Toronto
excuse me -- what city is this, again?
2007-10-26
By Eric Easter
As a travel destination, I must admit that Canada is always an afterthought for me. That goes double for Toronto. As someone who prefers the strange, faraway and exotic, Toronto is a bit too close, too familiar, too, well, American.
Still, when an opportunity came up recently to speak at a conference in Toronto, I jumped at the chance. Five years ago, Toronto was the last cheap getaway my wife and I took before socking away money to start a family and I had fond memories. Three kids later, I was eager to get a chance to revisit the town alone and explore more deeply the things I liked as well as the things I missed at my own more relaxed pace.
Getting there from Chicago was quick and easy. Toronto is no more than an hour’s flight from any city above DC or east of Chicago, and with two weeks put, flight/hotel packages were relatively inexpensive. The conference hotel was thankfully full, allowing me to feel less antisocial when I chose quieter, more comfortable accomodations. Conference attendees , quite frankly, freak me out. It was a journalism conference at that, which have a tendency to over-index on the freak scale.
I chose the Sutton Place Hotel where my wife and I stayed the first time around. It’s a classic but aging luxury spot given an overly generous 5 stars by all the major web review sites. In fact it’s more of a hard 3-star/soft 4-star. Still, the rooms are large, it’s well located, the wireless actually works and service is efficient and unobtrusive.
In the years since I’d been to Toronto, many things stayed the same, but some things have definitely changed.
The first begins at the airport. Passports for Americans traveling by air are now a requirement (drivers are required to have just government issued ID) and the range of questioning about your business in the country can be strange, irrelevant and aggravating. Nevertheless, the process is generally fast and security is very laid back, very Canadian.
The second change is money. I’d read but not quite taken seriously articles about Canadian monetary value now matching the dollar, so imagine my shock when I converted $100 US at the terminal and got back a measly $86 Canadian. But I got snookered. A currency exchange run by the same company but further along in baggage claim quoted a rate of $91. That rate fluctuated throughout the day - $94 to 1 at local banks, 96 to 1 at Sutton Place, 97 to 1 at Sheraton Centre, the conference location. There also used to be a time when you could send US dollars in stores and get back Canadian in change. No longer. Now you have two choices, use your credit card or make the exchange for loonies.
I was also surprised to find Toronto a bit worse for the wear. In my notes from the 1992 trip, I made frequent mention of my impression of Toronto as a “clean” or “spotless” But that was coming from Washington DC His coming from Chicago ( the real clean New York) Toronto seemed much more of an ever so slightly cleaner Baltimore.
Though in all fairness my last visit was a cold January and most of the locals had taken to the city’s underground system of pathways and shopping centers. An unseasonably warm Fall means livelier street activity and the detritus that comes with it.
With only an opening reception on my schedule, I met up with an old friend from college also attending the conference and took a list of nearby hot spots found on Toronto travel website martiniboys.com and headed out for dinner and drinks on Queen Street West, a long boulevard of funky boutiques and competitively hip restaurants.
Wanting to get the lay of the land we decided to walk. That gave us a good chance to get a close-up view of the stores and scope out the crowds in the places on our list. Spotting what looked like a good crowd, we landed at Coca, a resto-wine bar with a diverse and friendly clientele, a good wine selection and a great selection of tapas.
We caught up on careers and college associates over an innovative sample plate of olives seasoned with a range of untraditional spices from oranges and cardamom to sumac and almond stuffing. The olives accompanied a platter of Spanish cheeses, Serrano ham, paper-thin prosciutto and horse bresaola. Yes, horse. As in Seabiscuit. Secretariat. Trigger. The flavor was mild and slightly sweet with a texture and color not unlike that of packaged chipped beef.
After dinner, I decided to walk back to my hotel via Yonge Street, the most urban of Toronto drags that, depending on what block you’re on could be mistaken for Piccadilly Circus in London, pre-Disney Times Square, Michigan Avenue in Chicago or 14th Street in Washington DC.
