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Acclaimed chef may open own resto in Ottawa
but future plans are undecided

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APR 24 12 - 12:40 PM – Award-winning Ottawa chef Matt Carmichael, 40, is leaving the kitchens at Restaurant E18hteen, Social and Sidedoor on May 19 to take a few days off and, later, perhaps set up his own restaurant in the nation’s capital. Or, he says he may consider out-of-town opportunities, although none has gelled.

Carmichael has been wearing three hats as executive chef at E18hteen since 2006, Social since 2008, and was the executive chef who oversaw setting up the kitchen and menu at Sidedoor restaurant when it opened in February 2011. (Sidedoor is now being run by Jonathan Korecki, 28, who took the executive chef title in January.)

Readers may recall Carmichael won gold at the regional Gold Medal Plates competition in 2009, followed by bronze that year at the national competition finale. He is among the city’s most respected chefs, with a loyal following in the culinary community.

Ideally, Carmichael says he’d like to open a restaurant in Ottawa that’s “located in an up-and-coming neighbourhood,”  but not in hotspots like Hintonburg or the ByWard Market, for example, that are already well-served by good eateries.

“I’m looking for a new area to open with new possibilities,” Carmichael says.

“I’d like to be doing exciting flavours in a more casual environment of maybe 60 seats, but not expensive. And it’s important to have a neighbourhood feel to it, to be a destination place like Fraser Café is in New Edinburgh, or the Wellington Gastropub in Westboro.”

Asked why he is departing at this time, Carmichael says: “I’ve been here six years and I feel it came to fruition.

“The project has come to completion for me. We’ve done some great things here and I want to maintain upward momentum in my career.”

Carmichael says he may take a few days off  ”to gather my thoughts.”

“But, ultimately, I’d like to stay in Ottawa. However, if opportunities come about elsewhere then (moving) is not out of the question.”

Carmichael says he may consider relocating to British Columbia where there is an abundance of fresh, local and seasonal produce available year-round, although not in a big- or high-cost city like Vancouver.

“Ottawa is so near and dear to me,” he says. “I’d like to stay here. If I left it would always be in the back of my mind to return.”

Carmichael says he leaves the kitchen at E18hteen in good hands with his sous chef of more than three years, Walid El-Tawel, and at Social with chefs Jordan Holley and Matt Hall.

Ottawa’s celebrated chef, landlubber Matthew Carmichael, ready for seafood chowder throwdown as he’s about to board the frigate HMCS Ville de Québec at port in Cornwall.

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Ahoy! Ready or not, we arrive for a chowder chowdown
with the Canadian navy

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OCT 03 12 – 12:01 AM — Somewhere below deck in the bowels of HMCS Ville de Québec, a Halifax-class frigate and workhorse in the Atlantic fleet (arguably among Canada’s most expensive military assets), the stainless steel galley is bustling as up to 11 cooks scurry pretty much around the clock to feed a ravenous crew of 225 (including 25 women) whose appetites, apparently, know no limits.

I spotted not a single can of bully beef in this gleaming, albeit cramped navy kitchen, where seamen (and women) endlessly swab the deck and countertops to ensure everything is spotless for their boss, Guy Brideau, 47, petty officer first class and chief cook, who’s been with the armed forces almost 24 years. The place is spotless considering all the food prep and cooking goes on — it is, after all, the navy.

Above, Carmichael gets his galley briefing by Guy Brideau, petty officer first class and chief cook, aboard HMCS Ville de Québec.

“Weather is probably our biggest challenge,” Brideau says during our recent tour of the vessel, built in 1993 in Quebec City. Believe it or not, every seaman is given just 90 days to learn all 190 compartments on board — and there’s a test to ensure they do. There’s a laundromat, machine shop, desalinator to purify sea water, stores room, power plant, operations room, small arms storage, mess … a long list to learn.

“Any time you get seas over four metres, the deck becomes real slippery,” he explains.

“That’s when the pans and stuff start flying. And, any seas over six metres, well, then you really have to hold on.”

Which doubtless justifies the steel grip-bars located strategically here, there and everywhere to ensure those who are standing remain, well, standing, even in the nastiest sea. Mercifully, the St. Lawrence Seaway broke barely a ripple on our day in Cornwall, part of the ship’s summer Great Lakes tour of American and Canadian ports where the crew gets to strut their stuff for civilians to see where all those tax dollars are going. (Would you believe, at a top speed of about 30 knots/34 mph or 55 km/h the ship burns 900 litres of diesel/gasoline every five minutes? Gulp!)

Measuring 134 metres bow to stern, the 4,795-tonne warship seemed a fitting place to hook up with Ottawa’s most celebrated pop-up chef, Matt Carmichael. His mission: To participate in a cooking throwdown with cook Kurt Arnold, 33, petty officer second class, a Charlottetown native whose reputation for seafood chowder is somewhat legendary aboard the vessel.

Arnold had his secret ingredients — summer savoury and thyme — and Carmichael did too. “I’ve brought along a bottle of fish sauce,” Carmichael confided, “which I hope gives me an edge.”

Carmichael and his throwdown rival, Kurt Arnold, petty officer second class, as they prepare to make frigate chowder.

Carmichael is no stranger to kitchens, never mind wowing guests with his culinary prowess. Recall the award-winning, former executive chef at Ottawa’s Restaurant E18hteen, Social and Sidedoor created quite a stir earlier this year when he opened what was called a “pop-up” eatery at the iconic Mellos on Dalhousie Street. (He’s planning to open his own place on Elgin Strret as early as late November.)

As Brideau explains it, food is all-important to buoy morale aboard the Ville de Québec. It was Napoleon Bonaparte, after all, who once observed than an army marches on its stomach. “If we have a poor lunch then, guess what, our guys won’t be up for supper,” Brideau says.

It’s a mission taken no less seriously by the ship’s commander, Captain Steve Thornton, 40 (photo, above), born in Ottawa and now living in Halifax.

Does the commanding officer cook? Of course he does.

