Feeding 900+ hungry visitors was no easy feat at this weekend (on Sunday's) first ever Asian Food Battle 2023 at Toronto's JCCC (Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre). Ask this battle kitchen and food service crew who slayed and possibly prayed throughout the day, watching a seemingly never-ending snake of a line finally dissipate 5+ hours later 😯🙏.
We had 300+ 🇯🇵🇹🇼 battle tasting boxes to prepare plus countless savoury and sweet dishes for the hot table to be bought a la carte. Keeping up the pace of demand was mission impossible but the kitchen production and service crew did their very best and at the end of the night we were all high fiving!! Culture, Camaraderie, Community- all under one flippin' roof... the E.P.I.C best 👊💥
With little time to spare, supervising the busy kitchen activities, I had tiny moments to capture tidbits including a selfie with a RedSuns- the infamous midnight Tokyo racing car... a popular showstopper centred in the food and entertainment hall ✌.
There were performances, anime shows, people dressed in cos play costumes, kimonos, toys, snacks and food to buy and lots of fun games with prizes unfortunately with zero captures to share by me :(.
Happy to see @lisa.eats @moochi2000 @foodtravelwynne @chianan721025 and my artist brother Preserved Dragons and his family set up a table to sell his retro cult movie and martial arts character tees and stickers 🥋📽🎞.
Drum roll 🥁🥁🥁... The battle foods in question- the main feature summoning the top favourites of both Japanese 🇯🇵 and Taiwanese 🇹🇼 street foods in three categories for YOU to judge! And the results are in!
Winner- Takoyaki 🐙💥
Noodles- Japanese Yakisoba 76 votes; Taiwanese Fried Vermicelli (Mi Fien) 91 votes.
Winner- Mi Fien 🍜💥
Sweets- Japanese Matcha Jelly 75 votes;
Taiwanese Lemon Aiyu Jelly 86 votes.
Winner- Aiyu Lemon Jelly 💥
2/3 Looks like Taiwanese street foods reign supreme- in this first ever food battle round! 🇹🇼🏆
The calm 🌊- casual food and snack media tasting with an intimate group two weeks prior savouring the delectables to come on battle day!
The storm 🌩- frenetic kitchen production and food vendor service to meet the non-stop 5 hours + demand for food, food and more food 🍱🍙🍛🍡🍵🥢🍚🍢🥤!
Lots of interest already coming in from other cultural communities for a next round of food battle. With some logistics to iron out, I know the next event will even be more successful 👊💥.
Congrats to the Three Headed Dragon in hosting their first battle event, and to all the staff, volunteers and vendors- Arrigato Gozaimasu 🙏🌸🌸🌸
