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If you’re thinking about adding St. Lawrence Market to your Toronto Itinerary – do it! It’s such a great place to explore the local food of Ontario. This post outlines how we did a self-guided St. Lawrence Market food tour.
Foodie Paradise! That’s pretty much what markets like St. Lawrence are (at least to me). Is it overwhelming to have so many different options to choose from? Heck yes. Deliciously overwhelming!
It’s a good idea to have a plan of attack before visiting St. Lawrence Market, especially if you only have limited time in Toronto, as was our case. We were only able to make it to the market once during our visit, so I wanted to be sure we hit all the right spots in one go! You could seriously come back to St. Lawrence Market several times during one visit to Toronto and eat a handful of different things on each occasion.
If you’re headed to St. Lawrence Market anytime soon, hopefully this will help you with your plan of attack. If you aren’t planning on visiting Toronto in the near future, and you came here just because you’re hungry and love food, welcome friend.
Now let’s get to the food – listed in order that we scarfed everything down!
Carousel Bakery: Peameal Bacon
First up was the peameal bacon sandwich from Carousel Bakery. If you ask any seasoned St. Lawrence Market goer, they will probably tell you that you must try the peameal bacon sandwich from Carousel Bakery. For reals – this is on everyone’s list (except for vegetarians of course).
What in the world is peameal bacon? Glad you asked. Peameal bacon is wet-cured back bacon made from lean boneless pork loin that is trimmed of fat and rolled in cornmeal (formerly rolled in crushed peas – hence the name “peameal”). Really, it just reminds me of thick-sliced ham…or dare we say…Canadian bacon…
At Carousel, they keep their sandwiches simple – a delicious soft bun stuffed with layers of peameal bacon, and a spread station for all your saucy needs (we went with the spicy mustard).
The bacon is nice and salty, and is completely balanced when paired with the bread and mustard. You really do not need anything else here. Simple food often makes a big impact, and I can say for certain this would be a repeat for my husband.
You might be hard pressed to find peameal bacon outside of Canada, or even outside of Ontario for that matter – so if bacon is your jam, you’ll definitely want to jump at the chance at St. Lawrence Market.
St. Urbain: Montreal-Style Bagels
Montreal-style bagels in Ontario? Say it isn’t so! Really, though…you should have seen the eye-roll our tour guide in Montreal gave us when we said we had a Montreal-style bagel in Toronto.
The reason why we chose St. Urbain is that bagels are one of my absolute favorite breakfast foods. Reason? Bread. I love bread! I also just really enjoy savory foods, and bagels and cream cheese have always been my go-to for brek.
But first, we started off with an onion and potato knish because I had a knish for the very first time ever when we did our spring training baseball trip and it was amazing!
The knish at St. Urbain was completely different than what I previously had in Arizona – more flakey and layered, kind of like a pastry. It did have a pretty good potato and onion flavor, though I feel it would have been better warmed up.
Okay. Bagel time. Below is the Montreal-style bagel in all its goodness – an onion bagel with plain cream cheese. I loved it!
Montreal-style bagels are cooked sans salt and instead have sugar added to them for a different, slightly sweeter taste. They are also much more chewy in texture. Interesting and satisfying. I don’t think you can go wrong with this choice.
There is a great bagel debate, apparently, between New York and Montreal: Who makes the better bagel? I haven’t had a bagel from NY in my lifetime yet, but I can’t wait to compare!
We actually enjoyed this bagel from St. Urbain in Toronto more than the bagel we had in Montreal (though I attribute that to the delicious onion flavor and addition of cream cheese).
The bagels here at St. Urbain are relatively affordable (ours was a mere $2.86 CAD for a bagel and cream cheese), and you can even get sandwiches made with them (2019 menu below).
Kozlik’s: Gourmet Mustard
Being huge mustard fans, there was no way we were going to pass up Kozlik’s. They’ve got a plethora of mustards laid out for tasting, which you can taste by dipping pretzels. We are not fans of sweet mustard, so we just went ahead and helped ourselves to all the hot varieties. SO GOOD!
We walked away with four jars of mustard!
I would have to say my favorite was the horseradish, both in flavor and heat level, though any of the top-tier “hot” varieties are all winners in my book.
