A few new, highly anticipated restaurants popped up at last night’s sold-out night market hosted by The Stop Community Food Centre in the alley and rear parking lot at Honest Ed’s. Prior to opening their Queen East location this coming Monday (June 25), Leslieville’s Paulette’s Original fried-chicken-and-doughnuts shop served up doughnut holes (alas, with no chicken) in maple-sugar and garam-masala flavours. Cowbell’s still-under-construction sister restaurant, The Samuel J. Moore, had chef de cuisine Alexandra Feswick toasting up strawberry s’mores while Mark Cutrara manned the adjacent Cowbell booth making snow cones. His booth, made entirely of ice, surprisingly lasted the whole night.
Meanwhile, chefs Nick Liu and Steve Gonzalez continued to build buzz for their respective restaurants, Gwai Lo and Bushwick. Gonzalez’s fellow Top Chef Canada alum Dustin Gallagher, helping out at the Yours Truly booth, is now consulting at a pub called the Riverside Public House (725 Queen St. E. at Broadview) that’s slated to open in a few weeks; it’s owned by the people behind Wrongbar and Baby Huey.
About 850 tickets (at $50 a pop) for the night market sold-out within three days of going on sale. (To put the ticket price in perspective: a $50 donation to The Stop will provide a family of four with a food hamper that will last them for three days.) But the night just wasn’t about the food and booze, as each vendor was also outfitted with cool booths created by local design firms and students; Brockton General‘s cardboard pegasus (courtesy of Fugitive Glue) and Woodlot‘s LED/wood structure (built by a group of Ryerson students) were incredible. Click on the photo gallery above for a glimpse.
