I am thrilled that Live Market is my 100th post on this blog, seems like a perfectly appropriate name of a restaurant to celebrate! I can’t believe that I wrote my first review on this blog when I was 8 years old! Thank you everyone for supporting my blog for more than 4 years already, I have so much fun doing this, and hope to continue this for much longer!
As we approached Liberty Village and was just about to look up where Live Market was exactly in the area, there it was in front of us in all of its glory on the corner of King Street West and Atlantic Avenue — a nice, dark grey exterior with great fiery lettering that says “LIVE Market”. However you pronounce the word “live”, the food and products inside promote it! As with their Dupont Avenue location, Live Market also carries a wide range of Live Organic Raw products, a great menu, both cold and hot, featuring everything from Chickpea Burgers to Raw Noodle Bowls and they also have a HUGE grab and go selection in so many fridges and a freezer including drinks, sandwiches, salads, wraps, sushi, desserts and more. Not everything is gluten-free, but the majority is, and not everything is raw, there are a lot of cooked selections too. But, everything is vegan, and mostly organic – and it’s bright, cheerful, clean with 2 full walls of windows with long high tables pushed up against them with bar stools. You can eat in, or take out. I imagine that it would be a great spot for a lunch with a colleague or a nice brunch spot on the weekend when you are out for a bike ride downtown, for sure! And, if you are a coffee person, they have Ezra’s Pound coffee, and it seems to be a big deal – remember to take your own mug to reduce waste!
It was not an easy decision to choose what I was going to have with so much selection, and wanted to try something that I hadn’t before (I have eaten a lot of the things they carry and really like them!). I settled on a BLT on Silver Hills Big 16 Bread with Coconut Bacon. The sandwich was good, but could have definitely had much more on it, of everything, it was almost all bread – but I did really enjoy the smoky coconut flavour. I also tried a new Ginger Soda I had never seen, which was quite good in a glass bottle. I was super excited to see that they have Bunners Gypsy Cookies and Sweets from the Earth treats too. I had not tried the Hello Dolly before, so I took the opportunity with enthusiasm, and I must say, it’s absolutely, positively, awesmazing. The balance of coconut and crumbly crust with chocolate and nuts was just perfect. It’s really big, too!
I was still sort of hungry, so I shared an order of Gabi’s Organic Brown Rice Sushi with my mom – if you haven’t tried this before, it’s very, very good and available at many spots around the city. It’s uniquely filled with Burdock Root, instead of meat or fish, and the flavour and texture are both really good, I urge you to try this type of roll. My mom especially loves that it doesn’t come with that piece of fake green plastic sushi grass or any fake coloured and flavoured sushi condiments!
If you want to enjoy organic and raw chocolate, smoothies, makeup and creams, protein powders, glass drinking straws, desserts, and virtually everything vegan, except for clothes, this is your place in Toronto. It’s worth stopping by to eat a meal or grab a snack, but before you leave, you can stock up for days to come. Oh – their raw Chipotle Ranch Kale Chips and Nachos are awesome too.