“At home I’m more of a baker kind of guy,” Thornton says. “My wife tells me that one of the ways I swooned her was with my baking. I make great banana muffins and Kahlua cheesecake.

“If you have great food then morale will be better, and if you have bad food after bad food that’s pretty draining. We have amazing cooks here, so the food has a huge effect on people. If you have good food then the people are happy.” And while everyone may love french fries, they’re served only once a week on Fridays, the traditional fish-and-chips day in the mess.

“Normally we’d be building (meals) for 225 people,” Brideau says. “That’s three meals a day here, but five while in transit starting at 11:15 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. Morning breakfast is from 3:15 to 4 a.m., then we start again at 7 a.m. for normal breakfast. Breakfast includes eggs any style, bacon, sausage, hash browns, beans and tomatoes. We serve pancakes one day and french toast the next.

“As for lunch, we have two hot choices that may include roast pork, mashed potatoes and vegetables, or ravioli with tomato sauce and four types of sandwiches, assorted salads and dessert. Dinner is normally a roast of beef, gravy, potatoes and vegetables, or a choice of fish, and normally we have an omelette.

“We have set menus for Thursday night, which is steak night. In fact, some guys don’t know what day of the week it is until they see steak. Friday is fish and chips, Saturday is pizza night. Normally, on Sunday we have Châteaubriand, prime rib or roast turkey. For Thanksgiving we’ll be doing 14 turkeys, each 11 to 13 kilos. Sunday prime rib could be 14 roasts, for a total 80 kilos.”

My light lunch: Chicken caesar salad.

Among other amazing foodie facts, in a typical week at sea HMCS Ville de Québec chomps through:

– 70 kg bacon;

– 900 dozen eggs;

– 600 litres 2% milk;

– 115 loaves bread;

– 110 kg flour

– 75 kg striploin.

“Everyone on board, including the commanding officer, eats the same,” Brideau says. “Our junior guys follow recipes somewhat, but once they get their feet wet they no longer need them. I don’t follow recipes.”

Oh, and for the record: Wine is served with steak on Thursday; crew members are limited to two beers a day — Molson Canadian, Coors Lite, Labatt Blue or Alexander Keith’s. No liquor, sorry. And, definitely, no rum ration.

Above, top: Leading seaman Aja Wyrozub dips dessert fruit into chocolate for a reception that evening.

Carmichael says he’s pretty impressed with the ship’s kitchen galley, as tight as it is. “It’s not like a big hotel or restaurant where you have to run 50 feet to get anything,” he says. “And they’ve got a very serious Hobart mixer on board.”

Carved melon to decorate the reception table. Hmm, what would Admiral Horatio Nelson think?

I wonder, could Carmichael prepare restaurant-quality haute cuisine at sea? “Most certainly, yes,” he says without hesitation.

Yes, Carmichael put me do work doing mise en place.

And, after looking in the pantry I’d agree: For the chowder itself, Carmichael and Arnold together glugged through litres of 18-per-cent table cream, butter, maybe a dozen cans of clams, sea scallops, some five pounds of lobster meat, 25 pounds or so of fresh P.E.I. mussels, a splash (or two) of white wine. (Carmichael put me to work de-shelling mussels and peeling potatoes, oh my.) And, for the pièce de résistance, Carmichael reached into a crate in the cold room for a jar of caviar — just in case he wanted a pretty garnish for the soup (he didn’t use it, however).

Above (bottom frame), petty officer 2nd class Kurt Arnold, chef Matthew Carmichael, petty officer 1st class Guy Brideau.

And while we were making chowder, others in the kitchen were preparing sushi, chocolate-dipped fruit and stuffed cream-puff pastry, among various nibbles for an on-board reception with visiting dignitaries that night. “I’m very surprised by how much they can do here from scratch,” Carmichael says. “The kitchen culture here is the same as you’d find in a regular restaurant with high-octane music going on during food prep, people come and going. The pace is brisk — and I love it.”

As for the task immediately at hand: “When it comes to the chowder, I’m thinking they want something sustaining, something substantial, something to fill you up. So I’m pretty confident I can make a good one, along with my secret bottle of fish sauce.” The recipes from Carmichael and Arnold appear, here.

Oh, and for inquiring minds, it must be said the chowder showdown was a tight contest with Carmichael and Arnold both pretty evenly matched in the opinion of a dozen or so sailors who sampled. In the end, however, Carmichael won by a single vote that was cast by Mike Janseen, petty officer second class, who felt Arnold’s contained a “bit too much thyme” and not enough seafood flavour. “But they’re both great, Janseen decided.

Both recipes appear here …

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Carmichael’s On-board Seafood Chowder

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Serves 30

– 10 large baking potatoes, peeled, medium dice

– 1/2 bunch celery, diced

– 4 large onions, diced

– 5 bay leaves

– 1 lb (450 g) butter

– White pepper, to taste

– 3 cups (750 mL) cooked bacon bits

– 1 whole bulb garlic, peeled and minced

– Four 142-g cans clams, drained (discard liquid)

– 1 1/2 pounds (680 g) cooked lobster, large dice

– 1 pound (450 g) large tiger shrimp, deveined, shells removed and sliced in half lengthwise

– 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) flour

– 2 cups (500 mL) white wine

– 1/4 cup (50 mL) Viêt Hu’o'ng brand fish sauce, or to taste

– 10 lbs (4.5 kg) fresh mussels

– 3 L 18-per-cent table cream

– Tabasco, black pepper, to taste

1. In a large, heavy-bottom stock pot, melt butter, add white pepper and sauté celery, onion until translucent but not browned. Add bacon bits, garlic, potatoes and continue cooking, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching, about 5 minutes.

2. Sprinkle in flour, stirring to coat. Add wine, fish sauce and cook 10 minutes, sitrring to avoid scorching. Add mussels just long enough to cook, open shells and release liquor within; remove mussels, cool slightly and de-shell, reserving meat. Add cream, bring to simmer. Add Tabasco and black pepper, to taste. Simmer 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender, then turn off heat, adding seafood to cook in residual heat.

