Toronto Things to Do Tips by RB_Oakes

Located just to the west of Chinatown, Kensington Market is one of the best neighbourhoods to visit, and one of the most accessible. Being on the radar of both locals and tourists alike, it is surprisingly not that busy most of the time. The time that it is busy is on Saturday.

The market has three cheese shops, some butcher shops, at least four fishmongers (Caribbean or Portuguese), stores specializing in dried goods (nuts and legumes), an entire block of vintage clothing shops and numerous eateries.

Saturday the market is jammed with people, and only the truly masochistic would attempt to drive here (though some do, amazingly). To best experience it, come on a sunny day (always the busiest and you’ll be outdoors) and bring an empty stomach. The food is dirt cheap and you’ll gorge yourself, disgorge, and gorge again for $20.

Grab a hot Trinidadian double, homemade ginger beer and killer baked goods at Patty King. Visit a latin grocer, head to the back and get a couple of pupusas. Segovia Meats has the best sausages in the city – take some with you for a barbeque.

Stop at Casa Acoreana and smell the place. They have a coffee shop next door, which is the second best place in the market for people-watching. The best is along the outside wall of the store, where after a couple of years of just me sitting there on the one lonely chair they’ve now got a whole row of them. Bring your food from wherever – they don’t care. You can sit there for hours, and if the weather’s nice you probably should.

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Address: West of Spadina, between Dundas and College
Directions: Bordered by the Spadina streetcar (via Spadina Station) or the Dundas streetcar (via St. Patrick Station). An easy walk from downtown (to the northwest).

Little India

One of the more out-of-the-way neighbourhoods in Toronto is Little India. This is on Gerrard Street East, between Greenwood and Coxwell. Here is a concentration of various south Asian peoples, especially Pakistanis.

A lively neighbourhood even in the later evening hours, Little India hosts all of the amenities for the community – sari and silk shops, paan stores, sidewalk vendors serving sugar cane juice, India grocers, and restaurants covering the entire region.

You can find Pakistani barbeque, Kashmiri chai, and south Indian-style vegetarian fare. Some of the culinary delights are the aforementioned chai (authentic – sweet, hot, spicy and milky…a world away from grocery store chai); kulfi (Pakistani-style ice cream on a stick); dosai (crepes in which spiced potatoes are rolled; barbequed corn-on-the-cob; sambhar (outstanding lentil soup); paan (spice mixture rolled in a leaf that you tuck into your cheek and chew slowly – said to aid digestion) and barfi (fudge-like confection made with condensed milk).

Aside from barfi, some of the things you may wish to consider taking back are chai masala (spice mix for making chai); paneer (slightly tart firm cheese made by acidulating milk and then solidifying it – I chop it and fry it in a few drops of olive oil with green onions, garlic and chipotle peppers for breakfast); and Indian-style bagged snacks. The latter are the local equivalent of potato chips. They come in many varieties and are often made of chick pea flour, but spiced with Indian spices. They are baked, so much healthier than chips, and because they use great spices instead of salt and artificial flavours they taste much better, too. The best is the Punjabi Mix from Mirch Masala – and of this the big cumin sticks are king.

Of course, Hindu idols and Buddhas can be found. The more musically-inclined can find a whole host of Indian instruments – harmoniums, sitars, and lots of tablas.

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Address: Gerrard St E, between Greenwood and Coxwell
Directions: From College & Yonge (College Stn), take the Gerrard streetcar eastbound. Many of these turn north at Parliament, so make sure to get off if that happens and await one that is going straight down Gerrard.

Built on the grounds of the Victorian-era Gooderham & Worts distillery, not far from downtown, the Distillery District is in the process of becoming revitalized. 2003 was really the first year that it became a public draw. The host a lot of events down here, and in the summer you can be sure that something is going on each weekend. These include art shows, farmer’s markets, a Jazz festival, a world music festival, a dog weekend and other themes.

The architecture is of great interest – the structure of a Victorian factory was quite different than those of today. All the various buildings in the complex served a function in the distillery and it’s interesting to see how it’s all been transformed. The brickwork also adds a lot of atmosphere to the area, and combined with the gates marks quite specifically what is and what isn’t part of the district. That sense of clearly-definable area gives you an immediate sense of being in a distinct neighbourhood.

The weekends are bustling, especially in the summer. There’s a couple of restaurants on-site, a wonderful chocolate shop (Soma Chocolates) where luxurious chocolates of the highest calibre are hand-crafted. The only beer you’ll find on tap is from the on-site Mill Street Brewery – the Tankhouse Ale and Denison’s Weissbier are two of Canada’s finest beers. Too bad about the plastic cups and fenced in drinking areas.

Sunny weekends it’s well worth it to go down there – very happening place.

