Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market

Many large cities have city markets  ̶  large buildings that house lots of venders with mini stores inside and a lot of food stalls. We have visited ones in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and love the variety. The one in Toronto is St. Lawerence Market. We also love to ride subways to get around a busy city rather having to drive and finding a place to park that doesn’t cost too much. We combined both things in Toronto.

Josh looked up parking garages along the subway line on the edge of town and found a garage above the subway station, so convenient. We did make a wrong turn in the building above it by going toward Subway- the sandwich shop instead of the train. The subway line there is easy to navigate as there are only a few lines so were soon on our way toward downtown. We also knew there was a marathon race that morning so knew some roads would be closed at places so this was a great solution. A few city blocks walk and we were there.

The market was not the largest we’d been in but had great specialty meat shops, cheese shops, bakeries, and seafood. Several places had fresh oysters on ice of different varieties so Josh got a half dozen raw of assorted ones and he said they were really good. I love oysters also but the last few times they upset my body terribly so have given them up. I was jealous, they looked great.

I got something I grew up with from northern Indiana  ̶  fried smelt. It is a small fish about the size of sardines that are in the Great Lakes, I have seen on tv about the smelt runs along the shore of Lake Michigan when people go out at night and net them. Mom would fry them when she found them, not real common in Florida stores, and if they were small enough it is easy to just eat the whole thing, backbone and all. I won’t try to tell you how good they are, I understand it is probably an acquired taste. I got my smelt-fix for another few years.

There was a meat shop that had dry-aged beef hanging in a cooler with a glass viewing window on the side. Dry aged is expensive because of the time it takes to do but it is supposed to be a really concentrated flavor and tender. there also was a booth with several caviars and truffles for sell, too rich for our wallets. Josh bought some Italian smoked sausage and some Albanian smoked beef sausage. We were too far from refrigeration so didn’t get any cheeses to go with them. Before we left, we got some baklava from the bakery and a few other sweets. Of course, we got Canadian souvenirs from the tourist product store. Toronto is a very international city so there were several stores specializing in different country’s groceries.

We made it back to the station we originated from and found the car in the parking garage pretty easily. Barnie spent the day at a Petsmart Doggie Daycare so picked him up and headed back to camp. We’re getting to know the cows and horses along our local roads to camp.