Dishcrawl was started in Northern California by founder Tracy Lee as a social dining experience. Lee laments that “…there were two kinds of people, the kind that savored food and the kind that cannot tell the difference between Kobe beef and boiled cabbage.” She obviously chose to be the former!
Cue Gretchen Wilson, a corporate events planner for Thomson Reuters who also shared Lee’s passion for food and thought that Dishcrawl was a great idea to bring to Toronto. The only problem is that Lee would need someone to man the helms in our bustling city. So the story begins as Gretchen and her crew (now husband, Zeion) set off to bring Dishcrawl to Toronto. Amidst the chaos of planning their wedding and launching the first inaugural Dishcrawl – Gretchen showed us what professional corporate event planners were made of and Dishcrawl Toronto was set to sail with their first crawl along Queen West.
The concept is simple. Buy a ticket to sample a few restaurants all in one night. Although the idea is romantic, the execution and logistics required finesse. This second event, Dishcrawl – King Street Part 1 of 2 would feature the likes of Milagro’s, Grindhouse, Big Daddy’s, Kama and Prairie Girl Bakery.
A total of 50 food enthusiasts attended the event, but due to the sheer size of the group we would be split Matrix style into Blue or Red Team. 
Being on the blue team had us starting at Milagro’s which served up a complimentary red sangria – with refills! Definitely a great way to start off the night. We would then venture off to Grindhouse, Big Daddy’s and Kama’s. 
The highlights of the night were definitely the Coconut Shrimp from Big Daddy’s (real coconut flavour) and the Butter Chicken (surprisingly light) and Aloo Papri Chaat (like a threesome of flavours happening in your mouth – sweet, sour and spicy!) from Kama. The most underwhelming would’ve been the dish at the Grindhouse. I will give it points for creativity (they named it S.C.U.B.A – Self-contained unbelievable burger appetizer). The dish was basically a burger that resembled a pizza pocket with a very bland housemade tomato ketchup, soggy fries and a sake-sized cheddar-ale soup that was too salty for my taste buds.
The best venue of the night would go to Big Daddy’s as we got what I would call the VIP section of the restaurant that is on an elevated platform and is configured more as a lounge than it is for a proper sit-down meal. The seats were comfortable and allowed for mingling.
The night finished off at Kama, who stayed open later for us eager Dishcrawlers, where executive chef Satinder graced us with his presence and an explanation of the dishes he had prepared for us tonight. Unfortunately, he, like the rest of the staff at the restaurant spoke like auctioneers, and we had to fill in the gaps ourselves by perusing their normal menu to piece everything together.
The experience overall is best described as how one feels after eating at a buffet. You got to sample many things, but nothing was particularly memorable. However, at $60 a pop, this was not a gratifying buffet experience. Cold food, burnt and bland naan, and soggy fries does not good food make!
As Prairie Girl would be quite the walk (from King/University to King/Yonge), we were given goodie boxes of cupcakes out of Zeion’s car (maybe they should think about starting up their own Food Truck?) for us to take home. It was probably for the better as we were all too full for dessert. I know – what blasphemy – too full for dessert? Of the 3 flavours offered (Strawberry, Vanilla Bean and Chocolate), I got to sample the Chocolate and Vanilla Bean and must say that Prairie Girl deserves a yee-haw for the quality of their ingredients. I know where to go when I have my next cupcake craving!
Time constraints meant that our seats were barely warm before we were up and off to the next venue. The crawl itself started at 6:45PM, though I would say by the time food found its way to the table it was roughly 7:00PM. The night wrapped up around 10:00PM, which averages out to be about half an hour per restaurant. This excludes travel time and wait time for the food to arrive at the table and drink orders to be taken. As the group was larger, information regarding what we were eating was not always communicated to the entire group as we played catch up multiple times in trying to figure out what was on the menu, or simply waited until the dishes arrived at our table.
I would say that Dishcrawl is true to its reputation that it is a social dining experience – more emphasis on the social part than the dining part as the food is mass-prepared and you are competing against the clock to finish eating.
Shoutouts go out to Milagro’s for providing us with complimentary pitchers of sangria – we even got refills. As Nick Y. from the event would later state in an interview where he was asked what the best part of the evening was – “the $5 doubles at Big Daddy’s.” Oh yeah – from Monday to Wednesdays, doubles are $5 a drink. But if you want to get Bourbon instead of whiskey, that’ll cost you double!
When all was said and done I did enjoy meeting new people, discussing new restaurants and critiquing the overall food we were served down to molecular levels (which you can do with a group of food enthusiasts!). I think that the key to improving on future events would be bringing aboard additional staff to the Dishcrawl TO team which would mean smaller groups (that would hopefully translate into better food execution on the part of the participating restaurants) and less rush-rush and go.
The next Dishcrawl event King Street – Part 2 of 2 is already sold out and will be taking place on November 30. If you want to know more about Dishcrawl, you can visit there website by clicking here, or stayed tuned on Global TV tonight at 5:30PM for their coverage of the event.
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