Coming up: a Spanish tapas fest from the organizers of Slurp and Yum Cha

Impeccable timing is an important skill for a food-festival organizer. Suresh Doss and Frank Kocis have it down pat: they timed their massive soup party, Slurp Noodlefest, for the peak of the ramen trend, and threw a daylong Cantonese-dumpling fest the weekend after Susur Lee opened his upscale dim-sum shop at the Soho Met. Their latest event is no less well-timed. PintxosTO is an upcoming food festival devoted to small Spanish snacks called pintxos (derived from the word pincho, which means “spike”—a reference to toothpicks). The word is on everyone’s lips these days, thanks to Milton Nunes’s tapas bar Portland Variety, which recently opened for lunch on King West. Nunes is one of the vendors participating in the festival, along with chefs from Marben, Cava, Carmen, Pimenton, Patria and Torito—i.e. about 90 per cent of Toronto’s Spanish culinary talent. The festival takes place on July 6, but tickets are selling now.

July 6. $10 ($2–$7 per dish). 395 Wellington Ave. W., uniiverse.com