3. Taste, adjust seasoning as necessary, and serve immediately.

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PO2 Kurt Arnold’s Maritime Chowder

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Serves 10 to 12

– 1/2 lb (225 g) butter

– 1/4 lb bacon, diced

– 1 large onion, diced

– 2 stalks celery, diced

– 1 tablespoon (15 mL) garlic, minced

– 2 tablespoons (25 mL) dried summer savory

– 2 teaspoons (10 mL) dried thyme

– 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) flour

– Two 142-g cans clams, drained (reserve juice)

– 1 L whole milk, plus extra if needed to adjust consistency

– 4 large baking potatoes, peeled and diced

– Salt, Tabasco sauce, to taste

– 1/4 lb (115 g) each, sea scallops and fresh salmon chunks

– 1 lobster, meat only, bite-size chunks

– 2 cups (500 mL) 19-per-cent cream

1. In a 6-litre saucepot, melt butter, add diced bacon and sauté on medium-high heat, then add diced onion, celery, minced garlic and continue cooking until onion is translucent but not browned. Reduce heat to medium and add savory, thyme, flour; stir well to combine and cook 3 minutes.

2. Add reserved clam juice to pot, along with milk and diced potatoes. Simmer, adding more milk if necessary to thin to desired consistency as potatoes cook until tender. Season to taste with salt, Tabasco.

3. Just before serving, add all seafood and 18-per-cent cream; bring just to simmer, about 2 minutes, and serve.

L-R, Petty Officer 2nd class Kurt Arnold, Commander (Captain) Steve Thornton, chef Matthew Carmichael, Petty Officer 1st class Guy Brideau.

Twitter: @roneade

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Tadvalkars owner offers his place to enterprising chefs

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DEC 11 12 – 12:01 AM — It’s lunch in mid-week at Tadvalkars Lounge and Restaurant, one of many neighbourhood sports bars in Ottawa plopped against a sea of asphalt, this one at the north end of a parking lot shared by the Coliseum movie theatre complex in the heart of Britannia. As sports bars go, it is a well-appointed spot with big flat-screen television screens behind a well-stocked bar that bisects the 5,000-square-foot, wood-panelled space, individual TV screens at every booth, and a menu that in places seems a notch above ordinary with fresh (never frozen) chicken wings, and prime cuts of ribs and bovine that owner Ash Tadvalkar, a management consultant by profession, fetches on a regular basis from Costco.

The difference is, at this noon hour the 190-seat restaurant/bar is practically deserted. As in, fire off a cannon and likely not hit anyone.

But Tadvalkar has a nifty idea he hopes can turn the business around: He plans to traffic on the “pop-up” phenomenon by offering his dining room and fully equipped kitchen to undercapitalized chefs, maybe once or twice a month, who may be looking for just such a place without big overhead to showcase their talents.

To me, the idea has potential. All Tadvalkar has to do is find cooks with ambition and the gumption to do it.

Recall that chef Matthew Carmichael made a success of hosting what he called a pop-up at Mellos Restaurant on Dalhousie Street for just over a month last summer, so we know in the right hands the idea has legs.

Others have put on special theme menus on an occasional basis (although none, strictly speaking, is a true pop-up where by definition the location changes regularly, and is announced with literally a moment’s notice. The former Cobra Ottawa mystery dining experience was a true pop-up, as you never knew what was being served or where, but others that have come along since are not).

“What I need to do is fill the restaurant,” says Tadvalkar, 63, who says these days his business is breaking even. Sadly, though, most nights the place is only about one-quarter full for dinner.

“The bar is busy, but not the restaurant. So my idea is to build on the pop-up concept. I wonder, are there chefs in Ottawa looking for a pop-up restaurant with a beautiful kitchen they can use once or twice a month?

“I’m not sure exactly how it would work — they might bring in their own staff, or I could arrange the purchasing of food. The chefs would be the pop-ups, they wouldn’t have to worry about securing equipment, liquor licences, or city health permits because everything is already here and ready for enterprising chefs to use as they see fit.

“They might organize dinners for charity, or offer special theme menus, or host cook-off contests. You can be enterprising and build a clientele, or maybe just have fun. It’s an innovative idea, and the surroundings are elegant.”

I’d agree with Tadvalkar about that, although the neighbourhood falls somewhat short of magnificent. The space is not only clean and accommodating, but there is lots of free parking. Now, if only more customers would come …

Tadvalker opened the restaurant at 3094 Carling Ave. in 2009, when he was the franchisee under the sport bar name Shoeless Joe’s. “For me,” he says, “the experiment as a Shoeless Joe’s didn’t work out, so I rebranded the sports bar in September 2011 as my own operation completely to give me more flexibility.

“So now I’m buying local food. My wings are fresh from Quebec, and I buy fresh pork and beef.”

Unfortunately, being so close to a multi-plex movie theatre has contributed to as many problems as opportunities — notably in the area of service, which some armchair critics have noted on the Internet site Urbanspoon. “I think people may have had a negative experience with service,” he concedes with surprising candour, “but people don’t say our food is bad. And we are improving on service.

“Having a movie theatre in the parking lot is both a blessing and a curse,” Tadvalkar says. “One one hand I get traffic, especially on Tuesdays when movies are half-price. But of course everyone arrives at 6 or 6:15 p.m. and they want to be out in time for the 7 p.m. movie.

“So, sometimes people walk out and say the service is bad or the food isn’t on time. But I’m not going to rush my food, it takes time. You can’t come in at 6:30 p.m. and say you want a well-done steak in 10 minutes.”

A native of India, Tadvalkar formerly owned a Subway sandwich shop at Carlingwood Shopping Centre for 10 years. “As I was nearing retirement, I thought it would be good to get into food in a bigger way, so I sold the Subway in 2007 and took 18 months to get this place going. The whole idea was that this would be my retirement project.

