Categories: Food & Drink

This Toronto chef creates traditional Filipino food with her own flavourful flair

Photo via Diona Joyce

There’s a first time for everything, including Filipino street food.

Chef Diona Joyce’s authentic and flavourful Filipino dishes took Toronto by storm when she first opened Kanto by Tita Flips at Market 707 in 2013.

Since then she has solidified herself as an innovator in the Toronto food scene, being featured on Food Network’s Fire Masters in 2022 all while remaining as the star behind Kanto.

The restaurant preserves timeless traditions, adding tasty twists to beloved dishes, giving diners the gift of culture.

All of the menu items are Chef Joyce’s “babies”, hand crafted, developed and tested by her and her staff. As Chef Joyce put it in an interview with Curiocity, “if I can’t eat it, I won’t expect other people to.”

While Chef Joyce loves every single dish on her menu, there is one that has customers coming back time and time again – Sisig Fries.

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As explained by Joyce, Sisig is a traditional dish, originating in the North of the Philippines.

The star is offal – think ears, nose, liver, and other organ meats. It undergoes a transformation full of love in which it’s boiled, grilled, and chopped into small pieces.

The addition of calamansi, chili, pork belly and chicharron give it a flavour profile that is both tangy and umami, incorporating multiple textures.

The Sisig is then placed on top of fries, an homage to Canada that Chef Joyce lovingly refers to as “Filipino poutine.”

While organ meats may not immediately be everyones cup of tea, the dish was one of Joyce’s first that she created at Market 707 and it proved to be and remains a hit a decade later.

Chef Joyce has watched as her Sisig Fries have changed peoples perception of ingredients and have encouraged curiosity.

A bite into the complex flavours of Sisig has diners falling love, despite any preconceived notions about organ meats.

Their dish was created from a desire to “do something different, something never seen before” resulting in a combination that is both “new and inviting.”

All in all, Chef Diona Joyce is all about creating cultural pride for Filipino food, something she does daily through her delicious creations.