What does the future hold for Toronto's Indigenous food scene?
You might be able to sample food from almost every corner of the world in Toronto, but go looking for an Indigenous food scene, and it's a little harder to find.
Recent years have brought notable exceptions: you can try Ojibway tacos at Pow Wow Cafe, wild duck at NishDish, and three sisters soup at new arrival Kū-kŭm (the Cree word for grandmother.)
Former restaurateur John Croutch sees those restaurants as part of a "reclamation of culture, a reclamation of language," that is slowly turning the tide on a longstanding status quo.
A member of Wikwemikong First Nation, Croutch said there are powerful historic and economic reasons why a vibrant Indigenous food scene has been so long coming.
"When you think about food, recipes are passed down through families. The residential school had a big impact on the ability to pass down that knowledge," he said.
At Monday's Terroir Symposium, an annual food and hospitality conference, Croutch will speak about the marginalization of Indigenous cuisine, which he says began as soon as settlers arrived in North America.
"When settlers came to this country, they brought their own food systems with them. Our food system was already intact. But what they did was fence off their own food systems and appropriated ours," he said.
Price of traditional ingredients plays a role
Croutch said part of the fallout of that marginalization meant he grew up eating mostly European-style food.
When he opened his own restaurant years later, he discovered another major roadblock in sharing Indigenous cuisine: the cost of traditional ingredients.
"Think of any restaurant now that is trying to be a traditional Indigenous restaurant... the cost of those foods are very prohibitive. The cost of venison is expensive. If you want to have an Indigenous restaurant, you have to have a high-end restaurant."
Though he thinks there is a potential market for high-end Indigenous cuisine, he said he has yet to see that sort of restaurant thrive long-term.
Croutch believes successful Indigenous restaurants in Toronto would mean much more than sharing delicacies with people unfamiliar with them.
"The settler population, they need to know who we are so that we can live together," he said, explaining that successfully transmitting the Indigenous outlook on food and nature could be a fundamental building block in reconciliation and understanding.
