Toronto has never struck me as a city that had much to say about it itself. Without a distinct cuisine or even a stereotypical food item to which tourists could relate (think: currywurst in Berlin, pho in Hanoi, or deep dish pizzas in Chicago), I didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly didn’t anticipate how on the mark T-dot would be when it came to local food.

The vibrancy of local, small-scale food production in Toronto is astounding. From chefs to sommeliers, and food makers to retailers, it’s as if no serious food professional could imagine going to work each day without local products in mind.

I once heard a chocolatier say that most chocolate makers don’t actually “make” anything – they merely melt chocolate and reshape it, buying large blocks of couverture that are already processed from the cacao bean. Bean-to-bar chocolate making is hard work and requires immense labour and equipment, which is why we haven’t seen a lot of it around the world, let alone Hong Kong.

In Toronto, you can watch the whole process at SOMA, a small-batch chocolate maker founded by husband-and-wife team, pastry chef David Castellan and architect Cynthia Leung. At their atelier, beans, mostly from Fairtrade and organic farms, are made into bars, “twigs”, truffles, cocoa powder, drinking chocolate, gelato and more, with playful ingredients like fennel seeds, beetroot and sweetcorn. Their mini-factory and shop in the Distillery District is glassed in, allowing you to see the whole process.

For a country that grows 90 per cent of the world’s mustard seeds, there are surprisingly few artisanal Canadian mustard brands. Kozlik’s is one of the most well-loved, with over 35 types of mustard, ranging from classics like Dijon to the avant garde raspberry, and barbecue-inspired Sweet & Smokey. The mustards are made in downtown Toronto and sold around town, but their flagship store is in the historic St. Lawrence Market. 

About an hour from downtown Toronto is a little factory just off the main road that emanates the scent of wine, but it’s not the region’s ubiquitous ice wine that Dillon’s Distillers is making – it’s something stronger. Barely a year old, this small-batch distillery founded by biologist Geoff Dillon, along with his chemist father Peter Dillon and father-in-law Gary Huggins, has become something of a local legend. Their vodka and gin bases are made from excess wine from Niagara vineyards, the rye spirit (some of which, in a few years, will become whiskey) is made from Ontario rye grain, and their bitters are largely made from local fruits and botanicals, as are the botanicals for the stellar unfiltered gin. Just after a single sip of the gin and you’ll be breathing bouquets.

Thanks to the Dillons’ scientific edge, they’ve custom built stills that allow them great control over the process and product. In a country known for producing cheap grog, it’s little wonder why tipple-lovers from all over the country are head over heels (literally and figuratively) for Dillon’s, rushing into the factory’s cute “sipping room” every weekend.