Tyler Cowen: Scarborough the best ethnic food suburb in the world

[Jonny5]

In a brief blog post, popular economist and foodie Tyler Cowen has crowned Scarborough the best place for "ethnic food" in the world (he often says "all food is ethnic food").

His credentials in this area are very high. His well read book, an Economist Gets Lunch, goes in to the details of what he looks for, but, in summary, strip malls with mom n' pop restaurants are where he believes you find the best ethnic food in Canada and the US. For his regular job working he has travelled extensively, and if you look through the blog you can see he may have sampled almost every regional cuisine on Earth.

Wednesday night I was taken on a restaurant tour of Scarborough — four different places — plus rolls from a Sri Lankan locale, consumed in the office of the Dean of UT Scarborough and with the assistance of Peter Loewen.

After that eating, and lots of driving around and looking, I concluded Scarborough is the best ethnic food suburb I have seen in my life, ever, and by an order of magnitude. I hope you all have the chance to visit Scarborough, Ontario.

If you are wondering where I went, that is beside the point.

Where do you like to eat in Scarborough?

 

[buildup]

But I am wondering where he went!

 

[Cooper]

Check out Spice City Toronto. It's not Scarborough specific, but there's good Scarborough content.

http://www.spicecitytoronto.com/

 

[Jonny5]

The Star picked this up and has included the list of places he visited.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...s-scarborough-as-best-ethnic-food-suburb.html

 

[junctionist]

I used to work near Midland and Lawrence. For all the talk about fantastic ethnic food in Scarborough, the area's restaurants were subpar. There was a shawarma place with the blandest sauces and toppings that weren't fresh. There was a pizza place with cardboard-like pizza. A middle eastern bakery seemed interesting, but besides bread, it didn't have that much to offer in terms of pastries and lunch foods. Chain fast food places like Popeye's and Burger King were the busiest restaurants. The only option for coffee was a Tim Horton's.

 

[nrb]

Scarborough is a large area, and you need to use a car to get to most places. I would not judge it on one intersection. And there is great hakka round lawrence/midland, that you missed out on.

One thing about the places in Scarborough, is that you cannot judge them by their outward appearences, and most have no internet presence. So finding good food is mostly word of mouth.

 

[James]

^ Expanding on that, what I find is that everything is quite spread out in Scarborough. I've been to some really good restaurants in Scarborough as well, but they are really all over the Scarborough map. Scarborough covers such a large area of land; no one intersection or neighborhood can fittingly define "Scarborough" as a whole.

 

[JasonL]

Agreed, Scarborough is awesome for ethnic food, and many of these places are hole in the wall and you have to really do your research to find them.

You definitely need a car for Scarborough as its extremely spread out, but damn its worth it. I live fairly near Scarborough and we love exploring the various restaurants and trying them out.