Tastemaker, Toronto's newest food festival recently took place at Evergreen Brickworks.
The two-day event, featured some of the city's best chefs and allowed visitors to the chance to get an all-access experience to one of three sessions with the purchase of a $60 ticket.
Unfortunately, the festival which looked good on paper was not devoid of some major problems. Despite breaking up Tastemaker into three sessions, it became brutally obvious that organizers had oversold tickets. Between the 45 to 60 minute wait lines for dishes from the Sobeys Tastemaker Kitchen and the pushing and shoving that occurred to get to the vendor tables, Tastemaker did not live up to expectations. The promise of an all-inclusive experience created massive chaos with ticket holders scrounging for food and grabbing whatever they could get. I even overhead multiple frustrated people saying that they wanted a refund after spending mass amounts of time in long lineups and only getting one or two samples of food if that. The crowds got so insane that I feared for my safety as I tried to navigate my wheelchair past the mass amounts of people.
The one saving grace for Tastemaker was the food. Everything I ate was excellent. The session I attended featured Rob Gentile (Buca Osteria & Enoteca), Patrick Kriss (Alo), Grant van Gameren (Bar Isabel, Bar Raval) and Victor Barry (Piano Piano, Cafe Cancan) at the Sobeys Tastemaker Kitchen. My favourite dishes were from Rob Gentile who made fresh pasta alla boudin noir with nduja and Grant van Gameren's Spanish octopus. Both of these dishes gave me the culinary experience I wanted, despite the portions being smaller than I expected.
Despite my lackluster experience, there are ways that organizers of Tastemaker can improve the festival if it returns next year. Rather than promising an all-inclusive experience with the purchase of a $60 ticket, I feel like it would make more sense to lower the ticket price to $20, which would include samples from the vendors and charge a small fee (no more than $10) for alcohol and food prepared by the featured chefs. By charging a fee for dishes prepared by the featured chefs, it allows visitors to have control over where their money is being spent, which should in turn help with crowd control and massive lineups. With so many food events popping up the last few years, most people are used to having to pay an extra fee for food as long as they feel like they are not getting gauged.
People go to food events like Tastemaker to try dishes from restaurants they may not otherwise be able to. This food event had the potential to deliver a new and exciting culinary experience but instead left people disappointed and hungry.
