In May, Nordicity's Gaeby Abrahams attended the Taste of Place Summit in Markham, hosted by the Culinary Tourism Alliance in partnership with Destination Markham. The summit brought together food producers, tourism leaders, economic development professionals, and content creators. For Gaeby, it pointed to the potential for new ways of thinking about how culinary tourism acts as cultural infrastructure, and why inclusive metrics and everyday food spaces matter for resilient communities.
Food as Identity
Food is a lens through which people experience, understand, and contribute to place. Summit programming highlighted how culinary practices carry cultural memory, reflect migration histories, and express local identity in ways that resonate across communities. In Markham – where immigrant foodways and diasporic culinary traditions shape much of the local landscape – those stories were immediate and meaningful. Culinary tourism here doesn’t just happen in fine dining or heritage districts. It thrives in food courts, strip malls, and suburban plazas – places where residents gather, share, and build community. These everyday spaces are part of Canada’s cultural fabric.
And these dynamics aren’t exclusive to Markham. They exist across Canada, in both urban and rural settings, and include Indigenous food sovereignty, regional specialties, and everyday practices passed down through generations. Supporting these systems means more than celebrating cuisine. It requires investment in the people, places, and infrastructures that sustain culinary life as a form of cultural expression and community connection.
Rethinking What We Measure and Why
The tourism sector as a whole is data-rich. But the summit also revealed a gap between traditional tourism metrics and the broader impacts of culinary tourism. Existing frameworks often focus on economic outcomes without adequately capturing how culinary experiences support placemaking, social connection, or cultural continuity.
That raises some key questions: What kinds of indicators could better reflect the full impact of culinary tourism as cultural infrastructure? How might we design shared measurement frameworks that connect cultural, economic, and social dimensions – rather than treating them as separate silos? What would it take to embed community-defined success into the way we evaluate and support food-based cultural work?
These are questions worth exploring, especially for those of us working at the intersection of culture, tourism, and community development. We know cultural identity and economic development are closely linked. The next step is to consider how food – including culinary and agri-tourism – can be treated not only as an attraction, but as cultural infrastructure.
Opportunities to Evolve the System
Based on formal summit programming as well as conversations with other delegates, there’s clearly an opportunity to strengthen culinary tourism as a driver of cultural and economic resilience. But to do that, the systems around it need to evolve. That might include:
- Continuing to strengthen alignment across tourism, culture, community development, and economic sectors
- Investing in integrated measurement frameworks that reflect both economic, cultural, and social outcomes
- Recognizing everyday culinary life as a site of meaning, memory, and value – not just consumption
The Taste of Place Summit helped frame these conversations – not as side notes to tourism planning or economic development, but as essential to building stronger, more connected communities.
To continue the conversation about how culinary tourism can support cultural infrastructure and community development, contact Gaeby Abrahams.