While plans didn’t unfold exactly as he expected, Tadvalkar is convinced the Britannia neighbourhood is poised for greater things with the expansion of nearby Bayshore Shopping Centre, and National Defence moving to the former Nortel headquarters on Moodie Drive. “In five years you’re going to see a lot more condos here, and more business activity will blossom.

“My challenge is to survive and grow. If I can make this into something interesting, a surprising place to eat that supports local food and local chefs, then I’ll have a niche. And a big thing is to have food at reasonable cost, as people are looking for best value for their dollar.

“People want reliable, good clean places to eat. They’re looking for a different experience,” the restaurateur insists.

“When times are tough, that’s when ideas come to the fore. What I need to do is fill the place a couple of nights a week — that’s why I’m making the place available to chefs who may want to try a pop-up. As for the details, well, we can work out business arrangements that will be mutually beneficial. There are chefs out there who may be looking for a way to spread the risk. Starting a restaurant from scratch isn’t easy, so this could be a way to ease them in.”

Anyone who’s interested can give him a call at 613-726-3333 or email atadvalkar@aol.com

Twitter: @roneade

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And Happy New Year to us all in 2013

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JAN 01 13 – 12:01 AM — Regular readers may recall I’m no big fan of Top 10 lists, if only because they’re by definition ridiculously subjective, and the vast majority appear designed more to promote and sell the publications in which they appear (or a brand of bottled water, as the case may be) than share any particular insight with the unwashed masses. Top 10 lists become even more worthless the closer they get to home, where the gene pool is inevitably reduced as the same names at the same restaurants tend to show up year after year …

Think deck chairs.

Far better, I say, is if you want to make a list then go right ahead — but please spare us the artificial Top 10 ( or Top 25, or Top 50) restriction and let people count for themselves. We all have fingers, after all.

Here, I’ve selected a few stories from the Ottawa food world of some passing interest, if not significance, from the year just ended. A few appear because they represent a defining moment in the evolution of our busy little culinary world; others are included because they’re, well, entertaining in their own rite.

So, in no particular order, I offer this modest cavalcade of culinary curios. Feel free to add your own. Links to blog entries and related posts are underlined, in blue.

Above, chef Marc Lepine with wife Leigh Anne moments after his big win in Kelowna in February.

A truly worthwhile culinary award of distinction simply must go to Ottawa chef and restaurateur Marc Lepine, who you’ll recall in February won the annual Canadian Culinary Championship in Kelowna, B.C., where he beat a handful of top Canadian chefs chosen as winners from a series of regional competitions under the Gold Medal Plates banner. It was a taxing, three-day competition including mystery ingredients, tight deadlines, quick thinking.

The great news is that Lepine, who opened his tiny 22-seat Atelier restaurant on Rochester Street in November 2008, emerged as victor over such national culinary luminaries as Rob Feenie of Cactus Club Restaurants in Vancouver, and Jonathan Gushie of the Relais et Chateau property Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa in Cambridge, Ont., among others.

Despite the national attention Lepine remains characteristically modest, and in a followup in-depth interview in this blog just days later he expressed profound gratitude to staff and so many well-wishers back home. Even better, he vowed he would not be blinded by stardom, and will remain to cook his elegant (and most eclectic) cuisine in the nation’s capital for years to come. Truly a proud moment for the chef, his many supporters, and our city.

Support for Lepine at home was tangible, which leads me to recall a very cool event in the Ottawa food community (photo, above) when no fewer than 25 chefs and well-wishers literally invaded Lepine’s kitchen (my son, Graeme, among them) on the same weekend of competition to keep his small restaurant open. That was the only way, they figured, to avoid financial hardship Canada’s top chef would have undoubtedly suffered (by some estimates as much as $10,000 or more) had he closed for three very busy nights to do his best work on the west coast.

Called Takeover Weekend, the plan was hatched by chef Matthew Carmichael (photo, above left), formerly of Restaurant E18hteen, Social and The Sidedoor restaurants, who had no trouble getting some of the best chefs in Ottawa to volunteer their help. Of the $150 pricetag for every meal, $50 was donated to the Ottawa Food Bank — now, how altruistic is that?

Of course, Takeover Weekend was completely sold out.

To his credit, Lepine vows to continue the tradition by organizing a similar Takeover Weekend this February to support chef Jamie Stunt, of the small Oz Kafé on Elgin Street, as he competes in the same grand finale culinary championship in just a few weeks.

L-R above, Gold Medal Plates chef winners in Ottawa in November Jason Duffy of Arc.Lounge Dining (silver medal), Jamie Stunt of Oz Kafé (gold), and Jonathan Korecki of Sidedoor Contemporary Kitchen and Bar (bronze).

Which brings me to another significant event: The regional Gold Medal Plates victory in November by chef Jamie Stunt of Oz Kafé. Even more interesting, Stunt is not formally trained, which testifies to the fact that passion for the craft will carry young talent a long way on the road to success. No less noteworthy is that all three regional winners last fall were newcomers to Gold Medal Plates:  chefs Stunt, Jason Duffy (second place) of Arc.Lounge Dining, and Jonathan Korecki (third) of Sidedoor Contemporary Kitchen and Bar.

Recall that chef Jonathan Korecki (photo, left) impressed us all last year as a contestant on the TV reality show, Top Chef Canada, product placement darling for GE Monogram appliances, when he emerged in June as one of four finalists from the original 16 during the 12-week series — quite a feat, although he did not ultimately win the grand prize. Also making a splash on the video box was chef Curtis Luk, formerly of The Courtyard Restaurant, as Ottawa’s second contestant on the same TV series, who was chopped after six successful episodes. Both men did us proud.

And while we’re talking tube entertainment, congratulations to another TV contestant from Ottawa, Cathy Ferguson (photo, above) who made it to the finals in December on the TV series Recipe to Riches with her recipe for Montreal Deli Dip (she was not the ultimate winner, however). While completely forgettable, the weekly excuse to cash in on TV product placement (hosanna to Galen Weston) at least showcased some home-grown, untrained Ottawa talent, and that is a good thing. Honorable mention goes  to contestant Stephanie Kepman, an Ottawa law student and one of three competitors in an episode featuring entrée dishes (she was chopped and never got to the finals).

