Walking on Sunshine

On a beautiful Saturday, I decided to walk around to a few festivals running over the weekend. But first, I stopped at Zocalo for lunch. This tiny restaurant is located between Lansdowne and Dundas on Bloor, a stretch of street that is not particularly lively. This boite may be one of the first attempts at gentrification.

One wall had a number of tables running along a long wooden bench. Additional tables lined the other wall. There was a small bar area and the entire restaurant was painted  muted off-white/blue-green combination. Their specialty was broken bread sandwiches (i.e., make your own open-faced sandwich from the given ingredients).

I started with a cup of cauliflower and sage ($3). It was a bit watery and could have been creamier. My broken bread sandwich ($10.99) was sticky pomegranate chicken with radish, scallions, roasted garlic and fennel slather. The salad was primarily arugula, which was a little too strong. The slightly sweet chicken went well with the crunchy radish on top of the artisanal bread.

I then made my way down Roncesvalles to check out the Polish Festival. The contingent of Canadian Forces personnel gave me a primer on the workings of a howitzer. I discovered a Polish take on the open-faced sandwich called a Zapiekanka. The children and teens doing dances in traditional, colourful costumes were fun to watch; these old costumes seem to place a premium on knee-high leather boots for both men and women.

I ended the afternoon at the Queen West Art Crawl. I stumbled upon Dylan Bell and Suba Sankaran (of Retrocity) performing as Freeplay Duo. Using a loop sampler, they layered intricate harmonies without resorting to taped music or backing track to create wonderful songs. For other songs, it was just two voices playing off each other. Their CD had some great tunes, too but it lacked the more accessible covers that they were doing live. The onsite generator died 3/4 of the way through their excellent arrangement of Chick Corea's Spain but you can listen to a version of it online.