One of the best ways to see a city, and get to know some of the people who call that city home, is to take a walking tour. If you want to make that tour a whole lot better you take a walking food tour and that’s exactly what we did last week. We stayed local and headed over to Burlington, Ontario, where we met Sue and Lori from Burlington Food Tours. Sue and Lori both live in the city and are involved in the food industry.
The tour itself lasts about two to three hours and usually visits five or six restaurants all within a few minutes walk of each other. Apart from the food, the other highlight for me was the opportunity to meet some of the owners who had some amazing stories to tell, not just about their journey, but also about their locations since a few of the restaurants were located in some historical buildings.
Burlington is about forty five minutes west of Toronto and the food scene is very vibrant. What I really like is that many of the restaurants here are independently owned. It’s hard to go anywhere without running into a fast food chain these days, but there are surprisingly few in downtown Burlington. The downtown core itself isn’t very big so a fifteen minute walk in almost any direction from City Hall will bring you to restaurants serving up a variety of dishes.
A few years ago members of the local business community came together and launched a Prix Fixe Dining program called Taste Of Burlington. The goal of the program was to encourage residents and visitors to visit some of the local restaurants and experience their cuisines. The program Is now run by Tourism Burlingtonand takes place twice a year; the winter program runs in February/March and the summer program runs in August/September. This years’ summer program runs from August 13th to September 3rd, and there’ll be twenty four restaurants participating.