Left, National Capital Craft Beer Festival organizer J.P. Fournier, with his beverage of choice.

The year just passed was also a great one for craft brewers, among them Mill St. Brewpub which opened in late January in a stately heritage limestone mill owned by the benevolent National Capital Commission beside the Portage Bridge, Big Rig Brewery brew pub with principal investor and Ottawa Senators defenceman Chris Phillips in June, and Beyond the Pale Brewing Co., a micro, micro brewery that opened in Hintonburg in November.

Kudos also to beer aficionado J.P. Fournier, founder and driving force behind the first-ever and wildly successful National Capital Craft Beer Festival in August (photo below).

On a less uplifting note, no recap of the year’s memorable millstones would be complete without doffing our hat to the brain trust at Service Ontario that decided Union Local 613 could no longer use the name it branded months earlier because someone, somewhere, might mistake the dining establishment for a bona fide trade union. Within days of the decision hitting the fan on social media (including Yours Truly), and after mainstream news outlets caught on too, common sense prevailed and the government recanted in October.

See, they’re not all brain dead at Queen’s Park after all. Oh, ye of little faith …

I would also celebrate the triumph of a respected Ottawa restaurateur and pastry chef, Joe Calabro (photo, above) who reopened his Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana in March seven months after the shop was firebombed in the middle of the night by persons unknown. (Of course, the police still have no idea … ) The pasticceria had been a fixture on Preston Street for 33 years, and loyal customers were delighted to see it emerge from the ashes after extensive reconstruction.

On the lighter, airy side, who can forget a story of whimsy that went viral — including TV attention across North America — after Omnivore’s Ottawa in September reported a nifty gadget that literally vapourizes food that customers can inhale at Juniper Kitchen and Wine Bar? Called Le Whaf, chef/partner Norm Aitken (photo, above) ordered one from France and in practically no time was busy liquifying foodstuffs and vapourizing the contents to amuse customers at no charge. A few malcontents complained Le Whaf was glamourizing eating disorders, to which I say: Please, people, lighten up.

Despite a steady, day-long rain, Ottawa’s second annual Harvest Noir outside city hall in September was a spectacular success. And, yes, that’s a genuine pop-up, folks.

A deserving nod, too, goes to organizers Greg Searle and Samantha Biron (photo, above) who organized the second successful Harvest Noir — despite peeing rain — in late September outside Ottawa City Hall. Recall the idea is to enlist literally hundreds of guests (in this case, an estimated 1,500 people) to dress in their finest black, pack a picnic complete with elaborate table settings and accoutrements, converge on a secret location announced to participants only hours earlier by email, then pack everything up and disappear into the night without a trace. For the record, that’s a true pop-up because the location is unknown until the very last. (Bloggers, food writers, headline editors and confused commentators take note: A pop-up is not a series of dining events held at a designated location, so stop calling special event appearances by a guest chef a pop-up.)

Above, no feast by Montreal’s famous chef Martin Picard would be complete without a pig’s head impaled on a yellow-handled butcher’s knife. Now, that’s affection!

On the subject of guest appearances, likely the most memorable last year arrived in November when none other than Montreal’s iconoclastic champion of foie gras and rustic Quebecois cuisine, Martin Picard, prepared the headline dinner gala for the Ottawa Wine and Food Festival at Sala San Marco. By any measure, it was an orgy of excess where 400 people paid $125 to gorge on pig, duck fat, engorged liver, brains and sugar — the kind of fare that has made Picard’s Au Pied de Cochon restaurant in Montreal and it’s sister eatery, Sugar Shack in Mirabel, world famous. Of course, the meal was complete entertainment from start to finish and not one I would pass up — although I won’t likely hurry to Montreal for a replay, the food being so ridiculously over-the-top rich.

Another guest appearance of note was chef Matthew Carmichael’s seafood chowder throwdown on board the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec (photo, above) as it was docked at Cornwall in September on a public relations goodwill mission. Challenger was petty officer second class Kurt Arnold, but in the end judges on board decided Carmichael made the best soup.

One of the (very) few morsels of welcome news this year from Ottawa City Hall was council’s decision to (finally) relax food truck licensing by allowing 20 more street food trucks on city streets this year, for a total of 64. And they’re not looking for hotdogs, sausages and poutine — the idea is to stimulate creative street food. Among those interested is chef Kent Van Dyk at Longfields-Davidson Heights Second School in Barrhaven, who says a food truck might be just the thing to interest his enterprising culinary arts high school students (although not necessarily parked on a city street). Also interested is acclaimed Ottawa chef and restaurateur Ben Baird of The Urban Pear in the Glebe, who announced his plans for Ottawa Streat Gourmet in this blog in November.

Above, Newport restaurateur Moe Atallah in his natural habitat.

In August, restaurateur Moe Atallah announced here that he is moving the iconic Newport Restaurant down the street, enabling him to lease the prime corner at Churchill and Richmond Road to principals behind The Empire Grill, Metropolitain Brasserie and The Grand pizzeria, as well as space next door to a computer store. Normally the relocation of a neighbourhood spoon wouldn’t be too newsworthy — except this iconic landmark, home to the world-famous philanthropic Elvis Sighting Society, has been a beloved local fixture for 25 years. People actually shed tears when they learned their bacon and eggs are going down the road. (Perspective bulletin: Never mind the wasted Canadian lives in worthless and corrupt Afghanistan — when my diner in Westboro changes address, apparently, some folks are shaken to the marrow and need Kleenex.)

The good news is, the Newport menu and, without any doubt, Atallah’s famous welcoming front-of-house hospitality, will remain as ever. Love you always, Moe.

Finally, on a less uplifting note I’d pause a moment to respect a professional acquaintance, Lara Vaarré, 42, much-loved Ottawa chocolatier and founder of Truffle Treasures, who passed away on Boxing Day after being diagnosed with advanced colon cancer in March. An effervescent and inspiring young woman, Lara’s shop was named small business of the year in 2005 by the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. Anyone who knew her could only marvel; we will miss Lara’s bright smile, uplifting laugh, and cheerful disposition. Damn, life is not always fair!