Kozlik’s is a must-stop for any mustard lover, and would make a great souvenir (definitely suggest pairing your gourmet mustards with some sausage back home), or even a good gift to bring back for family/friends.
Uno Mustachio: Italian Sandwiches
Holy. Sandwich. I absolutely love eggplant parmesan, so when I came across Uno Mustachio in my research, I knew this was going to be one of my top spots!
Building Your Sandwich
Uno Mustachio offers three different varieties to choose from: Classic, Nonna’s & The Godfather, each offering different filling options/combinations.
- Bread: I got mine with a foccaccia-style bread versus the traditional Kaiser roll since it looked delicious in all its fresh-baked glory. In hindsight, I might have chosen the regular roll since the foccaccia soaked up too much of the sauce quickly and got a little soggy.
- Meats/Filling: You can choose from chicken parmigiana, veal parmigiana, New York Steak, meatball, hot Italian sausage, or eggplant parm (or a combo of multiple, depending on your sandwich choice). The most popular/talked about seems to be a combo of veal and eggplant, though I opted to go vegetarian and just stuck with the eggplant parm.
- Extras: I chose to get the mozzarella cheese (a must – unless of course you are lactose intolerant), peppers, and onion (basically, give me the works).
I am not sure I can remember ever having a sandwich so big! I do not recommend eating a whole sandwich to yourself – it was the size of my head, and you have so much more food at the market to taste.
If you aren’t traveling solo, definitely split this with someone else. We each ended up with our own since my husband really wanted to try veal in his and that’s not something that I eat. That was incredibly ambitious of us to say the least.
Flavor of Uno Mustachio Sandwiches
The eggplant was nicely seasoned with a bit of crunch on the outside, which balanced out the “wet” elements of sandwich. If I had to add any additional ingredients to the sandwich, I’d say go for an extra slice of mozzarella since they put so much eggplant (or whatever your filling of choice is) in the sandwich!
Since our sandwich from Uno Mustachio was consumed towards the end of our time at the market, we were nearing that “I’m stuffed” point and could barely finish our sandwiches. Overall, the sandwiches were really tasty, but definitely way too much food for one person unless this is your only meal from the market.
Hard Cider (aka Dessert)
Ending our time at the market, we passed by a stall selling and pouring samples of Canadian ice wine and cider. Ya’ll know I can’t resist the booze! I have been really loving ciders lately, so we tried the No Boats on Sunday Cranberry Rose Cider and the 100% Ontario Cider, and they were both excellent.
We took a bottle of each to enjoy during the rest of our time in Canada, and I really wish I could find a way to get this imported to the U.S.! If you wander by this stall, definitely go in for the taste test.
Exploring the Rest of the Market
As with any other market of this variety, you’re going to have a ton of fresh produce and meat products to choose from. If you happen to be staying in a place with a kitchen, this is definitely the place to come for stocking up on items to make meals out of.
Pertinent Info
For more info on the St. Lawrence Market, read up here: http://www.stlawrencemarket.com/. Also, if you aren’t into doing your own self-guided St. Lawrence Market food tour, you can always join a walking tour like this one.
Market Hours
Farmer’s Market:
Saturdays from 5am / 3pm
South Market:
Tuesday to Friday – 9am to 7pm
Saturday – 7am to 5pm
Sunday – 10am to 5pm
Monday – Closed
If you want to see me talk with my mouth full or with crumbs all over my face, check out our video of us eating food at the market!
Hopefully this post will help you plan your own self-guided St. Lawrence Market food tour! Have you ever been to St. Lawrence Market? Did you try anything different than we did? I’d love to know your thoughts for Round Two when we return to Toronto in the future.
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Hi Moani,
My name is Robert Biancolin, co-owner of Carousel Bakery. Thank you for including us in your
wonderful article about Toronto and the St. Lawrence Market. You and your husband definitely enjoyed the food. Since you mentioned next time you visit, I am inviting you both
to re-enjoy the Peameal sandwich on the house and share a story or two about the market.
Hope to see you soon.
Be safe and well.
Robert
Robert thank you so much for reaching out! That is incredibly kind of you, and we certainly will visit when in the area again. It would be lovely to hear some stories about the market! It was one of the highlights of our visit to Toronto.