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Food lovers cheesed off at organizers of mac and cheese festival
JULIAN UZIELLI

This article was published more than 8 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

An event billed as Canada’s first mac and cheese festival has left some Toronto food lovers with a bad taste in their mouths.

The free event in Liberty Village this past weekend attracted far more people than the space could handle, leading to lineups as long as 45 minutes for a helping of gourmet mac. Pictures posted on Twitter by attendees showed crowds packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and long lineups at the event gates.

Event organizer Phil Suos, of Vaulted Studios, estimated about 51,000 people came over the course of the three-day festival.

“We had all our systems in place and all that, it’s just when you try to fit so many thousands and thousands of people at the same time, you’re naturally going to get a lineup. Especially when it’s free,” he said.

H Bar was one of the 24 vendors selling samples at the festival, and co-owner Kate Hancock said she worked for 20 hours straight to keep up with demand.

“It was pretty insane, right from the opening get-go,” she said. “We had a lineup that just didn’t seem to end.”

But Hancock didn’t blame the organizers.

“Obviously for the first year there’s going to be kinks and hiccups that have to be worked out.… They did the best with the space that they had,” she said.

Attendees on Twitter were somewhat less forgiving.

This wasn’t the first cheese-themed food fest to go awry in Toronto. In March 2014, the grilled-cheese festival faced long lineups as well. But those people were considerably less lucky – they had to endure temperatures of minus-15 while they waited, as well as empty stomachs.

That event was organized by different people, and Suos said while it was “natural” to compare the two festivals, the events faced different challenges.

The grilled-cheese festival sold too many tickets in advance, Suos said.

“When you’re doing ticket sales, you know how much you’re bringing in before the event starts,” he said. “With us, it’s free.… It’s two very separate problems, but to the public it would appear that they’re similar.”

After the grilled-cheese festival fiasco, organizers said they were planning to make it an annual event – though no 2015 festival has been announced.

As for the mac and cheese festival, Suos said he planned to bring it back next year – with some improvements. “We’re just scouting out for a much, much larger venue,” he said.

Though attendees may have been unhappy with the festival’s organization, vendors didn’t seem to share that sentiment. Several vendors reached by The Globe said while the crowds made for difficult work, they were happy to have the customers.

Marta Kusel, chef at Cardinal Rule, thought the festival went as well as could be expected.

“There were irritated people, but I sort of look at it on the end of, how else was this going to happen?” she said. “There’s 24 vendors trying to feed 60,000 people, and you know, it went as it would have gone in any situation with that amount of people.”

Kusel said the long lines and big crowds only point to one thing: Torontonians love their mac and cheese.

“It’s like when your favourite band gets really popular and you can’t get a ticket – it’s a hard position to be in, but I think that everybody did the best that they could,” she said.

“It was very taxing and hard for everybody, but we all did it for the love of mac and cheese.”