Last night Paul and I braved the possibility of rain, and hopped a bus to just outside of the Toronto city limits to go to Markham, a city to the north-east of Toronto with a very large Chinese population. The reason? The Toronto Night Market. What’s a Night Market? Well according to Wikipedia:
Night markets or night bazaars are street markets operating at night mainly in urban or suburban areas that are generally dedicated to more leisurely strolling, shopping, and eating than more businesslike day markets.
The most well-known night markets are those in Taiwan or other areas inhabited by ethnic Chinese such as Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Thailand, and Chinatowns worldwide. The night market, however, originated in Taiwan, which hosts numerous night markets in each of its major cities. The larger and more formal of these markets might take place in purpose-built marketplaces while smaller or more informal ones tend to occupy streets or roads that are normal thoroughfares by day. Although some of these markets are specialized (e.g., in certain types of food), most have a mixture of individual stalls hawking clothing, consumer goods, xiaochi (snacks or fast food), and specialty drinks. The atmosphere is usually crowded and noisy with hawkers shouting and fast-paced music playing over loudspeakers. Some individual vendors may take advantage of the informality of the market to offer counterfeit, pirated or grey market consumer goods. The night markets usually open around 6pm, and are busy until past midnight.
Toronto’s night market was absolutely all of that. And while there was no shortage of $2 DVDs, and game stalls, Paul and I were there to have a few culinary adventures. And we weren’t disappointed.
Over the past few months, Paul and have watched a number of Bizarre Foods episodes on youtube. It’s become an addiction, though I think we’ve seen all that are online now. We enjoyed watching someone else try strange foods, some of which looked very unappetizing (stinky tofu), while others such as crispy snake skin made us grab our own snacks.
As soon as we got there, we became aware of just how much stinky tofu is a part of the night market scene. We were, we later found out, hundreds of feet from where the tofu was actually being cooked, but the strong smell of fermentation and a smell reminiscent of halitosis carried all the way over to where we had our first adventure. This one, not so adventurous. Fish Ballls:
These were tasty but not as flavourful as I expected. The red sauce is a chili oil that was just spicy enough to give Paul a bit of a burn in the back of his throat. Both of us thought they were OK but wouldn’t go seek them out again.
We moved on, closer to the smell of stinky tofu when I came across a stall selling various stinky tofu soups. I settled upon what looked to be the least adventurous. Ironically, it might’ve been the most adventurous thing I’d ever eaten: Taiwan style spicy stinky tofu soup with pig blood and pork intestine.
The flavour of the broth was actually quite good, scented with what I think was 5 spice powder. There was also a huge quantity of chili in the broth making this possibly one of the spiciest things I’ve ever eaten. There was only one piece of intestine in the soup, with the consistency of a rubber band and little flavour. The blood was similarly low on flavour, tasting like what I have heard others call it: “black tofu”. The tofu itself was not as bad as it smelled. It had a bit of a cheese-like flavour to it. I was only able to eat about half of the bowl, though, for a couple reasons. The first is that as spicy as it was, it was going to take a while. The other part is that back in the yurt years I was made very sick by some “accidental” stinky tofu. I thought I wrote an entry about that story but apparently I didn’t.
In brief, we didn’t have a fridge so we kept our food in a cooler buried in the ground, occasionally putting plastic bottles of ice (frozen at our friends’ house) in to keep the food cool. However, we had forgotten to change the ice for a while and so I took out a couple pounds of tofu to make dinner with and found it warm. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I thought, “It’s not even animal product so it should be relatively safe.” There was no bad smell, and I sliced some of it for Paul to eat as he preferred it – raw with dipping sauce while I took the rest and prepared jerk tofu and rice. A few minutes after I started to prepare our dinner I turned around to catch the then 2 year old Paul, standing before his bowl of tofu on the floor, peeing in the bowl. After a bit of a WTF moment, we concluded that Paul wasn’t really hungry then and I finished making dinner. Sage, not a fan of Jamaican food, skipped the jerk tofu leaving it all for me. It was quite delicious.
Hours later, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling as sick as I’ve ever felt. I tried to stand up but found myself so dizzy I couldn’t stand up and crawled out the door to find a place to rid myself of dinner. I spent the next few days in absolute agony – dizzy, weak, and sick. And we became well aware of what peeing in the bowl of tofu meant – “WARNING! DO NOT EAT!!”
And that’s why I was a little leery of stinky tofu. Still, I did enjoy it so maybe my own stinky tofu preparation method was a bit flawed.
Next to the Stinky Tofu Soup stall was another one that smelled absolutely delicious. This one sold Murtabak, a Malaysian stuffed bread dish. Behind a counter stood several men, rolling and tossing small balls of dough in a manner not unlike someone making a pizza crust. On offer were two different stuffings – beef or chicken. We chose the chicken and they prepared it for us.
At the end we were presented with a pastry, crisp on the outside, soft/chewy on the inside. The chicken inside had a bit of a coconut flavour, and we garnished ours with a bit of peanut sauce and chili paste.
Without a doubt, this was the tastiest food we chose in the whole evening. Unlike the fish balls, I would, and likely will, go looking for this again.
Moving on from there we joined what was now an absolute sea of humanity with families holding on to each others clothes so as to not lose each other as they filtered through the crush. Personal space no longer existed.
The crush led us past skewers of cooking meat, fish, and even squid to the source of the strong smell that pervaded the entire market. Fried stinky tofu. Somehow, by putting the stinky tofu into hot oil, all of the aromatic chemicals are aerosolized, thus ensuring that anyone within 100 metres of the market knows where it is. It looks deceivingly good, though:
I tried for much of the night to get up the courage to try it but I never succeeded, apparently I had found my limit. Meanwhile, Paul decided to have a bit of an adventure of his own. This time with duck necks.
Each neck costs $5 and comes with a free drink. When you order it, the stall owner takes one of the necks, chops it about 10 pieces and hands it to you in a bag.
Eating duck neck is a lot of work for a small bit of food. The food itself wasn’t bad – a little spicy and with a hint of five-spice or anise. We sat at the edge of the crowd and ate and planned the rest of our evening. When we finished, we headed back into the crowd to see what else we could find – this time being offered a sample of beef wrapped around mushrooms. Neither of us liked them that much and in fact were so anxious to get rid of the taste that we ended up at a nearby tea stall where we bought a apple-rose oolong iced tea. Paul really enjoyed it and offered me some and I relented, finding out too late that it was bubble tea. For the uninitiated, bubble tea is made by taking a perfectly good iced tea and tossing in large tapioca “pearls” and sometimes other little bits of jelly in it. The effect, to me, is like vomiting in reverse. Any drink you have to chew is just not right. But still, the tea itself tasted really good and so I lived with it.
The next thing I knew, I looked down at my blackberry and saw that it was 10:30 – we’d been there for hours. We decided to make one last dash through the crowd, get a couple more things, pick up an ice cream, and then head home. And so the last things we tried were Taiwanese sausage on a stick (tasty, but there’s that five spice again!), and dim sum which were relatively bland, leading me to believe that I should’ve picked up a bit of dipping sauce.
It wasn’t until we got on the bus that I noticed that having spent almost four hours at the night market, the two of us had begun to smell of stinky tofu with the scent pervading our skin and clothes. On the positive side, we had lots of space, and our own seats on the way home…
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