Toronto Food Tour: St. Lawrence Market & The Distillery

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Free cancellationExcellent quality

1/29

Duration2h 30m

GroupUp to 16

LanguagesEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

Peameal bacon, pizza, and the people who made them Toronto originals

A guided food tasting tour through Toronto's St. Lawrence Market and the Distillery District, led by a Culinary Storyteller who has walked these blocks for years and knows the vendors and kitchen families behind each stop. You'll taste up to 13 dishes across six stops — peameal bacon, fresh seafood, wood-oven pizza, butter tarts, poutine and more — over two and a half unhurried hours, eating a full meal while learning how each dish became a Canadian fixture. Small groups stay under 14, and vegetarian and pescatarian versions are available when you book.

2h 30m

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Distillery District and Market

Begin walk at Sweetie Pie Bakery
Taste savoury bites and cocktail
Hear Distillery District history
Photograph cobblestone lanes
Visit St. Lawrence Market stalls
Taste peameal bacon sandwich and seafood
Enjoy a sweet treat at market
End tour in the market

The Experience

You start at the Distillery District, a pedestrian-only village of cobblestone lanes and Victorian industrial buildings that once housed a whisky distillery. Sweetie Pie Bakery sits on Tank House Lane, and this is where your guide begins — not with a script, but with the story of how whisky built this corner of the city, why it fell silent, and how food brought it back to life. Over an hour, you'll taste savoury bites, a signature alcohol-free cocktail, and a sweet treat, moving between tastings while the buildings around you hold their own history. The lanes photograph beautifully, and cameras are welcome.

From there, you walk to St. Lawrence Market — two centuries old, 120 vendors under one roof, and ranked first by National Geographic ahead of London's Borough Market. This isn't a tourist attraction that sells food; it's a working market that became an attraction by being excellent for two hundred years. Your guide moves stall to stall the way regulars shop, introducing you to the families behind the counters. Recent tastings have included the market's signature peameal bacon sandwich, fresh seafood — smoked salmon, gravlax, lumpfish caviar, oyster — and a second sweet treat to finish. The tour ends here on purpose, in the middle of the market, and guests regularly stay to shop using a shortlist of what to carry home.

The tastings add up to a full meal: wood-oven Hawaiian pizza from Old Flame Brewery (the Canadian original, Ontario 1962); poutine crowned with Montreal smoked meat and a classic Canadian drink; a Scotch butter tart from Tartistry (the Canadian dessert debate settled by hand); a Nanaimo bar finale from Eve's Temptations (B.C.'s no-bake legend); and the seafood run. Your guide, William or Jusep, has been leading tours in these blocks since 2017 and 2019 respectively — they rebuilt this tour from the ground up and know every kitchen on the route by name. Children from age 3 are welcome, and strollers work on the market floors and the Distillery's cobblestone lanes.

What’s included

Up to 13 tastings across six stops — peameal bacon sandwich, smoked salmon, gravlax, lumpfish caviar, oyster, wood-oven Hawaiian pizza, poutine with Montreal smoked meat, a classic Canadian drink, Scotch butter tart, and a Nanaimo bar.
a live guide in English who knows the vendors and kitchen families by name.
small groups capped at 14.

Good to know

Moderate physical levelStroller friendlyPublic transport nearby

Operated by Chopsticks and Forks

Is this one for you?Two and a half hours leaves room for a full afternoon elsewhere in Toronto, or a leisurely lunch afterward — the tour is a meal, not a snack, so plan the rest of your day around it. If you have a free morning or early afternoon and want to eat your way through the city's two most storied food neighborhoods without building the itinerary yourself, this is the shape that works.