arts Centre, which, along with the construction, caused major traffic grief getting in to Square One. All I got this year was a pulled pork sandwich, with beans and rice and corn bread.
This year's Carrassauga in Mississauga (held on May 28, 29 and 30), the yearly (in its 25th Year) Multicutural Festival, featured some new countries (like Guyana and Vietnam) and some new pavilions (including quite a few tents outside of Hershey Centre). We usually catch this Festival, mostly for the chance to see some Culture, and buy some products) from various countries, but also for the chance to sample some good food (okay, expensive food). We found the crowds this year to be less; we had little trouble finding a parking place or getting a seat to see the show; perhaps it was the rather hot weather!!
Some highlights for us:
The China pavilion was actually a showcase of Taiwan, there was an interesting demonstration of Wushu Martial Arts; later in the evening was a special showing of well-done and interesting cultural dances.
The Guyana pavilion I checked out, because I wanted to have their chicken roti; unfortunately, while tasty, it didn't match up with the great roti I enjoyed long ago at Tony's Roti on Victoria Park (and I believe he came from Guyana).
The murtabak were back again at the Malaysia/Singapore pavilion, a sort of Asian roti filled with chicken or beef or vegetables.
The Thailand pavilion was serving food from P-Tom's in downtown Toronto; tasty, especially the mango salad!
Baytana Bakery in Mississauga (near Tomken and Britannia), which had a booth in the Lebanon Pavilion, makes their own phyllo dough, and uses a mixture of nuts (cashews, pistachios, walnuts, other nuts) in their baklava. They also make other lebanese sweets, such as sesame cookies and semolina with honey.
Pistachio mammoul from the Egypt Pavilion.
We went again this year to the yearly multicultural festival in Mississauga, there are about 15 pavilions set up representing 20 or so countries. Again, some of the pavilions are great (the Ukraine one has traditional dancers that are quite flashy, and some of the dancing looks quite similar to break-dancing), while others are not. This festival is about culture, and finding out about the many cultures that make up Canadian diversity, and part of that culture is represented by its food.
Some of the highlights that we sampled this year included some food that we had not eaten, and finding restaurants that we did not know existed in Mississauga. in the International pavilion, we ate murtabak, a Indian Muslim wrap popular in Singapore and Malaysia, it's a roti filled with various fillings (curried vegetable with chickpeas, red kidney beans, carrots and potatoes; Halal beef with carrots, potatoes and cilantro; or Halal chicken with peas, potatoes and white beans) is then grilled for 5 minutes and served with homemade coconut chutney and chili-garlic sauce. There was also Lebanese baklava and sesame-topped barazik. In the Portuguese pavilion, we ate two dishes, one with baked salted cod, another tasty pork alentejana (with clams and wine, garlic, oregano, bay leaves and cumin). A restaurant called Tarboosh (located at Central Parkway and Dundas) had excellent middle-eastern food in one of the pavilions.
We enjoyed mostly Carassauga, one complaint we have, is that the sound system is too loud in most of the pavilions, we can't really enjoy the music and dancing with the sound blaring.
We attended Carassauga last weekend, the yearly exhibition of the multiculture present in the Mississauga area. Lots of food at each of the pavilions, some highlights for me, food-wise, are the menudo pork stew and the adobo chicken at the Philippine pavilion, along with the Halo-halo drink enjoyed by my beautiful Bride; the sesame bagel at the Turkey pavilion; the hazelnut gelato along with the lemon gelato at the Italian pavilion; seeing sorrel or bissap for sale in the African pavilion (very expensive!); the green coconut at the Jamaica pavilion; the pork or chicken tacos at the Latin America pavilion; really a lot of good food to sample, all at fairly expensive prices.