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Address: Mill Street - south of King, east of Parliament
Directions: Walk down King or Wellington streets to the east of Yonge. Turn right (south) at Parliament, then left (east) at Mill Street. The gates are on the right-hand side. You can take the streetcar east on King to Parliament if you're feeling lazy.
Website: http://www.thedistillerydistrict.com

Proximity and size make it one of the most well-known of Toronto’s neighbourhoods. Restaurants and grocery stores abound. For locals/self-caterers, Chinatown is probably the cheapest place to buy food in the developed world. They give food away pretty much. Meat is ridiculously cheap. I bought a green pepper for thirty cents last weekend.

Among all the Chinese restaurants, I admit a little bit of heresy because my favourite place to eat here is Pho Hung, a Vietnamese beef soup specialist. Still, the main highlight of Chinatown is just to walk the streets. The bustle, swarms of people and indecipherable signage may not be authentic China, but it’s a reasonable enough facsimile and you’d be forgiven for wondering if you were still in Canada.

I especially enjoy crowd-walking here. This is the art of getting through crowds as quickly as possible with a minimum of commotion. In other words, you don’t just blast your way through, shoving people to the ground. No, dexterity is key and you’re not supposed to bump into anybody. Form is important to – you shouldn’t be forever jumping out of the way, slamming on the brakes, etc. Rather, you should glide smoothly and easily through the crowds by choosing the best paths through the ever-shifting human maze, and use subtle shifts in momentum and body movements to maximize your progress while avoiding the disturbance of others. I might be the only person in the world who gets a kick out of this, but it’s one of the reasons I go to Chinatown so I figured I’d mention it. It’s not like you don’t have silly-sounding reasons to go places sometimes.

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Address: Spadina Avenue, from Queen to College

The Toronto Islands are basically a giant sandbar created in a semi-circle around the harbour downtown. They were formed in the 1800’s during an especially violent storm and have remained ever since. Formerly, they were used for holiday cottages, until the city appropriated the islands to what is now the largest park in the city.

From the ferry terminal at the foot of Bay Street, you have three choices of places to land on the Islands. To the west is Hanlon’s Point, a quiet area, with a nudist beach.

Centre Island is where most of the people go. There you’ll find the nastiest tourist trap – Centreville, a poorly-maintained mini-amusement park for kids run by people who abuse their staff. Beyond this, over a small bridge is a wide boulevard with summer gardens. At the end of this is a beach. At the beach is the only good reason to take the Centre Island ferry – you can rent bikes here. The islands are quite long, so this is a pretty good idea if you wish to see it all.

The eastern dock is at Ward’s Island. Ward’s and Algonquin are the two islands in the chain where the original holiday cottages were allowed to remain. They stand in very close proximity to each other, and each one is architecturally unique. They are inhabited year-round and residents lease them from the city. There is a multi-year waiting list to get one. A real community has formed here.

The “streets” are sidewalks, and there are no cars. Still, they are named 1st Street, 2nd Street, and so on. The whole community is enveloped in forest, and growth sometimes obstructs the sidewalks.

Many people who stroll through this area soon find themselves daydreaming about living there. It is bucolic, friendly and at the same time you’re very close to the city. Save for the incursions of people like me on summer weekends, the residents mostly have the place to themselves. The views of downtown are excellent, too.

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Address: Toronto Islands
Directions: Take one of three ferries from the foot of Bay Street.

I used to live in the Annex and it’s a pretty cool place. The key area is Bloor Street West, from Spadina to Bathurst. While the drinking and eating places of this stretch are overrated, there are plenty of them. Greg’s Ice Cream, the best in town, is moving from their venerable Bloor & Avenue location to Bloor & Spadina, which gives you at least one worthy option.

There are some good, funky shops here – Piya’s Boutique (incense, clothes and miscellaneous idols), Book City, and the used cd shops. The Hungarian deli is a gustatory highlight, serving up a wide range of salamis and sausages, in addition to imported Hungarian goods, including tasty hazelnut-flavoured chocolate bars.

Internet cafés are plentiful on this stretch, and it finishes with the ridiculously tacky department store Honest Ed’s and a nice shopping stretch called Mirvish Village, which runs south of Bloor down Markham. Honest Ed’s has to be seen to be believed. Even if you normally despise cheesiness, you’ve got to respect it there because it goes right to the core of what they’re all about.

At the south end of the Annex is Harbord Street, which offers a quieter stretch of businesses, including the famous Harbord Fish & Chips, which is to my mind the second-best of its type in the city. There’s only a couple of seats inside, so bear that in mind if you’re headed that way in the wintertime. Getting stuck eating standing up, or outside in a snowstorm, isn’t too much fun.

North of Bloor along Bathurst is a grungy-looking stretch. Maybe four minutes from Bloor, is Alchemy Bakery, which is worth going slightly out of your way for. They make outstanding breads and cookies, bring in some very pretty, mainly tasty desserts and also have interesting beverages, like the local organic Rainmaker line, all of which are amongst the most complex and flavourful of all non-alcoholic beverages I’ve ever encountered.

