Metro Morning‘s food guidebook, Suresh Doss, joins us each and every week to explore one particular of the lots of good GTA eateries he’s learned.
This week, he talked to host Ismaila Alfa about a takeout food marketplace in downtown Toronto.
Ismaila: What is Sector 707?
Suresh: This is a container industry recognized in 2011 by Scadding Court docket. So, we’re heading to Dundas and Bathurst in the city, just north of Alexandra Park. I want you to photograph this lovely and colourful row of transport containers that is house to a dozen corporations. It was a combine of retail and food items when it introduced. But right now, it is primarily food stuff.
Ismaila: I have read of this area, and walked by there. What is the food items like there?
Suresh: It is seriously fantastic now. it has improved a great deal a lot all through the pandemic. I am not exaggerating right here. Picture a world-wide food stuff tour of avenue food stuff from Chicago to New Delhi to Osaka. As you may perhaps know, we really don’t have a ton of street food stuff alternatives in Toronto. So this is kind of a highlight for feeding on in this town.
Ismaila: And nowadays, you are taking us to a person of the more recent venues there?
Suresh: Of course, so a very small small kitchen preserving Damascene recipes, providing them new daily life. This is Houssam of Chef Harwash:
“We’ve been in this career for a 110 decades. Our father taught us the aged way that he applied to do in his restaurant. I have my father’s recipes in his handwriting. So we are speaking about variety of food stuff that we provide as rapidly foods. I am seeking to transfer you to the Damascus encounter without having travelling there. It really is my intention there.”
Ismaila: I have never ever noticed so substantially identity bursting out of a small area. This is a container, ideal?
Suresh: A very little bit about Houssam. His family members owned a bunch of dining places in Damascus. But due to the fact of the events of the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria, he and his 4 brothers left the nation. They finally arrived in Canada as refugees in 2018. And he reported that he invested his first yr in Canada doing work with a ride-hailing corporation, which is how he stumbled upon Scadding Court.
And he found a spot there, and opened this area Chef Harwash in November 2019, just ahead of the pandemic. So, it truly is been very a complicated experience for him.
Ismaila: What is the menu like?
Suresh: He observed a late night time audience for his falafel and his sujuk sandwiches, like his wraps. During the weekends, he stays open up late at night due to the fact there is this publish-partying, clubbing crowd.
You are looking for anything tasty to try to eat and what else is likely to be open up at midnight or 1:00 AM? So these had been the to start with products that ended up hits.
So this is a person who would make all his very own marinades and his have sauces. He is subsequent his father’s and grandfather’s written recipes. So this falafel is manufactured with chickpeas and parsley, and a superior amount of money of coriander in there. When he serves it to you, he places this pomegranate molasses, which I actually take pleasure in simply because it offers you a fantastic bitter notice.
[To make the] kebab. he marinates and will make by it hand. He wraps it in this meat wrap. He puts this extremely creamy garlic sauce on it that gives him a nice punchy contact. That’s the late night time things.
If you might be visiting for lunch, I have some other stuff for you.
Ismaila: What do you have for us?
Suresh: It truly is fairly extraordinary what he is equipped to recreate from these types of a smaller space. A lot of the time, I discover that it is Damascene dishes that he offers in new approaches.
Two illustrations. There is something referred to as a zaatar thyme saj. It can be an enveloped skinny flatbread that is normally cooked in a substantial-heat oven. But he cooks it on a flat top rated. He’ll set a quite thick smearing of sesame seeds, thyme, lemon rind. There’s even coconut powder. It truly is really classic Syrian, from the Silk Road era.
You can find a pretty generous volume of olive oil too. And next, I feel you would love is a dish from Syria identified as a Toshkha.
It’s effectively flatbread but a sandwich this time. And in involving it there are kebabs alongside with cheese. He presents it kind of like a quesadilla.
So I want you to photo a effervescent cheese and sauce oozing out of the sides. For me, you can slice it and there is certainly a garlic sauce in the middle.
The true star of the dish is the sausage that has this pronounced spicing. And it’s brought collectively by all the sauce and cheese on the dish.