Skip to content

Savour the flavours community has to offer with Auroralicious

Presented by the Canadian Food & Wine Institute at The Armoury and the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, the event will see local restaurants offering fixed price menus from March 12 to 28
man holding eggplant
Stock photo

If you have been looking for a new local restaurant to try but just don’t know where to start, Auroralicious will help take away some of that guess work.

Auroralicious, presented by the Canadian Food & Wine Institute at The Armoury and the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, will see many local restaurants come together between March 12 and 28 offering prix fixe (fixed price) menus for new and returning customers, putting their best foot forward in showing all the flavours Aurora has to offer.

Auroralicious was first proposed by the Canadian Food & Wine Institute (CFWI) as a way to not only promote area restaurants but underscore the importance of shopping – and dining – local. 

“The idea came from a member of our team who suggested we do a Winterlicious/Summerlicious event,” says CFWI’s Chelsea Brewster. “I thought it was a fantastic idea, but being in the situation we were all in, I didn’t think we could pull it off before Christmas. I reached out to the town and to the chamber to say we had this crazy idea… and they were totally on board with it. We did a kind of sit-down at Christmas to figure out what makes the most sense, pandemic aside, for the timing of the year.

“We chose the March Break weekend to kick it off just to give people something to look forward to, to try and keep people as local as possible, and really bring the community together when we can’t travel at this point in time.”

Although March Break was subsequently delayed until April, that hasn’t deterred participating restaurants from sticking to the plan and rolling out their fare next month. 

“This is an opportunity for people to try out some of these restaurants and some of their best fares at great prices and it is an opportunity to not cook for a couple of weeks and just enjoy a little culinary staycation,” says Sandra Ferri, president & CEO of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce. “We want people who maybe haven’t tried [the restaurants] before to just see what we have to offer in Aurora and hopefully that will give restaurants the opportunity to gain new clients and give people the opportunity to savour the flavours of Aurora.

“They should be going to explore Aurora looking for something they haven’t tried before and really giving them a try to see how well they like it.”

Ferri says since the global pandemic took hold, she has made a concerted effort to try the many restaurants the community has to offer. Mayor Tom Mrakas has tried to do the same, often posting a selection of his take-out selections on various social media channels to support local business.

Auroralicious is an extension of that sentiment.

“This is something that we have said time and time again during this pandemic that this is an idea we can pull together as a community and help support our local businesses, especially our restaurants that have been shut down for a long time,” said Mayor Mrakas. “They have been struggling, so how can we do something that can help them? This was an incredible idea that was brought forward and something that we said we could do that would get excitement in the community and people would be able to get out and support local restaurants – and, in essence, our neighbours and our friends.

“It is also about getting that sense of community pride and understanding that even once we get out of this pandemic it is going to be a great opportunity for us to continue to stay local and realize we don’t need to go outside of Aurora because we have everything here from a restaurant perspective. I think that is what people are going to start being aware of through this program and it will be a big success if that occurs.”

For more on Auroralicious and a continually updated list of participating restaurants and prix fixe menus, visit exploreaurora.ca.

Brock Weir is a federally funded Local Journalism Initiative reporter at The Auroran