Terroir 2012

By Leslie Wu

TORONTO—In the storied hall of Arcadian Court, a space rich with history but recently  given a facelift,  members of the vanguard and new guard of the foodservice industry met in April to discuss the next generation of chefs.

Although the sessions celebrated tomorrow’s culture and the drive forward of the new radical, many of the veteran speakers spoke of their growth in the industry in terms of their past journeys, personal soul searching, loss or change, offering stories about their own experiences and challenges.

“Hype does not last forever. No matter how good the charcuterie is, at the end of the month, revenues must have exceeded expenses,” said opening speaker Peter Oliver, president of the Oliver and Bonacini Group. “I  know how annoying this can be.”

Oliver spoke of the challenges to restaurateurs in keeping the mental energy they started with, while constantly striving for excellence in service, providing growth for employees and understanding the cost side of the business.

“At Oliver and Bonacini, the secret of our success is that we’ve made every mistake that could be made,” joked Oliver.

Libretto Restaurant Group’s Max Rimaldi spoke frankly about his movement from Wall Street to insolvency in the 80’s, and how his shifts in careers ultimately provided unique and unforeseen job skills that proved useful as a restaurateur.

“Dishwasher to stockbroker to plumber, that’s me,” he joked, speaking of how his plumbing talents came in handy when the bank backed out of the loan for the first Pizza Libretto and the project became a do -it-yourself commitment.

He also spoke about the need for service to trump design or fashion aesthetics. “The days of masking crappy service with a designer uniform are gone,” he said. “My waiter has a handlebar mustache and a hipster haircut...so what? Does he know the food really well? Does he know the wine list?”

“We make things that we ask people to put in their mouths and if we screw it up, we hear about it in their food blogs,” said Rimaldi.

Throughout the day, ideas about food sourcing and ingredients were couched in the language of not just ideology, but also business.

For Barton Seaver, author of For Cod and Country, his sobering moment was when he returned to a lake where he had enjoyed the bounty when he was a young chef, and realizing that there was nothing left.

“The guiding hand of natural selection  in this world is holding a fork,” he said. He compared the difference in messaging between local and sustainable as a difference in what is being saved and how language is used to define it.

“In the farm movement, the idea is that the farm is necessary and must be saved,” he said. “The sustainable seafood movement was born in environmental roots and the idea is that we must save the oceans.”

He offered the difficult message that chefs must play their part in preservation not through sustainability, but also by examining their purchasing decisions more strictly. “The fun stuff about being a chef is touching the uncomfortable issues,” said Seaver, who pushed for incorporating all possible forms of seafood, including canned and frozen, into the kitchen.

“We have to be willing to support things outside of our own menus,” said Seaver. “Sustainable products do not make sustainable systems.”

To Seaver, it’s not the protein that defines a chef. “If you look at the menu, we list the protein in 14 point bold font, and then all the stuff that makes us chefs in tiny 10 point type,” said Seaver. “We have more to say than just where our food comes from.”

To close off the day, Australian chef Ben Shewry gave a heartfelt speech about the influence of his son on his life eight years ago and the effect of being a chef on his family life.

This accounts in part for his passion in preserving the ocean and its wildlife. He spoke of how hard it was to give up using a specific fish in his restaurant in order to make it available for future generations. “If you love something as much as I love this fish, let it go and hope that it will sustain itself and its family,” he said.

“You always hear people like me going on about the exclusivity of the ingredients that I use...but where does that leave the other 85 per cent of the population?” he asked. “Man is reinterpreting nature every time he cooks.”

At the end of the day, the conference’s themes of experimentation and business realities were brought home by Shewry.

“Cooking should be raw and real,” he said.      “And you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes.”


Hospitality industry recognizes its own

with first Terroir Awards for Excellence

For the first time, awards were a part of the Terroir program. The  GE Monogram Terroir Awards for Excellence in Hospitality went to professionals working in Canada in the three categories of chef, beverage, and front-of-house.

Will Predhomme won the beverage category for his work as senior sommelier/senior manager at Canoe Restaurant & Bar in Toronto.

For front of house, the award went to Virgilio Vea, food and beverage director, Langdon Hall  Country House Hotel & Spa,  Cambridge.

The title of best chef was won by Ryan Crawford, chef, Stone Road Grille, Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Prizes awarded included $1,000 cash and a celebration at a gala fundraising dinner to be held later in the year.

 Criteria for each peer-voted award included five years of experience in the industry, adherence to standards of excellence and service in hospitality as observed by industry and consumers  and upholding of standards of sustainability by supporting local producers, artisans and businesses.

Will Predhomme is a man who knows wine.

Virgillio Vea is smooth at the front of the house.

Ryan Crawford, the top chef.