So it looks like I went to Japan again; well not really, but rather another chance to get some local street foods straight from the fine patrons of Markham. Located in the back parking lot in Markville Mall, the food event ran for 3 days on Father’s day weekend, from June 16-18. While these food market things often are overpriced for what they are selling, it’s a nice place to get everything all in once place and besides, it’s the first summer where we can say that covid is behind us, so that’s nice. Let’s see what we ate today.

The event itself has a number of no name sponsors like some kung fu club and association of china people of markham or whatever but they did however have a Red Bull sponsorship based on these nice cars parked and giving away/doing some social media like/retweet bullshit for free Red Bull. I didn’t do it.

What is this shit? I thought this was a street food market, not Anime North. Seems to me like these guys tried applying to AN but failed and so they try their Kuji gacha store here instead. Like, nice guys but kinda LAME. I appreciate that they have gachapon machines tho.

Oh wow looks like I am in Japan again, look at the nice festival goldfish scooping game with kids and shit. Oh wait, sorry no, we are actually in Markham, the region in the GTA that has a population demographic where 48% of it’s inhabitants identify as Chinese, yea I see; I get it now; it’s once again Chinese people with the strong desire to go to Japan or partake in a similar Real street festival in Asia but just can’t, so they do this. Ah I see, makes sense, wanna try to simulate the Japan festival experience I guess. Sure.

The nice parking lot is lined with a variety of food stalls, ranging from authentic Chinese/Taiwanese street food fare to Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Thai street food fare; all operated by Chinese people regardless. I mean, I can’t blame them for wanting to simulate the Japanese festival experience.

Proof of existence 1. For some reason I think this picture looks pretty good of me. Noice, not so much for my sister on the side that got cut off.

A better picture overall but with me looking like I am on crack or sleepy with my sister more in the scene. Sure fam sure.

Yay. We are at the Lucky Lion Street Food Night Market where Chinese people get to show off their proud Chinese culture and heritage while also pretending to be Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai while running the food stands for unsuspecting white and brown folk who don’t know any better.

Wow, looks like I really am in Japan again. They even brought the claw machines in. Oh wait, never-mind, this is another store in Toronto/GTA that does crane games that tries to simulate the Japan trip experience. Wow, I had no idea simulating the Japan trip experience was such a popular and requested experience to have.

Some booths are clearly operated by a real restaurant or food truck maybe but these mad lads, I think were nothing, just a few dudes trying to make a few extra dollars or something making grilled onigiri. I mean, it’s just rice some filling and labor right?

For some reason or another, I was compelled to what may be considered the most ghetto and ad hoc food vendor in the entire event and brought some from them. 2 grilled onigiri for $15. Wow, rice coming at a premium here. One is filled with salmon and the other with fake crab meat and honestly, despite it’s simplicity they were not bad. Would eat again maybe.

Is this the CNE or something? Blooming onion huh? Wow. I think it’s too early for that shit but I like fried foods so we decided to try the fried enoki mushrooms, that’s something I haven’t tried before.

I am not entirely sure what this fried food stall was trying to represent; Chinese, Japanese or something else but they certainly have an interesting way of keeping orders and queue management in check, based on my ‘ticket’ for my order using a black behrs paint color swatch sample that you normally pick up at like Home Depot or Rona. Chinese people just being Chinese after all I guess, I mean printing paper and ink cost too much I guess.

And here is our deep fried Enoki Mushroom deep fried in all it’s golden crispy glory. Hmm, it was certainly quite different than other fried carnival foods that’s for sure and for $15, certainly in line with the general pricing for everything at this event. Not bad. I am not sure what the seasoning they sprinkled on top of it tho. I wasn’t sure but they had bottles of ketchup there so I got some anyways, yea, ok sure.

Moving along now is a stall for home made siu mai and some nice Wuhan Hot Dry noodles. How appropriate that even tho there is no relation to our current state of affairs, Wuhan will forever be associated with the covid19 pandemic.

I don’t believe I’ve ever tried some Wuhan noodles before like this, at least not fresh like this so I decided to give it a try. This was I think $13 dollars a serving so a little cheaper but still massively overpriced and there is no meat or protein, just noodles and sauce. It’s not bad, you gotta mix all the shit yourself in the bowl; has some tastes of like chili, peanut and some other stuff, kinda filling tho. Probably wouldn’t have again.

Nice Thai stall selling all sorts of street eats, looks good to me.

For some reason this was our first real meat of the day, after first eating heavy carb stuff like rice, noodles and even mushrooms earlier. We had 3 skewers for $10, two beef and one chicken satay. While the chicken was nice and tasty with peanut satay flavor, the beef was better and very savory. Good shit.

I mean, it wouldn’t be a Lucky Lion Night Market without some nice lion dancing from our local Chinese Kung Fu association sponsors or something. Yea. Beat that drum and gongs boiz.

Craving more meat we decided to go to this very smoky stall selling northern Chinese style lamb and beef skewers. Wow, much smoke indeed.

For a price of 3 for $10, they are not bad; we got 2 beef and one lamb and although they taste good, they are seasoned way too much with spice to mask the meat flavor, I couldn’t tell if I was eating beef or lamb, they all tasted the same. On the smaller size, they were also kinda tough and overly fatty, chewy for some chunks so definitely not the best skewers we had today. Probably not worth.