Another reason why people should get a colonoscopy — your resolution for 2013, perhaps? Pay attention, dear readers, for your own good health.

Twitter: @roneade

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It doesn’t look like much today — chef Matthew Carmichael’s planned El Camino is still very much a work in progress. He’s accepting job applications now.

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Hopes to open at 380 Elgin St. in early April

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MAR 06 13 – 12:01 AM — Chef Matthew Carmichael is inviting applications for both front- and back-of-house positions at his new El Camino restaurant on Elgin Street, at Gladstone, which he expects to open in “the first or second week” of April. Applicants for cooks, servers, assistants, bartending and dish washing should email him at mattdcar@yahoo.ca.

I dropped by the basement space, formerly a shawarma shop, yesterday to find it’s pretty much an empty if not yawning abyss with bare walls, empty kitchen area and rough concrete floor. But he expects it will come together quickly once the equipment and furnishings arrive — including custom stainless steel bar stools with maple seats now being built near London, Ont.

Food will include tacos made with sustainable seafood and a raw bar with tuna, scallops, oysters and spot prawn tartare, as well as Thai curry, shrimp dumplings, papaya salad, guacamole.

“At night it will be cool where you walk by on the sidewalk and see the kitchen and taco machine through the window downstairs,” Carmichael says.

Custom bar stools being fabricated near London, Ont., will not have the foot rest shown at left.

Initially, he expects to open five days a week Wednesday to Sunday, with lunch takeout through the front takeout window and dinner service beginning at 6 p.m.

A prominent feature in the 55- to 60-seat restaurant is a Woolworth-style oak bartop “peninsula” that juts into the cente floor space, lined on both sides with 30 fixed stools. Two booths at the rear will each seat eight, plus about five high-top tables on the main floor. He plans to retain a poured concrete wall on the north side, as well as polished concrete floor.

“We’re not going for any pretension here,” Carmichael says. “It’s just going to be straightforward, bare bones — no rustic, no reclaimed wood, no Edison-style light bulbs. Nothing fancy. It’s going to be super casual with backless stools at the bar, all high-tops.”

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Twitter @roneade

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Takes over former Burgers on Main location Sept. 2

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Opens December, inspired by Joe Beef in Montreal

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AUG 22 13 – 9:45 AM — The chef who enraptured Ottawa foodies with his fresh tacos and takeout window on Elgin Street plans a second restaurant in December loosely modelled after the acclaimed Joe Beef steak and seafood eatery in Montreal.

Matthew Carmichael, 41, takes possession of the former Burgers on Main location at 343 Somerset St. W., near Bank Street, on Sept. 2, when he will begin renovations with Jordan Holley, executive chef at Social Restaurant and Lounge, and a third silent partner identified only as someone “in the high-tech business.” Carmichael has a five-year lease with option to renew; the new place is not yet named.

Carmichael’s popular restaurant and take-out window, El Camino on Elgin Street, will remain unchanged. A spartan space with bare concrete floor, walls, open kitchen and characteristic peninsula countertop with bar stools along its perimeter, the 54-seat El Camino has attracted lineups of eager noshers since it opened May 28. By far, taco sales at $4 each outstrip El Camino’s other offerings.

Above, centre frame: Paige Price at El Camino on Elgin Street makes up to 12 trays (that’s 165 taco shelsl each, ready to press flat) a day. Bottom, the wall behind the bar.

Carmichael comes with his own impressive pedigree, winning the prestigious Gold Medal Plates culinary competition in Ottawa in late 2009, then placing bronze at the Canadian GMP Championship early the following year. He was formerly executive chef at Restaurant E18hteen (beginning 2006), then assumed additional overseeing duties at Social (2008), and was a key figure behind the opening of Sidedoor Contemporary Kitchen + Bar (2011). He left those dining rooms in May 2012, then launched a brief but successful “pop-up” restaurant at Mellos on Dalhousie Street.

Holley has been at Social about five years, where he became executive chef in 2012.

Chef Matt Carmichael, during an interview yesterday at his incredibly successful El Camino.

Named after the quirky Chevrolet coupe utility vehicle, El Camino sells an impressive number of tacos; on its busiest day last Friday, it served 1,980 fresh tortillas with such irresistible fillings as beef tongue (my favourite), lamb, pork, tempura cod. Also on the limited menu is tuna sashimi, and Mexican corn. Carmichael is sole owner of El Camino. On a typical day, Carmichael says he’ll go through 15 braised beef tongues, each making 10 to 12 portions.

“It’s crazy busy,” says El Camino sous chef Kristine Hartling.

“We have to lock the restaurant doors before we open at 5:30 p.m., otherwise people will just walk in. The places fills instantly, and they’re lined up every night. We do 10 turnovers a night.”

Above top, the lineups never stop from the time El Camino takeout window opens at noon until closing. Bottom right, Paige Price rolls taco balls to be pressed flat, then griddled.

Carmichael attributes the instant success of El Camino to simply prepared quality ingredients, and a neighbourhood demographic between the ages of 25 and 45 looking for fast, fresh and tasty eats. “There are nights we have a waiting list of 50 or 60 people,” he says. “Some will wait one or one-and-a-half hours.

“They’ll leave us their phone number, go away for a drink, then return when we text-message that we’re ready.” He estimates more than 400 takeout customers each night.

“So my news is, I just signed an agreement to take over an existing restaurant on Somerset, the former Burgers on Main [closed in July]. I’d like to push for a Dec. 1 opening, but you know how these things go. The good thing is that all the restaurant plumbing, electrical, etc. is already there, so it’s just front-of-house cosmetics to be done.”

The Somerset location has been home to a number of restaurants in recent years, including Bocado Italian/Greek restaurant, then Friday’s Roast Beef House, and most recently Burgers on Main.

