Pop-up Vietnamese Eatery Secures Permanent Bloordale Home
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Tum Lum transitions from festival street food to a brick-and-mortar storefront through a unique succession with a retired local business owner.
Tum Lum, a Vietnamese street food pop-up that has operated at city festivals since 2019, has opened its first permanent location at 1227 Bloor St. W., according to BlogTO.
The transition represents a collaborative effort to maintain community stability in the Bloordale neighborhood. The storefront previously housed Galaxy T&T for 12 years. Following the retirement of Galaxy T&T owner Mai Phan—known as "Auntie Mai"—earlier this fall, the space was passed to the Tum Lum team.
Rather than a standard takeover, the Tum Lum team described the move as a "changing of the guard" in a social media announcement. Beyond securing a physical location, the new venture has inherited the original recipes from Mai Phan, which they intend to serve alongside their own established menu of banh mi and Vietnamese coffee.
After undergoing extensive renovations, the shop now offers Vietnamese snacks, including grilled rice paper banh trang nuong (Vietnamese pizza), as it seeks to serve the same community that supported the previous establishment for over a decade, BlogTO reports.