More Thai inspired drinks huh, run by Chinese people no doubt. I guess this looks cool, all the social media and youtube shit has these drinks so let’s give it a try.

On the left is my lychee butterfly which is basically just lychee juice mixed with some soda water/sprite/7up, not bad I guess. On the right is my sister’s milky mango drink, which is just mangos and condensed milk which in the end tasted like… milk.. with mangos. Yea. Probably not the best or cost effective drinks at $10 each, massively overpriced but it comes in nice little bags like milk does in Canada so that’s cool. Yea, pure gimmick but yea, we are thirsty and our water bottles have almost run out already.

Big stalls and stuff for seafood like grilled squid and oysters Not really feeling it right now but that’s cool.

I believe this Golden Mantou stall was selling some fried sweet dessert thing. I’m not entirely sure what it’s origins are but I think Chinese I guess? I mean with a population of basically 50% Chinese in Markham, your more likely to be right than wrong.

Even tho sushi was originally a street food back in the day in Japan, it doesn’t seem to do so well in modern times as a street food stall. Not many people were lining up for this place. They even had takoyaki and some other stuff going on in addition to sushi but I guess most people don’t’ think sushi when they think of street food, too bad.

This place selling HK style waff–I mean, Mini Eggs is most definitely some store or shop somewhere. I’m not a big fan of these grilled savory ones they were peddling since when I think of HK style waff–I mean, Mini Eggs I usually associate them as a sweet snack or dessert. Nice shirts tho.

Is Shawama is the same as Shawarma? Looks like it to me, maybe Chinese version with Chinese spices maybe? That or they just trying to make shit up and appeal to brown and arab foodies. The Chinese burger I am assuming is the similar kind of stuff you would get at Bingz, at least this being the more traditional take on it. They had no prices on their display so I gladly walked away. It wasn’t very busy at this stall either despite being so big tho.

Based off the banners, this is probably the same restaurant/stall that does the grilled squid and oysters. Throughout the afternoon we saw lots of people with huge big meat skewers and wondered where they got them from, well it’s this place.

Even though they had a very big line, they had a good ordering system in which if your order is done and available, you get it immediately, no waiting for the person in front of you in the line, which was cool. For a price of 3 for $20 these huge beef skewers were probably the best things we had today. Despite it’s higher than normal price, their size and quality definitely make up for the increased price, it made all the other skewers we had today feel like scams in comparison to these guys. Good shit.

The entire layout of the event is like a long U shape so we basically came to an end and back where we started with the crane games. My sister spent about $20 or so worth of tokens trying for this cabbage dog but no luck. This ain’t Japan you know, none of this suimasen bullshit,  you gotta play hard for this ‘vegetable fairy’ as the tag reads.

Nice display and my assumption is that this is a roast pig but it’s interesting how none of the signs show any pork food for sale. No labels or signs for price either. Why do they do this? Do they change the price depending on how they feel about the customer or something? You get discount cause you speak Chinese, $10! but for everyone else it’s like $15 dollars? I have no idea why just my speculation.

Definitely After School snacks for sure. With some fried chicken bits and deep fried hot dog with some bullshit seasoning on them. Wanted fried chicken so decided to give it a try.

When our order came I wasn’t so sure initially because the chicken visually looked pink still, but it’s probably because of the batter or seasoning on them. I’m not so sure about the sauce they put on these either, a bit sweet? It was alright but not that crispy to be honest, I’ve had far better chicken elsewhere. At least it was tender, being thin strips of white breast meat tho. Noice, but not really. $15 I think.

I forgot to take a picture of the stall this came from of this but it’s some waffle croissant thing that my sister ate with nice slice of Kraft singles and Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. I had no partake in this savory bread thing but the Kraft singles cheese was melted with a blowtorch so that’s nice. I think $10?

After eating a considerable number of vastly overpriced street food items I think we were full. It certainly got more busier as the sun got hotter in the late afternoon. We had spent about a good 2 or so hours here and I think we were done at around 6-7pm can’t remember. Looks like this guy in front of me is about done too.

As we exit the event we see some kind of dance gathering or contest for Asian dance moves or something, of course dancing to some popular Kpop or something. Yea, seems a bit out of place considering what we ate at this place. You can see how close we are to the Best Buy in the parking on at the back.

So yea, that was the Lucky Lion Night Market in which we did not attend during the night, but rather, during the day because night time is scary filled with hooligans and degenerates. Considering that this was only the second time this event was held, I’d say it was not bad, pretty successful in trying to promote and foster the local Chinese businesses in Markham and the surrounding GTA area. The location is both convenient and also jokes, being in the parking lot of a major mall but I suppose it’s better than being in some remote street, I mean, we are in a parking lot, we don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot or going far.

For some reason the Father’s day weekend had lots of festivals and food events going on, such as Taco Fest, Taste of Italy downtown, some Halal muslim food fest downtown and in Mississauga, and even Filipino food fest right beside STC, which is interesting. I’m surprised that the Filipino food fest took place at the same dates minus the Sunday, wouldn’t it be better to not compete with all these other events? While I enjoyed my experience, the cost factor cannot be ignored, I can’t remember but I think between the two of us, we both spent probably a combined $100-150 dollars I think, which is pretty costly but yea, for the sake of experience I guess.

Would I go again? If I want to simulate a pseudo Japan-festival experience, sure maybe but otherwise I am not so sure it’s worth if your thinking of value. We’ll see how it goes next year maybe.