When Toronto’s Suresh Doss sits down to eat, he’s not just tasting what’s on the plate. He’s tracing the movement of people, memory and migration that made it possible.
For more than two decades, Doss has been the country’s go-to voice on local hidden gems, from strip-mall Sri Lankan spots to suburban taquerias. Now, in his new and long-anticipated CBC show Locals Welcome, he expands that work across Canada, travelling through diasporic communities from Richmond, B.C. to P.E.I. to Haida Gwaii, using food as a map of belonging.
“It came from the team of Anthony Bourdain,” Doss says, referring to the late and beloved American chef’s various television series exploring food and human connection. “We can’t ignore that. We’re telling stories about the immigration wave of Canada.”
A food mosaic that keeps changing
Indeed, much like Bourdain, in each episode, Doss meets cooks, families and restaurateurs whose dishes tell the story of how Canada eats now — and how all that food got here. CBC describes the country’s cuisine as a “food mosaic,” but Doss prefers to think of it as something alive. “There’s no proper term to describe it,” he says. “It evolves. The beauty is how it changes, regardless of how we feel socially or politically. It’s the dishes that bring us together.”
That belief shapes Locals Welcome’s mix of intimacy and curiosity. Through its premiere 10-episode season, Doss dives into Nigerian, Chinese, South Asian, Filipino, Persian and Haitian diasporas, tracing the ways recipes travel, adapt and survive. Each story, he says, pushes back against the idea that “Canadian food” can be pinned down. Instead, he proves, it’s a living archive of migration.
“We’re at such a divisive point right now,” Doss says, always contemplative. “The one thing that brings us together is that we all eat at the same place — the same roti shop, the same pho joint. We share the table.”
Why medium matters
After years of radio, print and digital storytelling, Doss says television offered the most direct way to show that connection. “It’s a chance to present a language that shows people; different faces, real conversations,” he says. On screen, that ethos translates into something disarmingly tender: chefs and diners who aren’t being performed for, but listened to. Most of them can’t hide their grins as they embrace Doss, lighting up as he voraciously digs into their cooking. Which, by the way, you can practically smell through the screen, thanks to the camera’s love of lingering over every drip of sauce and rising steam.
It’s all intentional. Doss wanted to capture the softness of real encounters, something he feels social media has flattened. “When we’re not on camera, we’re fine together,” he says. “Social media has broken us, but when we’re in person, I think we’re okay. The show tries to bring back that manual sense; going to a restaurant, a short-order spot, and just being normal.”
And, of course, making real, living, breathing connections.
Challenging assumptions, one plate at a time
Some of Locals Welcome’s most joyful moments are also its most surprising. “Richmond, B.C. ruined dim sum for me,” Doss laughs. “I can’t have dim sum in Toronto anymore. And Montreal — I can’t have North African, Tunisian, Mauritanian, Algerian food anywhere else!”
The show thrives on these regional shocks; how diaspora cuisines change in new places, often in plain sight at the shabby looking strip mall down the road. But Doss is careful about how he approaches these stories. “You don’t want to helicopter into something,” he says. “You want to make sure you’re respectful and acknowledging cultures.”
The Nigerian episode, he notes, was especially personal. “I knew that culture,” he says. Doss was born in Sri Lanka, and his family then relocated to Nigeria, followed by Scarborough. (One might say he was doomed to have a layered palate.) “Writing it was easier because I knew how to approach it, with a kind of methodical acknowledgment.” But across communities, he emphasizes, humility is essential. “There’s no way you can know everything,” he adds. “Just listen.”
Scarborough roots
That instinct for care comes naturally to someone raised in Scarborough, a part of Toronto where cuisines and cultures vary and often overlap. “Growing up in Scarborough, I know this city really well,” he says. “I know this country pretty well.”
The personal connections running through Locals Welcome often surface unexpectedly, like when his longtime friend and beloved Canadian chef Matty Matheson appears on the show, as exuberant and hearty as always. Doss recalls that Matheson, during the pandemic, texted him asking for “some flavour.” Without sparing a second, Doss drove across the city to drop off a meal from Karaikudi Curry House — an act that would inspire a YouTube cooking video of Matheson’s own. When Doss later invited him on his own show, the two filmed at Doss’s home, where she served Matheson crab curry.
“He was so sensitive, so soft, so tender,” Doss remembers. “Very different from what you might expect.” There’s also nothing more Canadian than watching Matheson down some golgappa (a South Asian street snack also called “pani puri”).
The search never ends
Filming the series took more than two years, with Doss relying on the same instincts that have guided his two-decade food-writing career: walking, driving, looking around. Essentially, following his nose.
The resulting conversations revealed an evolving food map few Canadians have seen on screen: chefs leaving Vancouver to open restaurants in Haida Gwaii, Syrians building community in Prince Edward County, Indian families expanding in Winnipeg, Vietnamese cooks thriving in the Yukon.
“Be curious,” Doss says simply. “If you can find a bakery, a butcher shop, a barber shop — look around that. If there’s a theme, walk around that theme.”
It’s not just an invitation to eat better, but a call to see each other more fully. To Doss, that’s what food storytelling is for. “The beauty is how it changes,” he says. “The beauty is how we culturally intersect.”
Watch new episodes of Locals Welcome every Sunday on CBC at 9 p.m. local on CBC TV and streaming free on CBC Gem.
