Street Vendor Songs

Montreal did away with a big chunk of its cultural heritage when it started cracking down on street vendors in the 1960s. Food vendors were the first to go and, although City Hall has been easing its restrictions on street vending for a number of years, allowing people to sell art and crafts on Ste. Catherine Street and at the tam tams, it still refuses to allow anyone except mobile ice cream vendors to sell food on the street. This makes us one of the only major cities in the world with a near-total ban on street food.

Not only does this deprive us of delicious snacks, it eliminates a great source of streetlife. Today, on Coolopolis, Kristian Gravenor posted a bit about the calls of early twentieth century street vendors. He points to an article in the May 19th, 1929 edition of Le Petit Journal:

La corporation des marchands des quatres saisons, ou “colporteurs” comme on les nomme ici, est composée de braves gens qui gagnent honorablement leur vie en vendant de porte en porte, les primeurs, fruits ou légumes. On pouvait autrement classer dans cette catégorie les vendeurs de crême à la glace et les petits marchands de galettes et de blé-d’inde bouilli.

Le marchand de crême à la glace se tenait au coin des rues avec une petite voiture où était installé son bidon d’ice cream qui’il débitait à un sou le cocotier. Celui-là, il va sans dire, était particulièrement l’ami des enfants.

Un autre petit vendeur très populaire était le marchand de petites galettes et de petits pains chauds: “Galettes! Galettes! Madame!” criait-il, “pas trop de beurre dedans! … Cinq pour cinq sous! … Galettes! … Galettes! …”

Puis le marchand de blé-d’inde bouilli qui parcourait les rues avec son haridelle, en criant sans cesse, et en vers, s’il vous plait:

“Bon blé-d’inde bouilli!
Trois sous pour un épi! …”

Et qui ne se rappelle le vendeur de bluets, annoçant sa marchandise avec un trémolo dans la voix, tout comme notre marchand de bananes d’aujourd’hui: “Bluets!… Ah! les beaux bluets du Saguenay!…”

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The Taste of a Japa Dog

In Vancouver, like in most Canadian cities, street food vendors are limited to hawking pre-cooked meat: hot dogs, in other words. But, even within the restrictive confines of the law, innovation is possible, especially in a global city like Vancouver. You can taste as much by wandering over to the corner of Smithe and Burrard. There, across the street from a supermarket and a megaplex cinema, amidst the daytime downtown bustle, is an ordinary-looking hot dog stand. Its hot dogs, however, are anything but ordinary: they are “Japa Dogs,” a new type of street meat invented by Noriki Tamura, an ad salesman who left Tokyo for Vancouver two years ago.

I read about Japa Dog in Maclean’s a week before I left for Vancouver. “Behind the spitting grill, Noriki Tamura keeps up with the crowd, dressing still-sizzling turkey dogs with pale brown miso mayonnaise, sesame sauce and a layer of crispy green radish sprouts,” writes Nancy Macdonald. “His $5 Oroshi packs a motley punch. The bratwurst frank is loaded with an inch-thick layer of finely shaved daikon radish and green onions, topped with wasabi and soy sauce. As the grilled German sausage burns a trail down the gullet, the wasabi delivers its unmistakable kick to the nose. Hands down, Japa Dog marks the single biggest innovation to hit city street meat since Vancouver vendors started hawking the Yves Famous Veggie Dog a decade ago.”

I had to check it out so, last Wednesday, on the kind of bright, impossibly fresh day that only the Pacific Northwest is able to produce, I wandered up to Burrard Street for lunch and bought a Terimayo, a beef hotdog topped with teriyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise and strips of dried seaweed. My food vocabulary is fairly limited, so I’ll describe it like this: it tasted Japanese. It was probably the combination of the seaweed and mayo, the former naturally savoury and the latter full of MSG, which combined to create a brothy, full-mouthed umami flavour. The $4.25 price tag was a bit steep, but not terribly overpriced when you consider that the going rate for the most basic Vancouver street meat is $3.50.

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Street Food Freedom!

While Montreal obstinately refuses to allow any sort of food vending on its streets — ostensibly for health and cleanliness reasons — Toronto has convinced the Ontario government to liberalize its street food rules so that vendors may sell more than just hot dogs. Soon, in addition to the several hundred sausage stands and chip trucks that dot the city’s landscape, Torontonians will be able to buy samosas, brochettes, crêpes, Taiwanese fish balls — and pretty much anything else you can imagine — on the street.

Considering the extent of Toronto’s cultural diversity — half of its population is foreign-born — you can pretty much bet that this move will introduce the city to a vast array of street vending traditions from around the world. Immigrant entrepreneurs will finally have a way to build a low-overhead business selling the food they know best; Toronto’s pedestrians, meanwhile, will have access to an international food fair on every block.

In fact, last Friday, a street food festival was held in front of Toronto’s City Hall to celebrate the new rules. According to the Toronto Star, one of the highlights was murtabak, an Indian Muslim wrap that is a popular street snack in Singapore and Malaysia.

Down the 401 in Montreal, however, in a city supposedly known for its laissez-faire attitude, cosmopolitanism and joie de vivre, politicians and bureaucrats claim that allowing street vendors to sell food would put the city’s hundreds of cheap restaurants out of business. Yet Toronto has no shortage of hole-in-the-wall falafel joints, take-out jerk chicken restaurants and inexpensive Korean cafés. Montreal certainly wasn’t hard-pressed for cheap eats back when street food was allowed in the 1950s and 60s.

Like most Montrealers, I’m a fan of the occasional shish taouk from Basha or soggy steamé from La Belle Province. But wouldn’t it taste so much better if you could buy it on the street?