Articles About Arz Fine Foods in The Press
Toronto Star: Breadmaking queen shares her favourites
Derick Chetty
This month, as she is awarded the Order of Canada for philanthropy, we ask Linda Haynes to take a moment, reflect and list her favourite Toronto things, people and places.
Arz. I go for the halloumi cheese, the freshest pistachios, olives, pomegranate syrup and the best baklava in Toronto.
The Globe and Mail: It’s better in the ‘burbs
For adventurous cookbook authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, who have traveled the world many times over but rarely go north of Bloor Street if they can help it, the breakthrough came with a friendly question put to a Syrian diplomat during a tense visa application: “Where do you buy your bread?”
The answer was Arz, Armenia -owned bakery-deli-cafe on Lawrence East.
Paul and Christian’s Picks The Best Dessert Shops & Patisseries
Arz Bakery Fine Foods
1909 Lawrence Avenue East
416-755-5074
Arz Bakery boasts a wonderful selection of Middle Eastern specialties at very affordable prices. While many come for the French pastries, the Middle Eastern Cheese and dried meats and every bit as good
National Post: Kuitenbrouwer, The Walk Across Toronto On Lawrence Avenue East, a tasty little piece of Lebanon
June 5, 2009
A note to rice connoisseurs: Arz Fine Foods, 1909 Lawrence Avenue East, will be getting in its new shipment of basmati next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Not all the rice is created equal, it turns out: Armand Boyadjian, co-owner of Arz, says he travels to India annually to meet the rice merchants in Delhi and select his supply.
“I buy three-year-old basmati,” he says. “Long grain, nothing broken inside.” His boxcar container of rice travels by ship to Montreal then will jump a train to Toronto.
Arz opened 20 years ago near here, expended 10 years ago and today is the Pusateri’s of Middle Eastern food, with a huge assortment of nuts and a bakery selling pita, cakes, cookies, savoury pie and three kind of baklava: pistachio, walnut and cashew.
As Toronto’s Lebanese prosper, they are leaving this area, too.
ARAB QUARTER: Canada’s next crop and livestock opportunities may already be flying off store shelves on Toronto’s Lawrence Avenue.
November 2008
By Steven Biggs
Contributing Editor, Country Guide Magazine
SIX LANES OF TRAFFIC stream between low-rise strip malls as I make my way along Lawrence Avenue. I stop for a red light at a busy intersection, and then at another, and then I brake for a third before I realize there isn’t a crossroad here.
This light is new since my last visit. And it’s a good clue to what’s going on.
Hovic Boyadjian, one of the owners of Arz Fine Foods, later smiles as he tells me how his request for the stoplight took only three years, half the time it often takes to get a new light in this city. With the constant flow of cars turning into the store’s small parking lot, and ample pedestrian traffic braving the six lanes of traffic, the stoplight made sense.
