Bain: Pop-up vendors have fun with Chinese toast

You can eat its glammed up fat rectangles of grilled toast — topped with things like red beans, crushed cookies, strawberry jam and whipped cream — this weekend at Taste of Asia.

But then Winnie Yip, Carmen Tsang, Vanassa Chan and Amy Lee will go back to their day jobs in marketing/communications, graphic design, interior design and cooking respectively.

Too bad, because these friends are on to something with their good looking, affordable, snack-sized toasts.

They invited me over to Lee and Chan’s house near Chinatown East for a sampling of their two savoury and four sweet toasts. Lee did the cooking.

They buy unsliced loaves of soft, sweet Chinese white bread from Foodymart Warden and cut out 2.5-centimetre by 7.5-centimetre rectangles. For the festival, they’ll grill the rectangles on a propane barbecue, but at home they use the ridged side of a griddle set on the stove.

Two toast flavours will fetch $1 each. One is buttered and doused with cinnamon sugar. The other is painted with garlic-parsley butter.

I say splurge on one of the $2 creations. Bacon & Cheese gets the garlic parsley butter, warm cheese sauce and fake bacon bits (yes, they’re trying to keep costs down). Strawberry Shortcake gets fresh whipped cream, strawberry jam thinned with simple syrup, and crumbled shortbread cookies. Chocolate & Oreo is just that — whipped cream, chocolate syrup and crumbled cookies.

Red Bean & Green Tea wins my highest praise. Fresh whipped cream is artfully piped from a pastry bag onto the toast. Dollops of canned, sweetened red beans go on top. A green tea syrup, made from matcha powder and corn syrup, is drizzled over everything.

Asia’s best flavours meet Canada’s enduring love of white bread toast.

“In the Western world we eat crêpes and waffles,” points out Lee. “This is the same thing but we put it on toast.”

The women — who’re all in their 30s and from Hong Kong — were inspired by the thick toast served in bubble tea houses and by their love of Asian street food.

They pooled their diverse talents to create Grilled Specialty Toast, which is more of a description of their food than a proper business name. They figured out food costs, perfected their menu, designed a banner and flyers, secured a Taste of Asia booth, and tried to drum up publicity.

“This is a little bit of summer fun to share our goodies with everyone,” offers Tsang.

The foursome always go to Taste of Asia, says Yip, but get tired of the same old smelly tofu, curry fish ball and grilled lamb vendors.

“We’re more family style,” says Chan. “We want to bring some colour with our food.”

“Other Asian vendors are not so concerned with presentation,” adds Lee.

The women also felt it was important to create something they could sell for $1 or $2. Most festival food offerings are $5.

Taste of Asia is expected to draw more than 100,000 people to Kennedy Rd. north of Steeles Ave. (beside Pacific Mall) on June 25 and June 26.

There will be more than 180 vendors (about 50 of them food) at the ninth annual event, hosted by the Federation of Chinese Canadians in Markham, Association of Progressive Muslims of Ontario and Town of Markham. Expect Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Mongolian, Indonesian, Filipino and Malaysian food.

If things go well for Tsang, Chan, Yip and Lee, they might take another stab this summer at vending.

It costs nearly $1,000 to rent a Taste of Asia booth. If they sell 3,000 portions of toast, they just might blow their earnings on a trip to New York City — to eat, of course.

One day you just might even see this foodie foursome open a café.

Until then, add their voices to the chorus demanding a more vibrant street food scene in Greater Toronto.

“I think the city should be more open-minded,” says Lee. “We live in a multicultural city and they should let us do different things. If they really open and allow people to do different styles of carts, it’s going to be wonderful in the city.”