BRASILEIRO Afro-Brazilian music and dancing with a donation supporting the Stop Community Food Centre’s Betinho bake oven. Join in the rhythms Friday (May 30) at the Berkeley Church, 315 Queen East, at 9 pm. $25, adv $20. www.showbrasileiro.com. Rating: NNNNN
What’s the connection between The Stop and Brasileiro?
It’s a partnership around the Betinho project. Betinho’s real name was Herbert de Souza. He was a legend around food activism, and one of the projects Brasiliero wanted to push was this bake oven.
Why an oven?
At an incredible conference in Brazil, we cooked up this idea to keep the Brazil-Toronto connection going, and this is one aspect. It’s a physical space that honours de Souza’s lifelong work around food, poverty and hunger issues – a place where food brings people in from the whole community.
Where will it go?
There are a 4.3 acres south of St. Clair and east of Christie where buildings that take up 20 to 25 per cent of the park have sat unused since 1985.
In 2000, Artscape issued a call for proposals for these stunning buildings built between 1913 and 1921. We will use one of them.
Can food be political?
We’re a local organization, but you can’t pick up a paper these days without reading about big industrial food and how food prices are going through the roof and people in Haiti are eating dirt. This project is another weapon in our arsenal to be able to talk about food literacy.
What’s on the menu for the first meal from the oven?
It’s going to be the best pizza you can imagine, and the toppings will come from our community garden adjacent to it. We hope to open the oven in mid-September.
What’s the most important consideration when you’re feeding 200 people?
The nutritional quality of the food. When you think of urban hunger, you think of a food bank, but it’s tough to find nutritious food that’s culturally appropriate.
