Sunday, January 27, 2002
The recent furor about street food in Montreal inspired Barry to look up a column he wrote for the Gazette in 1995. Here it is:
Thought for Food
"What is so rare as a day in June?" wrote James Russell Lowell 150 years ago. How about a spring day in Montreal? How about a gloriously warm, take-off-your-top-coat-and-strut-downtown kind of spring day? How about stopping for a snack as you enjoy your walk? Of course, you don't want to go into a restaurant, just keep on strolling, perhaps with a juicy, sauerkraut-loaded, Polish sausage from a New York-style hot dog stand; or maybe munching on some roasted chestnuts, like they do in Italy; or enjoying a freshly made hazelnut-cream filled crêpe from a gas fired crêpe wagon? Whoops, sorry, my fantasies got in the way.
 This is what I fail to understand. If Canada is ranked as the best country and Montreal as one of the most liveable cities in the world, how did we attain a level of gastronomic tendentiousness wherein we rarely permit ourselves this kind of truly enjoyable, inexpensive indulgence.
Sure, there are a few stands for street food during the jazz festival, but just try to taste what citizens almost anywhere else take for granted every day: granitas and ice cream in Rome, mint tea and kebobs in the middle east, corn on the cob and tacos in Mexico City, lemonade and barbecue in any town in central Florida.
Actually the problem is not in deciding what to sell. The MUC department for food inspection has pages of regulations for what can be sold from non-motorized, mobile units or what it calls "triporteurs." They permit almost any hot food as street food as long as it is easily cooked or warmed.
The department even recommends what kinds of cooking wagons are most appropriate. The Torkit G400 is a current favorite. It is Canadian-made, has a barbecue, four condiment trays, a water tank, room for a double sink, an optional refrigeration unit, several storage areas and an umbrella holder. It sells for about $6000. It's very impressive. I bet the woman I met selling hot tamales in Tulancingo Mexico could have used the Torkit G400 for a home.
No, the problem isn't in selecting high-quality street food. The problem is in making it available. Each municipality in the MUC decides, on its own, whether to grant permits. So far none has been willing to do so. Sure, ice cream vendors are now allowed into a few of our parks, but imagine if you could get other treats as easily: freshly popped corn, hand sliced potatoes fried while you wait, slices of watermelon, or snow-cones scrapped from a block of ice and topped with fruit syrup.
Jonny Chin knows about street food. He's a young man skilled in the art of making Chinese "dragon's beard" candy. These are candies in which thousands of strands of sugar are pulled by hand and wrapped around a simple filling. The delicacies are sold, and usually eaten, on the spot. Jonny started making them on street corners but soon found that food regulations wouldn't let him continue. He set up in a small shop in one of the Chinese malls on St-Laurent boulevard, but it wasn't the same. This is fun food that catches the attention of those passing by. So Jonny stays outside and keeps moving. If you are lucky, you can catch him somewhere in Chinatown when the days get warm.
François Lemay works with the city's department of permits and inspections. He says there are a lot of reasons why Montreal doesn't permit sidewalk food. "We contacted people in New York and Toronto and they said that there were problems of security and health and that many people can't control the storage." Sure, but that is true of restaurants as well.
He also said that the city was worried too many kiosks would disrupt traffic. Perhaps, but we have managed to find a way to accommodate street musicians and allocate them to specific areas. Lemay said that storekeepers pay taxes and that sidewalk sellers would compete. Again, we give out licenses to peddlers and they compete with other retail merchants. Finally, he said "why offer a service which is already in place in stores." Well, so much for the argument of competition in the marketplace.
Of course, Lemay is only an administrator. The direction, he correctly points out, must come from city council.
If Mayor Bourque and Montreal's politicos are really looking for a way to revitalize the downtown core, why not open selected streets to food. Imagine dining truly al fresco, grazing down Ste-Catherine street. I can see it now: a Sezchuan-inspired noodle stand to the right, soft warm, Philadelphia-style pretzels to the left, a rolling sidewalk salad bar somewhere around Peel, and a french fry van, imported directly from Ottawa, serving the crowds at Phillips Square.
Ahh, what is so rare as a day in June? How about a Torkit G400 in Montreal?
—Barry Lazar
Saturday, January 26, 2002
See This Man About a Dog
There are few pleasures in this world better than the anticipation as you stand in front of a hot dog cart on a hot afternoon and watch the hot dog guy prepare your dog. Your stomach growls as you imagine biting into that savory cylinder of fulsome frank and even the wasps buzzing around your head don’t distract your riveted gaze as he squirts on the dijon and loads up on the relish. Onions? What are you, crazy? Of course, onions. Onions, chilies, the woiks. And then there it is, that barely-held-together tubic foot of tastemania, right before your quivering, now-prehensile lips . . .
 Yes, it’s a dog day afternoon dream, but chances are you’re not having it in Montreal.
That’s because Montreal city bylaw P-1, dating back to 1947, states that edible products “cannot be offered or displayed for sale on public property." This was originally supposed to take care of “chip vendors,” wheeled purveyors of various foods who were thought to clutter the streets in an unsafe manner. That renowned Stürmbanfuerher of public sensibility, Mayor Jean Drapeau, further sought to make sure unsightly sidewalk food vendors were nowhere to be seen during Expo ‘67 and later, at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
And so it stands today. (A curious sidebar to this bylaw is that because the bylaw stipulates no food carts on “public” property, hot dog carts can ply their trades on McGill campus, which is considered “private” property. And great dogs they are, too.)
SuperDog to the rescue. Montreal entrepreneur Louis-Raymond Maranda, a one-time bailiff (and, needless to say, veteran of the dog-eat-dog world of the Montreal court system) wants to personally give the dog its day in court. He wants to start his own hot dog vending outfit and hire students to sell them. So he’s submitted a proposal to our new, presumably canine-friendly mayor, Gerald Tremblay, and now awaits an answer, as do we all.
Of course, the Quebec Association of Restaurateurs is up in arms about it all, fearing that street sales of hot dogs near restaurants could do irreparable harm. "There are already too many restaurants in Montreal. The competition is ferocious," says their spokesman, Hans Brouillette.
Yup, it’s a fact: Benôit LeBlanc’s hot dog cart parked outside Le Queue du Cheval is going to be the domino that topples the whole mighty food chain into a crashing heap of rubble and dust.
Thank God, cooler heads might yet prevail. Georges Bossé, member of the city executive committee responsible for economic development (possibly just because saying that is a mouthful means he’s a friendly food-oriented guy) has said that under the city's new structure the 27 individual boroughs will set their own rules. "As long as it doesn't become a nuisance, personally I don't see major problems," he told CBC radio.
What I want to know is, where do we line up to vote? Who do we lobby to ram this bill right through congress and smash through the bureaucratic superglue into law? Maybe we should start a mail-in campaign to help UnderDog Louis-Raymond Maranda get his and our wish.
Me, I’m already slavering in anticipation. But if this bill does pass, I think I’d want something a bit more stylish than that tired old Montreal staple, the steamé. I’d want a mountainous Knackwurst-style dog with a sesame seed bun and all, count them, all the trimmings: relish, dijon or New York mustard, onions, maybe even tomatoes and chile peppers. Think they could do that?
Hmm. That would be teaching an old dog new tricks. —Nick Robinson (with files from the Web) |
|
