The Downtown Yonge BIA wants to take you on a food tour for just $20
And it includes stops at five different restaurants
The Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area wants more Torontonians to discover the foodie finds in its district. So if you’ve ever wondered where to eat in the zone bordered by Grosvenor, Richmond and Bay Streets and the TMU campus, this is your moment to stuff your face courtesy of the DYBIA, which has partnered with the Tour Guys to launch Taste of Downtown Yonge, a weekly walking tour that will take hungry people to up to five different restaurants for the low, low price of just $20.
Related: The Incredible Edible Bucket List
“I won’t tell you which places, because that would ruin the surprise,” says DYBIA executive director and COO Pauline Larsen. “But it’s not just little nibbles!”
Unlike most food tours, which are aimed at tourists and usually cost around $100 (plus tips for the guides), these crawls are designed for locals and are heavily subsidized by the DYBIA to promote the area’s businesses and hopefully inspire repeat visits.
Related: Ten restaurants with prix-fixe menus for $60 or less
“We want to get people excited about coming to this area again after the pandemic,” says Larsen, who notes that over 125 new restaurants have opened there since 2022, many of them small, independent storefront vendors. “We’ve always tried to do big events that bring crowds of people, but then we thought, What if we connect people one by one instead?”
Each tour takes about two hours, and they kick off every Thursday between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. They also include a side serving of downtown Toronto history, with the theme changing seasonally. Right now, the DYBIA is booking guests for its Winter Warm Up tour—which sounds like something we could all use.
Leah Rumack has worked as the deputy editor of Today’s Parent and the features director of Fashion and has contributed as a writer to a long list of Canadian brands including Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Chatelaine, Elle Canada, Zoomer, the National Post, EnRoute and Re:porter. Her work focuses on travel, food, pop culture, beauty and fashion.
