Woman behind Toronto subway picnic plans to keep making food for others

TTC passengers enjoy a picnic on July 28. (Courtesy of Tara Behruz/ @flossyfairy)

The woman behind a subway picnic that drew lots of attention online isn’t planning on hosting another event on public transport but still wants to help feed people for free.

On July 28, Izzy Petraglia and a group of nine friends set up a table on a subway car leaving Glencairn station, which had a variety of homemade dishes she’d made. These included pancit noodles, pineapple brown sugar ham, spicy miso cucumber salad, sweet and spicy tofu, broccoli with homemade hot honey and ube white chocolate cookies.

The group stayed on the subway until the end of the line and back, passing out flyers with the dishes’ ingredients on it and encouraging follow passengers to take the food. In total, they were on the subway for about 90 minutes.

Petraglia said the dishes were well received by many transit riders – especially the cookies.

“We met a lot of people,” she told CTV News. “There were a few different groups of people just coming up to us and even if they didn’t take food, some people were just interested in talking or learning more about about it or taking pictures and laughing. There wasn’t really any like negative reception.”

By the end of the ride, most of the food was gone.

“We had like maybe like a few pieces of ham left, but that was practically it ,” she said. “I’m really happy with how it went.”

Petraglia said she was inspired by a similar event involving a Thanksgiving dinner served on the New York subway, which had been going viral on social media.

Petraglia’s Instagram post about the event garnered nearly 100 comments and was shared widely online, many in the comments wondering if it was legal or sanitary. Petraglia insists the food was safe and that she’s not concerned about feedback, unless it’s constructive criticism.

“I do feel like there’s no matter what you do, and if anything goes viral in some sort of way, and there’s a lot of attention, you’re never gonna be able to make everyone happy,” she said.

Petraglia said that during her subway picnic, a few TTC employees walked by, but no one said anything to her. She and her group of friends were also sure to clean up after themselves.

While she doesn’t have any plans to do a similar event on the subway, Petraglia does want to keep feeding people for free, whether it’s the unhoused community or activist movements,

“I would like to do it more at like a homeless shelter or at a park where there is a lot of homeless people around so I could really give back in a meaningful way to people who will like truly appreciate it,” she said.

Stuart Green with the TTC said that while the intent of the picnic seems harmless enough, it was not an authorized event.

“Safety is always our paramount concern and things like this have the potential to create unintended and unsafe crowding situations,” he said in an email. “We remind everyone who wants to use TTC property for anything other than making a trip, we have protocols and a permitting process to ensure everyone is kept safe.”