From May 15 to 29, downtown Sydney will be catering to food lovers.
The Downtown Sydney Development Association is sponsoring an Eat Downtown food festival, with participating restaurants promoting their fare.
The kickoff feature event will be an outdoor food court on May 15, 12-2pm, where restaurant owners will be offering samples of their cuisine. A section of Charlotte Street will be closed to traffic, allowing pedestrians to peruse a wide selection of culinary offerings including Louisiana style sausage, hummus, scallops, salads, mini burgers, subs, and satays. There will also be live music.
Jared Wolf, owner of Allegro Restaurant and one of the food court’s coordinators, said that the court is not just about promoting any one restaurant. “It’s a part of an overall effort to get people to visit the downtown area of Sydney.”
Admission to the downtown food court will be by the purchase of a $1 ticket, or $10 for a strip of 12 tickets. A single ticket can be redeemed for most of the items available, with a few select items requiring two tickets. “There are 13 restaurants participating in the food court,” Wolf explained, “so by purchasing the 12 tickets, you can sample something from almost all of the tables.”
Wolf is pleased with the initiative. “It really got rolling when we [decided to] make it a charitable event,” he said. The original idea was to have an event that promoted the restaurants, since most of the Downtown Sydney Development’s promotions had previously been retail-oriented. “We decided that instead of just promoting our restaurants, we would do something that gave back to the community”
All of the proceeds from the food court tickets will go to the Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation. Wolf said that the foundation was a natural choice for the participating business owners. “We were looking for something that would be of benefit to the community as a whole…choosing the hospital foundation seemed to make sense,” he explained.
Since 1993, the non-profit Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation has raised over $10 million towards the goal of offering more treatment options in Cape Breton so that residents would be able to stay in the community while undergoing treatment.
Wolf hopes that the Eat Downtown promotion becomes an annual festival. For now, he said “it will be a chance for people to come and chat with restaurant owners and sample a wide variety of food.”
After the food court kickoff for the Eat Downtown promotion, all participating restaurants will be offering a special lunch feature under $10, and a dinner feature under $25 until May 29.
Participating restaurants include Peking, Tim Horton’s, Trio, Cat & The Fiddle Cafe, Casino NS All Star Grill, Allegro, CB Fudge Company, Flavor, Crown & Moose, Daniel’s, Governor’s, Time Machine, Subway, Kenny’s, Beanbank, Napoli, Nico’s, Maxwell’s, Judy’s Kitchen, New Moon, Maple Leaf, and Black Diamond. For more information, visit Take A Bite of Downtown Sydney on Facebook.
