Hot & Spicy Food Festival

Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, Ontario
(416) 973-4000

http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/wr/festivals/hsff.php
Google Map

Date: August 11, 2006 (Fesitval runs from August 11-13)
What's on the menu: Hot & spicy food samples from around the world
Drinks: Cold beverage tent, pop, water, juice and decent selection of international beers
Cost: free samples, full dinners $8-10


Lost in the hype of the Taste of The Danforth was the litte known event the Hot & Spicy Food Festival. This is where pretenders like CFO and I go to tantalize our taste buds with fiery foods. Located in the always popular Harbourfront Centre, we arrive early on the first day of the event only to be met with a sparse crowd. Unfazed, we continue our walk along the beautiful boardwalk.

Our first stop was the World Café. Inside we find a handful of international food vendors. A quick count finds 3 caribbean food vendors, 1 Chinese booth, 1 Latin booth and 1 Indian vendor. Not exactly the most diverse selections, but the Harbourfront Centre rotates vendors throughout the summer. Popular food choices include jerk meat (chicken, pork), Indian curries, BBQ chicken, Chinese stir-frys and a few others. We decided to skip the Café for now until we found the real fiery foods.

After a brief search, we finally find the Red Hot Market inside a smallish tent. Up a flight of steps and into the tent we're disappointed to find only a few vendors offering up tiny samples of their foods. We tried a tasty, but no so spicy jambalaya, a pad thai lacking any heat, some fiery pepper dips with tortilla chips and a few samples of pepper jellies. In and out of the tent in 5 or so minutes, we're left wondering if this is all the Hot & Spicy Food Festival has to offer?! We decide to walk around the rest of the Centre in search of anything to fill us up.


A quick stroll around the area finds nothing, so we settle for what's in the World Café. We decide on the Latin food vendor and a couple of apps from the caribbean food vendor, Coco Bananas. From the Latin foods we order a bbq chicken dinner served with rice and a salad, a cheese filled empanada and a plantain. The chicken is dry like jerk chicken, but without the taste. Side dishes include a decent salad and rice. The empanada was good - deep fried and crispy, sprinkled with sugar giving it a sweet taste at first, but once you bite in further your mouth is filled with a warm melted cream cheese. Plantain was also good slightly caramelized on the outside and filled with a touch of the same cheese in the empanada.

From Coco Bananas we ordered pressed plantains and acra's. Pressed plantain is well... plantain pressed flat then fried. Tasteless by itself, it comes with a mild hot sauce that adds a bit of flavour. Acra is a black eye bean fritter, deep fried and filled with a bean mixutre almost like a samosa, best described as "meh".

With half filled stomachs we continue to check out the rest of the event. On the main stage is a drum & dance group loudly playing some catchy beats. Surrounding the stage are vendors selling various crafts. Just off to the side we find Churros Ricos Churros, a vendor selling freshly made churros. Our churro is pulled straight from the deep fryer and dusted with powdered sugar. Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, sweet with a touch of saltiness... this is the best churro we've had.


To the back of the stage are a few more food vendors. One caribbean vendor has sliced platains on the menu, served cheap at $3 a plate - they're good too.. crispy and sweet. No food festival is ever complete without a roasted corn on the cob vendor. The Hot & Spicy festival is no different - corn is roasted slowly on a barbeque, rubbed with lemon and coated with a spicy mixutre. A relative steal for $2.50 considering other festival prices.

With much disappointment we decide to head home. As we slowly walk along the boardwalk, a street magican catches our eye. Max the magician performs 15 minute street shows to anyone willing to watch. Hilarious tricks (Max is somewhat of a comedian) ranged from guessing cards to pulling a squash out of a hat. Definitely one of the highlights to an otherwise disappointing night

We certianly cannot recommend this festival to anyone. Even novice hot and spicy eaters would be disappointed by the lack of heat. It wasn't just the lack of heat though, there weren't enough vendors or people at the festival. The best food at the event was the churros, which would probably register about -100 on the Scoville heat scale. Don't worry if you missed this event, hot & spicy food lovers, this yearly food festival will probably be back next year and if organizers read this blog posting they might even get the Scoville units pass the beginner level.


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