“I’ll continue to have El Camino on Elgin Street where I can do the Mexican/Thai/Asian flavours, and on Somerset Street I’m thinking of something inspired by Joe Beef in Montreal — modern Canadiana. It’s a come-as-you-are place where you go for a great steak, a bottle of wine. I still want to work with halibut, but don’t have the space at El Camino to handle a 50- or 60-pound fish. But I can do that on Somerset Street.

“To me the food is almost the easy part,” Carmichael says. “The challenge is to repackage the food in a way that has not been done in Ottawa.”

He’s looking for fresh, seasonal and local ingredients when possible, including fish, red meat, fresh pasta, and such tried-and-true favourites as authentic Italian osso bucco, rotisserie chicken, maybe pot roast. Architect is Andrew Reeves of Linebox Studio.

Joe Beef has been an iconic darling among food lovers in Montreal since it opened in 2005, named after Irish-born Charles “Joe Beef” McKiernan, a 19th century Montreal innkeeper. It has been applauded by TV food celebrities Anthony Bourdain and David Chang of Momofuku fame, serving generous portions of what’s billed as “old Montreal classics” including, say, lobster spaghetti, steak, seafood.

“We’re not trying to redefine or create anything new, just redeliver and repackage it,” Carmichael says.

“What makes a restaurant special is the way people feel when they’re here. I mean, is there anything better than a perfectly ripe tomato with good cheese, good olive oil and fresh herbs? Hey, that makes me a happy man.

“We’re also looking to achieve a good price point. It can’t be a $50 steak, so we’ll have to walk that line between value and quality. It’s hard being in the restaurant business these days as people want quality but don’t want to pay a lot for it,” Carmichael says.

“When you walk in at Somerset Street the old house has a great feel, it’s like walking into your grandmother’s house with 70 or 80 seats downstairs and about 50 seats on the second level. We’ll highlight the old-world charm, but modernized.”

Lamb taco at El Camino.

Crispy cod is the most popular in sales at El Camino.

Beef tongue taco, second most popular on the El Camino menu.

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Twitter: @roneade

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Marysol Foucault takes national stage at
Canadian Culinary Championships on Feb. 6-8

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Fundraiser reception at Urban Element on Feb. 2
will help send Team Marysol to Kelowna

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JAN 13 14 – 12:01 AM — Less than a month before she joins the Canadian Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna, B.C., Marysol Foucault, 37, owner/chef at the tiny 11-seat Edgar restaurant on a residential street in Gatineau, is well immersed in preparation, planning and rehearsal for what will likely be — ready or not — the career opportunity of her lifetime.

Flummoxed? Frightened? Intimidated?

None of the above, Marysol says modestly, as she methodically arranges her ingredients, fine-tunes a dish that won her the qualifying Ottawa-Gatineau Gold Medal Plates round at the National Arts Centre last November, and prepares to schlep what may be hundreds of pounds of refrigerated foodstuffs — from rabbit to wild boar — clear across the country to cook for upwards of 500 people in a kitchen she has never seen, in a city she has never visited, under tight deadlines she could barely imagine.

Left, 500 fundraising calendars featuring Edgar staff members are being sold at $10 each to help raise money for Marysol’s bid at the Canadian Culinary Championships. (Marysol is Miss July.) For complete details, check Anne Waters’ blog by clicking here.

Gold Medal Plates is a series of cross-country events where invited chefs compete in 11 regional contests to qualify for the gruelling three-day finale Feb. 6 to 8 in Kelowna. The purpose is to raise money for Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes (more than $7 million so far), and of course to showcase the nation’s emerging culinary talent and excellent vintages.

With no formal culinary training, Marysol was clearly surprised — she truly did not expect to join 10 other champions who qualified from St. John’s to Vancouver. See what I mean, in the question-and-answer interview that follows in this post.

But, she quickly discovered after winning last fall that  Gold Medal Plates is something of a two-edged victory, especially for a very small restaurant like Edgar.

The good news is, it’s flattering to be chosen from among some of the best chefs in the National Capital Region. On the other hand, it comes at considerable expense because compensation for such costs as air fare, lodging and ground transportation from organizers in Kelowna is very limited. Regional winners are also expected to contribute a wine-and-food pairing dinner as a fund-raising auction item.

The bottom line is, moving forward to the Canadian Championships is fairly costly for such a small restaurant that doesn’t even have a liquor licence. Above, Marysol wins gold at the regional competition in November at the National Arts Centre. She is flanked by chefs Jonathan Korecki who took silver, and Katie Brown Ardington who placed bronze.

Marysol will be travelling to Kelowna with boyfriend Simon Guibord, as well as Edgar chefs Michael Lasalle and Anna March. Omnivore’s Ottawa has also made arrangements to attend, paying our own air fare while accommodation and ground transportation are courtesy Kelowna Tourism.

Marysol has no idea what the final tab will be, but a special fundraising food and drink reception to raise $3,500 for the trip has been organized for Feb. 2 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Urban Element culinary studio on Parkdale Avenue — just before Marysol leaves for wine country in the Okanagan Valley with her small entourage. Key organizer of the fundraiser in Ottawa is chef Jamie Stunt, formerly of Oz Kafé, also Gold Medal Plates winner in 2012 who placed silver at the national competition last February.

Jamie, incidentally, also plans to “take over” Marysol’s small kitchen at Edgar for brunch Feb. 8 and 9 while she’s away. “He’ll prepare one of three brunch options at Edgar,” Marysol says.

“My staff are handling the classics — dutch baby and huevos rancheros — and Jamie is doing a poached egg dish. We serve from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, and 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. No reservations. There is pretty much always a wait line for brunch — we serve everyone waiting in line who arrives before 2:01 p.m. No group bigger than four, actually, as there is only the front counter for such groups. We do take-out brunches too — people do eat in their cars! That’s 90 plates a day or 125 in summer.”

This is the official announcement for the Feb. 2 event at Urban Element, directly below. For tickets (that are expected to sell out quickly), click where indicted.

