Kensington Market

I have class once a week at the University of Toronto; my colleagues and I usually go out to lunch after class. This week, we headed over to the Kensington Market part of town, which is west of Chinatown. A somewhat overenthusiastic writeup of the area gives a good pocket description:

Kensington Market is Toronto at its best: ferociously independent, enchantingly eclectic, culturally diverse, touristically tolerant, racially inclusive, class sensitive, ever changing. Savour the spirited open-air commerce now almost vanished everywhere but here, in the densely peopled, hectic retail and residential district of Kensington. There is a place – and a taste – for everyone in Kensington.

The Market is no neat theme park of Shopping Past. It is a living, bruising, sweaty history. Elbowing your way through the mob on a sunny Saturday morning is probably as tough today as it was in the early 1920s, after Jewish merchants had established the thriving open-air market.

My reaction: it's a neat market neighborhood, and it feels like a chunk of 'real city.' It was a good place to pick up fresh cheap produce from streetside stalls, and to find specialty foods (mmm… tasty stinky Stilton). We ate at an excellent taqueria (El Trompo): the platter of tacos reminded me of the ones I had in a Mexican eatery in Tucson—four small soft corn tortillas, with chopped pork and melted cheese. It's definitely a neighborhood I want to walk around in and explore in the future.