Dining

At Long Last Street Food…Not exactly!

food trucks

By Michael Minorgan for Curtains Up

www.globalgourmets.ca

Montreal’s prohibition on street food dates back to 1947 when it was considered to be littering the streets, providing undue competition to local businesses and committing flagrant abuses of the city’s traffic laws. This ban has finally been lifted and these gastronomic delights will once again grace our city’s streets and allow us to partake in these delicious morsels…. right?  Well no, not exactly.

As it turns out, what we will be offered will not even meet the minimum standards of what street food is supposed to be. In typical Montreal fashion, these operations will be so tied up and burdened by rules, regulations and highly subjective bureaucratic judgments that what we will be left with will be a  warmed over product of uninspired and sanitized food. The very essence of street food is that it allows the small entrepreneur, with little cash on hand, to open a small business and bring their passion for cooking to the forefront  while earning a decent living. Perhaps, as much treasured immigrants to this great city, it would allow them to display their unique cuisines to our food savvy palates and allows us to relish in their expertise.

This freedom of access is not permitted under present regulations, permits will only be issued to pre existing restaurants or caterers and the food sold must represent, by definition, “the identity of Quebec and Montreal” and must also be, according to the mayor, “highly respected and renowned”. One may quite fairly ask what in the hell does “highly respected and renowned” mean and which bureaucrat is going to make this very subjective evaluationbefore permits are isued. What does ‘Quebec or Montreal identity’ mean? Does it mean we can’t offer tacos or arepas or even kebabs etc ? Must it all be poutine or beaver tails etc (perhaps we could get away with a fancy poutine!) It all seems a bit ridiculous and coupled with the fact that any food sold in these trucks must be prepared in another  inside location, presumably a restaurant kitchen, and then transported, already cooked, to the food truck (no food carts or wagons are allowed a la New York by the way) and presumably just warmed up before being sold to the customer….boring!

food trucks3

Street food has survived successfully for decades and in some cases centuries alongside successful restaurants and cafes in cities all over the world. During my many visits to South East Asia I have very often eaten all my meals at these amazing food stalls and I might add that in most of the cases the food I have eaten has been some of the best that I have sampled anywhere and I have never experienced any ill effects from these sojourns.

Yes our street food experiment in the city will be a novel experience, for awhile at least, especially as we have been starved from such sinful excesses for so long, but under these current rigid regulations that permit only the ‘big boys’ access to  this field because 66 years on they still feel somehow threatened by the lowly food truck adversary.

I fear this food high will be short lived until the marketplace ultimately demands more culinary freedoms. We will, I am certain, eventually  tire of warmed up tacos and smoked meat sandwiches and demand that our food be prepared fresh and on the spot in front of us and be dished up  hot, messy and dripping with sauces and melted cheeses right from the food truck grill, as it should be!

Toronto’s initial experiment into street food failed miserably and should offer Montreal a window into how too many rules and regulations stifled businesses and made it impossible for them to succeed and survive, but it seems we have no interest in such lessons.

Street food, real street food, has the attraction of allowing cooks great flexibility, at a low cost, to present their unique cuisines in neighbourhoods all over the city and to be able to move their trucks, within limits, to where the market is. It allows for innovation and experimentation, the hallmarks of any successful business and it puts excitement back into our food choices which benefits everyone involved and offers a definite attraction to tourists visiting our city. Montreal’s present approach can only promise a sanitized version of the original that will certainly not be popular with people who have experienced the real thing elsewhere.

You only have to look to cities like Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon, Manila, Mexico City or even Los Angeles for the true meaning of street food, where the food is prepared by passionate cooks who have been making the same dish for decades and in many cases centuries using handed down family recipes that have survived generations in the same locations. As it is in these cities, street food should be a vital part of any city’s culinary scene. This will not be the case in Montreal, at least at its outset. We will be hard pressed in the beginning, to even land a coveted spot on the Food Network’s much acclaimed Eat St.

I have however the utmost faith in Montrealers’ love of good food and I rest assured that they will eventually rise up in unison and demand that  Montreal remove these shackles and allow the image to evolve that Grumman 78 had in mind when they gave renewed birth to this idea some months ago…outrageously and fun filled graffiti decorated trucks cooking delicious and messy  mouth watering food that allows some of our finest ethnic cooks to display their passions and invite all of us to relish in it!.

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