It’s been a year since anyone has eaten a juicy rib-eye or a bowl of impossibly fragrant Thai curry or anything, for that matter inside a packed Toronto restaurant, an experience once as central to life in this food-obsessed town as piling onto the streetcar at rush hour. (That, we don’t miss.) Since then, more than 10,000 restaurants have reportedly closed across Canada hundreds in Toronto taking countless jobs along with them. The rest continue to scrape by on a mix of takeout, delivery and outdoor dining, along with Covid relief funds and, if they’re lucky, flexible landlords.
NOW Magazine
How Toronto cake business Kwento blossomed online
Shannon Nocos s pandemic project infuses Filipino culture into artfully detailed cakes and tarts By Kelsey Adams
Shannon Nocos never set out to start a cake business.
In fact, in her first semester of culinary school she remembers distinctly saying she would never enroll in pastry classes.
“The pastry program was on the other side of the hall and I would say I’d never do it because it’s super tedious, there’s too much measuring involved, everything has to be super precise,” she says. “And here I am: [baking] is my entire life.”