It was on Yonge that I was reminded of something I had forgotten about Toronto, the degree to which Toronto’s fairly large homeless population is also very very young. It is a marked contrast from San Francisco or Washington DC, where homelessness is so much an outgrowth of failed mental health and veteran’s health policies. In a country with socialized medicine and a history without war conflict, the homeless take on a different face –white, young, lucid and outwardly healthy. In some ways, it becomes more disconcerting. Fending off the drunk and crazy becomes second nature if you’re from a large American city. Reacting to the young, strong and sober adds a degree of threat to what would otherwise be a sense of compassion.
Still the weather was warm and foggy, adding an otherworldly quality to huge video screens in Dundas Square where I watched a dozen mildly competent breakdancers entertain a midnight crowd.
After a round of meetings the next morning, I passed on the chicken at the conference’s lunch and, still craving the exotic, walked a mile or so the Kensington Market area around Spadina and Dundas, the center point of Toronto’s large and sprawling Chinatown. I’m a sucker for outdoor markets and it was a kick channeling Anthony Bourdain and sniffing durian fruit at the stalls and looking for small gifts for the kids.
For lunch, I crossed to the more interesting east side of Spadina where Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries have claimed their ground. Even though the banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) in the windows looked incredible, I decided to fight off a scratchy throat with a hot bowl of pho and a plate of spring rolls at Bun Saigon, an unassuming joint that had the look of authenticity. The well done brisket version was excellent and the broth brown and flavorful, even more so with the heavy handed squirt of sriracha I applied. Any dish that requires hot sauce gets my vote. I topped it off with a Vietnamese coffee that dripped into a layer of thick sweetened condensed milk and finished brewing almost exactly at the end of the meal. Perfect timing and a perfect (and cheap) meal.
With a free schedule until the evening I decided to revisit some of the places my wife and I enjoyed earlier, almost all around the Yorkville area, Toronto’s version of Georgetown/Beverly Hills/Fifth Avenue, pick a city.
I considered but rethought afternoon tea at the Windsor Arms, Toronto’s premier luxury boutique hotel, where first time around we sat next to the owner of the Roots chain (Canada’s version of The Gap), who gave us a personalized tour of the hotel. But afternoon tea without female company felt a little too precious, so I hit some of the high end men’s stores instead.
That’s where the money thing came back to haunt me. In earlier years, stores put the Canadian and US prices on tags to show Americans what a deal they were getting by buying Canadian. Now, not only do the tags just carry the Canadian price, but the Canadian prices tend to be appreciably higher than in the US. If you intend to shop in Canada, it pays to check prices for real comparison. For example, a Dolce and Gabbana men’s suit I tried on days earlier went for $1200 at Nordstrom in Chicago, but was $1295 Canadian at Holt Renfrew in Toronto. After conversion, that would have come to $1335.00, and that’s before the international tax that I always forget to apply to for a refund.
With a shopping trip rapidly descending into a less-interesting window shopping excursion, I walked to ----- street for wine, dessert and people watching at the patio of the venerable Sassafrazz, the location of a lovely brunch on my first trip. If there is a key difference in Canada from the US, it’s the very European style of service at restaurants. Waiters allow you to linger after a meal. If you can get over the reflex to ask for a check, you can sit for hours, letting wine open up, chocolate take its time on your palate and the sounds and smells of a city tell its story. And I did just that.
It doesn’t matter what I did from that point. Suffice to say I spent it at that conference. With journalists. It was all downhill from there.
GETTING THERE
Airfare – Most airlines service Toronto’s Pearson Airport. I got a deal on America Airlines via Orbitz for $700 r/t including two nights at a 5-star (kinda) hotel. Most of that price was the hotel, but it was the least expensive deal. Remember to bring a valid passport if traveling by air. Another option is to fly into upstate New York and drive a rental, if you don’t have a passport.
Expect to pay $50 US, including tip, for a taxi from Pearson to downtown.
WHERE TO SHOP:
Uncle Otis 26 Bellair Street
Holt Renfrew 50 Bloor Street West
Harry Rosen 77 Bloor Street West
Roots – Various locations.
WHERE TO EAT
Coca 783 Queen Street West
Caju 922 Queen Street West
Sassafraz 100 Cumberland Street
Bun Saigon 252 Spadina Avenue
WHERE TO STAY
High End
Windsor Arms
Mid Level
Sutton Place Hotel
Budget
Residence Inn Toronto-Downtown
Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing. He writes about politics, culture and technology for ebonyjet.com