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Address: Between Harbord & Dupont, Avenue & Bathurst
Directions: Via St. George, Spadina, Dupont or Bathurst stations.

My fondest memories of the stretch of Bloor St West that runs westward from Bathurst to Christie are the parades during the 2002 World Cup. Every time South Korea won, the place went bonkers. The best was the impromptu parade at 4:30 in the morning after the won their quarterfinal match against Spain. The street was filled with raucous Koreans and bleary-eyed spectators such as myself. The cops were totally unprepared, and didn’t even have people out to man the intersections as thousands of people streamed down the street. Toronto is the best place on earth to watch the World Cup, save for the host country itself, because every country has a neighbourhood here, and no matter who wins a given match, somewhere in the city there will be a party.

Outside of such events, Koreatown boasts a steady flow of Korean internet cafés, groceries and restraurants. Walnut cakes are available – they look like walnuts, cost $1 and are filled with sweets and savouries. You can get apple pancakes at some places, too, and these are quite nice for dessert.

Latin Americans are slowly working their way into the area and have numerous grocery stores as well, and also the outstanding taquiera Tacos el Asador, which is one block east of Christie. This is one of the best restaurants in Toronto, with a very friendly vibe, and phenomenal burritos. The horchata is great, and the care they take extends to often importing Latin beers not normally available in Toronto.

At Christie, you’ll find Christie Pits Park, the biggest in the area. I’ve taken burritos here and watched the United Nations of locals play soccer on the pitch below.

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Address: Bloor St W, between Bathurst & Christie
Directions: Via Bathurst or Christie stations.

Out of the way, to say the least, is the once-Polish neighbourhood down Roncesvalles. This runs south from Dundas West to the corner where King and Queen meet. Oddly, the shopping is all on the east side of the street. The west side does however have some businesses north of Dundas, which is a transition stretch between Roncesvalles and Bloor and notable for the Mauritian restaurant Blue Bay Café (octopus curry!).

As stated, the area was once quite Polish, and still a few delis remain, along with the Chopin restaurant. Arguably, there isn’t that much here that you can’t find elsewhere. It’s mainly just neighbourhood shops, cafés and restaurants. This is true, but being rather out of the way, it’s totally devoid of tourists or even people from other neighbourhoods. A true chance to see Torontonians in their indigenous habitat!

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Address: Roncesvalles Ave.
Directions: Runs south from Dundas West station (Bloor & Dundas W), to King & Queen

Toronto’s Beach neighbourhood stretches along the beach/boardwalk from Ashbridge’s Bay eastward. The main shopping stretch is along Queen Street East. The entire area is quite a bit further to the east than other worthwhile neighbourhoods. Because of the beach and boardwalk, the area in quite tony. Amongst the bar, restaurants and cafés, Castro’s in notable for its beer list. There is a candy shop that offers fudge, British foods, and all manner of candies. Very dangerous place, that.

The beach itself and adjacent parkland is the real reason people come here from other neighbourhoods. It’s not Rio, and swimming in Lake Ontario is seldom advisable due to pollution concerns (not to mention cold temperatures), but it’s the only serious stretch of sandy shore aside from those on the Islands, so it is still a great place to catch a tan, stroll with your S.O. or walk the dog.

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Address: Queen Street East
Directions: Take Queen Streetcar eastbound, between Woodbine and Victoria Park.

One of the key intersections in Toronto, and an odd mix of office towers, obscene suburban architecture (the movie theatres on the northwest corner, for example) and old Toronto shopping blocks (the northeast side of the street). It’s pretty rare to find an area of Toronto as white as Yonge/Eg, where “ethnic” means “Jewish”, but there’s still some interesting places.

Vortex Records is a great used music store on the 2nd floor a minute up the block on the northeast side. To the east, down Eglinton at Mount Pleasant is the Granite Brewery, easily the area’s best pub. South of there down Mount Pleasant three blocks, on the west side, is Penrose Fish and Chips, an uptown icon.

South of Eglinton on Yonge, La Salumeira is a pretty good deli with an impressive selection of obscure imported foods. Further south, the Bow & Arrow is a decent pub with good beer list and Sunday evening live music. The cask ales are not turned over very quickly, though, and I don’t recommend ordering them.

The houses in this entire area are surprisingly expensive. The best place to gawk at millionaires, though, lies a little further to the southwest, in the area bounded between Eglinton in the north, St. Clair in the south, Avenue in the east and Bathurst in the west.

This area, Forest Hill, has a tiny “village” along Spadina, north of St. Clair, where you’ll find a few shops. This is, however, some distance from Yonge/Eg. At Bathurst/Eg. (yes, this is a whole other neighbourhood, but not one of much interest) you’ll find King Falafel – it doesn’t look like much but it is beyond good.

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Address: Yonge/Eglinton
Directions: Area accessible via both Eglinton and Davisville subway stations.