Cuisine Canada Scene

Food Day Canada
Saturday, July 31, 2010
6:00 PM Your time
Cities, restaurants and backyards across Canada

Until last year, Food Day Canada was known as The World’s Longest Barbecue. It is always held on the Saturday of the first weekend in August, which this year happens to fall in July. When I began the event in 2003, the goal was to collectively celebrate the food of Canada, specifically beef because of BSE and the devastation it caused to that industry. After that first event, I expanded the scope to include all ingredients harvested here. And every year since, I have challenged Canadians to barbecue /cook /use Canadian ingredient and share their menus on the dedicated website.

This year, we’ve built a new website and established a new web presence, while ensuring the stories from the past are all still available online for everyone to see.  These menus are a voyeuristic look into the real food life of Canada. Curiously, since launching the site this year, we’ve had hits from 46 countries around the globe, including Russia, all of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Food Day Canada is our chance to create a day that showcases our extraordinary ingredients at a time when our farming/fishing communities are top of mind.  The only participation requirement is to cook great local/regional/national foods on Saturday July 31st and post the menus to the website (click here for the easy-to-fill-out submission form).

While the platform on which Food Day rests is virtual, there are also larger live events. Here in my own village of Elora, our local raceway will host a number of Ontario commodity organizations who are coming together to barbecue their products (pork/beef/chicken/vegetables/fruit) for the public — with lotsa good beer and a few cases of wine.  In addition, those same commodity organizations are committed to providing product for Ontario’s Food Banks for every Ontario menu posted on the website.  It’s win/win/win.

Also for the first time, this year, restaurants from across Canada are taking part. This handpicked group of 136 restaurants were carefully selected because they truly walk the talk. They include: Chives Canadian Bistro (Halifax, NS), Atlantica (St John’s, NL),  Bacalao (Clarenville & St. John’s, NL), Rossmount Inn (St Andrews by-the-Sea, NB),  Lot 30 (Charlottetown, PE), Inn at Bay Fortune (Fortune, PE),  Treadwell (Port Dalhousie, ON), Epic (Toronto, ON), Rouge (Calgary, AB) CharCut (Calgary, AB), Langdon Hall (Cambridge, ON),  C Restaurant (Vancouver, BC), Klondike Kate’s (Dawson City, YT) and a whole whack of restaurants in the Ottawa and Toronto areas.

Other national ‘days’ are about the eaters.  Food Day is about the farmers and fishers who feed us so very, very well. And about Canada’s chefs, who through their talent and innovation, bring the best Canadian ingredients to the table.

To celebrate, we are including some pretty neat awards as well. Mine will be given to a member of the general public whose menu shows the most Adaptability. Three other awards will go to  Chefs/Restaurants.  The judges for these awards are James Chatto, Michael Smith, Anthony Walsh, Sinclair Philip and Judy Creighton.

The goal is to build a full on food celebration in every corner of Canada that cannot be ignored.

Having a party never felt so good!

Anita Stewart