
1

"At my recently-opened cart in the Bantu Island pod on Northeast Alberta, I specialize in Portuguese sweet muffins called bolo levedos — soft, squishy, almost like a brioche and something I’d describe to someone unfamiliar as kind of like an English muffin — made with eggs, butter, and sugar. I started making them out of my kitchen during the pandemic, handing them out until people began Venmoing me, and now I use them as a vehicle for a spicy fried chicken sandwich with cilantro, a fried deviled egg sandwich, and a burger packed with pineapple, onion, and spices that’s reminiscent of a meatloaf sandwich; I also toss them in sugar and fill them as doughnuts (pumpkin spice was a recent offering) or serve them alongside things like fish soup or delicata squash. The bolos come from San Miguel in the Azores, where they’ve traditionally been cooked on a cast iron set on a volcanic vent, and I went there recently to see them firsthand." - Thom Hilton