Title: Indian, Caribbean or Chinese
Author: Ashaab Hassan
Abstract:
This research examines 60 restaurants of three
different cuisines located in Downtown Toronto.
The cuisines are Indian, Chinese, and Carribean
and we researched the top 10 and bottom 10 for
each cuisine in an effort to understand the factors
that determine the spatial distribution of the
restaurants. Using the Yelp algorithms, we were
able to discover which restaurants have the highest
and lowest ratings within the area of downtown
Toronto. Furthermore, we will investigate whether
Critical Mass idea could be applied to either of the
cuisines we are looking at.
Key words: Indian, Caribbean, Chinese,
Toronto, Downtown, Clusters
Introduction
Our love for food and Canada’s diverse culture
makes it interesting for us to investigate different
cuisines in the country. Indian and Chinese
cuisines are two of the most sought-out in Toronto,
and Caribbean is not as popular as the other two, so
it would definitely be interesting to investigate the
three of them in how they are located the way they
are and if any theories could explain why. We
specifically chose downtown Toronto with the
borders of Don Valley Parkway in the East,
Dufferin Street on the West, Lake Ontario in the
South and St. Clair Avenue West in the North. In
this study, we look at the critical mass hypothesis
to help explain why there are clusters. We also
look at the Phan and Luk idea of ethnic enclaves
and how it would apply to the districts, especially
Chinatown.
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Background
The Critical Mass idea by Patterson and Silver was
presented in our analysis. The idea is essentially
that “new arts organizations will likely model
themselves on established
organizations” (Patterson and Silver 2015:73). We
will be connecting this idea to the clustering of the
different cuisines of the restaurants as other
successful restaurants would already be there and
would help with their success.
Another study we looked at was the idea of ethnic
enclaves applied to Chinese restaurants,
specifically in Chinatown and the idea that
restaurants clustered due to the demographics of
the area, which was presented in the study by Mai
B. Phan and Chiu M. Luk
M ethods
Our data was conducted using the Yelp application
which allows users to view reviews and ratings on
restaurant. These reviews allowed us to narrow
down which restaurants would be of interest for
this research. The method of choice was to pick the
top 10 and bottom 10 restaurants based on the
highest reviews and ratings, preferably five reviews
per restaurant. With this information, we could
pinpoint which restaurants in downtown Toronto
we would like to add to the study.
Findings
Our results indicated that there were a lot of
regional space between all the restaurants we
picked. Within the downtown core, Caribbean and

Indian restaurants were more spaced out and
seemed to be rather independent, whereas the
Chinese restaurants seemed to be closer together,
almost like a cluster.
The Caribbean restaurants were mostly located
within the Kensington Market district and around
Ryerson University on Dundas. For the most part,
these restaurants are usually not “sit-down”
restaurants and tend to be for express or “to-go”
foods, which explains why Dundas is the location
of choice as the student population is always
looking for food that is easy to take away.
Caribbean cuisine for the most part seems to be
extremely dispersed within Toronto and there are
no clusters of them within our regional limits.
The Chinese restaurants are also located within
the same area, Chinatown. “Chinatowns are
typically considered ethnic enclaves dominated
by Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs catering
mainly for Chinese-speaking immigrants. As an
economic enclave, it is characterized by a
geographic concentration of ethnic businesses
usually located in major urban centres and
employing co-ethnics” (Phan and Luk 2008:295).
Chinatown is a precinct bursting with authentic
Chinese food restaurants which are door to door.
As the majority of the inhabitants of this precinct
are Chinese, the restaurants tend to cater to that
population while also managing to attract not just
the Chinese population of Toronto overall, but
also anyone who is a fan of Chinese cuisine.
As for Indian cuisine, those were the most
dispersed within the regions covered and areas of Say I Have a Business in Chinatown': Chinese
downtown Toronto. There are no clusters and this Sub-Ethnic Relations in Toronto's Chinatown
could be due to the fact that Little India—a
district of Indian culture—is not within the
regional limits of downtown Toronto.
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Conclusion and Recommendation
Insofar, it is evident that the three cuisines that
were covered differed in their own ways for this
research.
For Caribbean cuisines, the restaurants focused on
themselves, choosing to be independent and
catering to the consumers in the area.
Similar to Caribbean cuisine, Indian restaurants
are incredibly dispersed within the downtown
Toronto region with little to no cluster. The
critical mass idea would not apply to the
Caribbean or Indian restaurants we looked at as
there was not enough competition among the
restaurants in the region.
The Critical Mass idea could be used to explain
the situation in Chinatown, because of the
successful market of the currently existing
Chinese restaurants. While the products may be
the same or similar, it is the quality that is said to
differ and this was further established by the
reviews uploaded to Yelp.
Bibliography
Patterson, Matt and Daniel Silver. 2015. “The
place of art: Local area characteristics and arts
growth in Canada, 2001–2011.” Poetics 51: 69-
87. Retrieved February 14 , 2018
(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2015.05.003).
Phan, Mai B. and Chiu M. Luk. 2008. "'I Don't
West." Ethnic & Racial Studies 31(2): 294-326.
doi:10.1080/01419870701342379.