Red Tape Is Never Appetizing.......

.....but Comrade Miller and his band of clowns, especially Filon, will add it as a condimen to the Zappi Factory menu.

Street meat beat

Parking-lot kitchen upsets the A La Cart

By DON PEAT, SUN MEDIA

A Toronto entrepreneur is serving up some tasty street food, providing an alternative to the Toronto A La Cart program.

Radek Maj, 28, has launched his own street-level food business that, if it survives, may show up the red tape-laden city program and prove that private business knows best when it comes to street eats.

"I'm an advocate of good food," Maj said yesterday outside The Zappi Factory, his recently opened portable kitchen in a private parking lot, steps from the Dundas West subway station.

"Torontonians are foodies, they're used to ethnic food; you just need to give them choices."

Along with perogies, sweet potato fries and soup, his main course offering is a twist on the Polish open-faced baguette sandwich known as a zapiekanka.

Still one of Poland's most popular dishes, the zapiekanka is a leftover from the country's communist era, traditionally served as half a toasted baguette with mushrooms, chives and butter on top.

Maj's version, served on artisan bread, adds various combinations of mushrooms, cheese, roasted peppers, eggplant, tuna and salmon.

"We have something unique, we looked to the past for inspiration," Maj said.

Serving up ethnic food that borders on the gourmet alongside hot dogs and sausages was supposed to be the logic behind the city's troubled A La Cart program.

Maj can't believe what a disaster setting up a handful of vendors across the city to serve up two approved menu items has become.

Last week, after the first year of the program saw some of the eight vendors almost bankrupted, the board of health approved reducing some location fees and adding 10 new locations.

Maj's kitchen, which he designed as an independent study project while an architecture student at Ryerson University, would impress A La Cart vendors who are stuck with the city-approved, open- air carts.

The Zappi Factory is a covered trailer that houses a convection oven, a fridge and hot running water.

"You have to have housing; you have to have a roof; you have to have something that protects your back," Maj said.