How Toronto Eats
I soon realized I wasn't eating like everybody else.
Growing up in Toronto you would think I would know what eating in Toronto is like but that’s simply not the truth.
I grew up in a Sri Lankan home where yes we had eating utensils but no we didn’t really use them. We generally ate with our hands; a truth I was once embarrassed of.
As a child, telling people I ate with my hands usually didn’t get a great reaction. My peers thought it was strange and it made me feeling like I wasn’t eating “correctly.”
These early onset experiences brought on insecurities that eventually caught up with me as I grew older.
I remember being in high school and beginning to go out to dinners at various chain restaurants in the city with my friends. This meant I was going to go eat food that wasn’t much like mine, I would be required to eat with a fork and knife, and I clearly remember feeling very insecure about my ability to dine with my peers.
It was like giving a baby a fork and knife. I didn’t know which hand to hold the knife in, I clutched my utensils with little to no grace, and let me remind you again, I grew up in the city. I was born in this city. Why was this so difficult? Was I practicing proper etiquette? I could barely decipher the foods on the menu.
Although I have become adjusted to forks and knives and have greater knowledge on the types of foods out there, I still prefer to eat my own culture’s food with my hands, but then again, hand me a dish of poutine and I’ll demand for a fork. Why is that?
The crazy thing is that I’m not alone. There’s a whole generation of insecure confused eaters like me who are coming to the same conclusions and asking the same questions. Why do we eat the way we eat?
It pretty much comes down to comfort according to Dr. Donna Gabaccia.
Dr. Gabaccia, a historical and cultural studies professor at the University of Toronto and has been teaching food studies since 1994. She says we eat the way we eat because food is “preverbal.”
“You start eating before you start talking,” she says. “The tastes that are distinctive of your culture stays with you because it’s one of your earliest experiences of the world and you tend to hold onto those preferences.”
It’s not just the types of food you eat but how you eat them she says. This also applies to the way you eat your comfort food says Dr. Gabaccia
“You ate them that way at home, you ate them that way as a child, that’s not just your comfort food but your comfort way of eating,” she says.
I reached out to an old friend of mine, Emily Huynh. She and I grew up eating together in elementary school and we went to those same high school dinners. She grew up in a Chinese home and is well accustomed to eating Chinese cuisine with chopsticks. We never spoke about our eating experiences back then but looking back at it, we realized we had similar experiences.
“My parents were immigrants and I was socialized by my family with our heritage in mind,” she says. “The food I eat rarely requires knives; I basically only use it when I’m eating out and it’s expected. I grew up without much exposure to using knives and forks.”
So yes, I am not alone when it comes to having different eating practice, but what ties all these eating practices together in a multicultural city like Toronto?
Etiquette specialist, Louise Fox, says etiquette has changed over the years and over cultures, but one thing that is well understood and shared is the ability to make people comfortable.
“Once upon a time etiquette was a set of rules that stood to create divisions in class but today it aims to be about inclusivity,” she says. “Good manners is really about respect, kindness and consideration for others. What gives us the right to be judgemental?”
Dr. Gabaccia says that almost everywhere where there are two different groups of people coming together they are simultaneously horrified and fascinated with each other’s eating habits. Over the past 30 years she says there’s more sharing of food and it’s helping create a positive valence in Toronto.
“The sharing of food, person to person, is seen as promoting mutual understanding,” she says.
In a city like Toronto especially, Dr. Gabaccia says many people seek both adventure and comfort through eating. This leads them to cross culinary boundaries
This wild multicultural city is eating in all sorts of ways and eating all sorts of food. So how does Toronto eat? There’s not one single answer.
Today I am able to eat with forks and knives, my hands, and even chopsticks. The ability to eat your food the way you want but also having this space where you can share foods and cross those cultural barriers is the food space we live in. When we all come together and respect one another, we begin to have a mutual understanding of where we all come from and why we can appreciate one another.
