Spices in Toronto

A new report by The Atlantic lists Toronto as the #2 best city to live in for business, life, and innovation. But to go on a practical tangent, where should one be buying the spices to stock their kitchen?

It was several years ago that I reviewed a store called The Spice Trader for BlogTO. I have yet to find another store with spices of comparable quality, in spite of hopes that a there would be some sort of cheaper ethnic jewel of a source somewhere in the city.

I’m willing to pay a premium for quality, but what gets me is that the store does not offer any sort of volume discount. With prices ranging from $5-10 for small tins, whether you buy 1 or 10 at a time there is no mercy as you shell out quite a bit of cash. And so despite the dominance of Spice Trader tins on our spice shelf, most of them have been restocked with cheaper versions from various sources.

While I have a few favorites that I might keep buying from Spice Trader (roasted paprika!), I’m still holding out hope that I’ll stumble upon a great store or someone will tip me off. I am excited to see the new Top Chef Canada stumbling around some places in Toronto like Ethiopian Spice Store and
Perola’s in Kensington market.

1 Comment »

  1. Greg Said,

      July 8, 2011 @ 2:26 pm

    Would you expect a discount at Loblaws or Sobys ?

    Why do people expect discounts from the little guys who are trying to compete with the big guys.

    As a small business owner I know that the margins they are making are no where near the big guys.

    Support the little local businesses.

RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment. Don't worry you can easily use your Google or Facebook account I made it easy to do..