“Rats. I left the swan food back at the inn.”
Stratford, Ontario, is—to the best of my knowledge—the only place where that thought has ever crossed my mind. And I was irked with myself, because as I enjoyed a Saturday morning bike ride beside the Avon River, the giant white birds were everywhere. There were even fluffy cygnets, for crying out loud.
“Swan food?” I hear you asking. It’s dried corn, sold at the Stratford Tourism Alliance office and several other spots around town. Some caring locals, worried about the quantities of unhealthy bread that tourists were tossing to birds, set up a program to sell $2 bags of healthy chow instead.
Stratford is a town where even the waterfowl are well fed.
If you’re human, though, you have much, much better things to nosh on than dried corn.
On our visit last weekend, my husband Paul and I learned that Stratford is home to three taste trails. And, unlike similar ventures in other places, these ones didn’t involve long drives from farm to farm. Almost all of the spots on all three trails are located within about six blocks downtown.
To take the official self-guided tour, you buy six vouchers for $25. You can trade each voucher for a different “free” goodie at the shops you visit. Most of the treats are worth more than $4, so it’s a good investment if you use all six vouchers.
We started, not surprisingly, with the Bacon and Ale Trail. The “freebie” we picked up at gourmet food purveyor Turnbull & Stewart was—I am not making this up—bacon mayonnaise. Made by Empire Mayonnaise of Brooklyn, it only has seven ingredients: canola oil, egg yolks, vinegar, bacon, salt, guar gum and xanthan gum. The shop staff warned us that we really shouldn’t eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon. I am not convinced.
One of our favourite meals in Stratford started with another voucher treat: a charcuterie plate and a craft beer sample at Monforte on Wellington, a funky restaurant operated by local cheesemaker Monforte Dairy. The charcuterie—featuring locally raised pork products and a chunk of Monforte’s water buffalo milk cheese—was delicious.
So we also ordered Spanish omelettes. Costing the princely sum of $5 each, the omelettes were thick, delectable wedges of egg and potato, brightened with a small dish of rosemary aioli.
A second trail focuses on all things chocolate, and we settled quite quickly on imported shortbread cookies studded with chunks of Belgian chocolate at MacLeod’s Scottish Shop and a brownie at Coffee Culture Café & Eatery.
The third trail is a maple route, and while maple isn’t my favourite flavour (I know, I should have my Canadian citizenship revoked), we did pick up some “free” maple sugar candies for our sweet-toothed daughter at Treasures. We also traded a voucher for a tasty maple bacon, lettuce and tomato panini at Canadian Grub to Go, a fun, casual restaurant where everything on the menu is either grown or refined in the Great White North.
Each trail features a dozen or so shops and restaurants, so this post just scratches the surface. Each set of vouchers is good for three days, so don’t feel as though you have to stuff yourself in a single day. Leave that to the ducks and swans—if you remember the bird food.
P.S.: If you want to sample even more foodie finds in the region, head down on the weekend of July 19 and 20 for the Savour Stratford Perth County Culinary Festival.
I travelled to Stratford as a guest of the Stratford Tourism Alliance, which neither reviewed nor approved this post.
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If you go
Distance from Ottawa: 583km
More information: Stratford Tourism Alliance
2 comments
We haven’t been to the Stratford area for awhile. It’s one of my favourite parts of Ontario to explore in fall. Leaves are later and I love the idea of a food-walking tour. That piece of bread in your photo. Could sink my teeth into it right about now!
[…] restaurant scene (spurred by graduates from a local culinary school), quirky shops, several food trails and swans gliding regally along the Thames River. I love the fact that the Festival Theatre (shown […]