Fundraising “Food Court” style

Gold Medal Plates Fundraising Event in support of

Chef Marysol Foucault, Edgar (Gold Medalist)

Hosted by chef Jamie Stunt & urban element

Sunday, February 2, 2014

6-8 p.m., $75 pp Purchase tickets by clicking here.

“Takeover” dinners have been held the last two years to help cover the costs of Ottawa chefs competing in the Canadian Culinary Championships of Gold Medal Plates in Kelowna. Since this year’s winner’s restaurant has just 11 seats, urban element is honoured to play host to a stand-up meal/walk about/schmoozefest in lieu of Edgar’s space. Urban element resident chef Anna March will welcome an array of chefs into the kitchen this evening for a night of great fun, fabulous food and drink. The following chefs will be paired up and collaborate on an appetizer each: Chris Lord (Union Local 613), Katie Brown Ardington (Beckta), Matt Carmichael (El Camino), Marc Lepine (Atelier), Marc Doiron (Town), Trish Larkin (Black Cat Bistro), Chris Deraiche (Wellington Gastropub), Simon Bell (Oz Kafe), Jason Duffy (Arc the.hotel), and Steve Mitton (Murray Street). Beau’s Beer and Ashton Brewery will provide frosty cold beverages and urban element will offer their latest creative collaboration with Stratus Vineyards and unveiling their house red and white wines. All proceeds are dedicated to pay for competition expenses.

The National Capital Region has done well at the Grand Championships in the past: In February last year, Stunt (also self-taught) took the national silver prize after winning gold in Ottawa in late 2012. Before that, in early 2012 chef/owner Marc Lepine of Atelier restaurant took the top national gold prize. Above, Marysol’s winning plate in November, which she will replicate with only minor changes in February at the Canadian Championships: Cured and sous vide wild boar squeezed around juicy, pressed rabbit loin with rabbit liver mousse, brown butter, garnished with lichen steeped in maple whisky and fried, chestnut, parsnip, golden beet gastrique.

Other chefs who have placed among the top three in national winner circles include Matthew Carmichael in 2009 (bronze) and Michael Blackie in 2006 (silver).

Check out our question-and-answer interview with Marysol, below, and look for a followup chat with chef Jamie Stunt and Urban Element co-owner Carley Schelck to be posted in Omnivore’s Ottawa later this week.

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Omnivore’s Ottawa: You were surprised if not astonished at winning gold at the regional Gold Medal Plates at the National Arts Centre in November – as owner of a tiny 11-seat salad, soup, sandwich and dessert shop on a residential street in Gatineau, now in the national spotlight. Why so surprised?

Marysol Foucault: Maybe not being part of the central Ottawa circuit makes you think you’re doing your thing, you know you can cook, but you don’t know how others cook or how you measure up to those other people. So of course you think everyone is so much more talented than you, you just think that because you’re farther away doing your little thing.

It’s such a big honour to be invited to do such a thing and you’ll do your best. You do what you do. You will cook and you don’t expect it to be recognized, so it’s really an honour and a surprise to be recognized.

Omnivore’s: You did not expect to win …

Marysol: No [laughs].

Omnivore’s: Did you expect even to place in the top three?

Marysol: I didn’t know really what to expect. I mean, everyone hopes to do their best to win. We stayed true to ourselves. I was speaking with someone who said I should be maybe four-per-cent ready to win, and know how to react when you lose. I was thinking, at least if I lose I’ll have done what we do here every single day and we’ll stay true to what we do, that we won’t try something we can’t really handle. We’ll just follow techniques we’re at ease with, doing tastes that we like.

L-R, Marysol Foucault, with fundraiser organizers on Feb. 2 chef Jamie Stunt, Urban Element co-owner Carley Schelck.

Omnivore’s: What was your initial reaction when you were invited to participate in Gold Medal Plates?

Marysol: I told Sue Holloway [Olympian in 1976 and 1984, and organizer of the Ottawa GMP event] that I’d think about it. I think she was a bit surprised. She asked, like, what’s there to think about? But we’re really small and I didn’t really think we’d measure up to the other restaurants. When you’re invited, you don’t know who else is invited. I just thought, I don’t know if I really want to do this.

Sue actually came out to the restaurant and I didn’t know who she was. She came in the afternoon as we were prepping; she was waving through the door and I said, like, no, we’re closed, and finally I let her in. I told her I would email the next day after thinking about the whole situation. I spoke to a couple of staff, and some staff said no, we’re not doing it. Then others said we have to do it. You feel like it’s such a big honour to be invited and if you say no, it’s like you’re doing something bad.

Omnivore’s: Were you concerned that your restaurant is so small that you couldn’t serve hundreds of people?

Marysol: My main concern was, how do we prep for all these people? Most kitchens are closed, not open like ours, they have walk-in fridges and they have all this working space that we just don’t have. They also have all the staff that we don’t have. We’re so small, but we needed to run the restaurant normally and do the prep for the competition as well. So it was a matter of crazy planning. After our regular business hours we just kept on going and going with a prep schedule for the competition.

Omnivore’s: Last fall your winning dish was cured sous vide-cooked wild boar squeezed around juicy pressed rabbit loin on rabbit liver mousse with brown butter, chestnut, parsnip, crispy Sortilege lichen steeped in maple whisky and golden beet gastrique. Will you be doing the same dish at the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna?

Marysol: Yes, we will be doing a very, very similar dish. Some things like nasturtiums came from our garden, so we can’t do that in winter. Friends were able to forage for the lichen before the snow. There will be tiny changes to the dish, but nothing major. We had a parsnip puff that involved a lot of manual work, but in Kelowna we’ll have only four hours to prepare so we can’t really start doing finicky things. So we’ll do the crunchy another way and the intense parsnip taste another way, so we’ll just be replacing some things.

Omnivore’s: Why did you choose that dish, those ingredients, for the competition?

Marysol: Initially we did experiments with bear but we just weren’t getting the results we wanted. I wasn’t happy with the texture, so maybe three weeks before the competition in November we had to face reality and do something else. So we tried thinking about what we do here, what we do on the menu, what we like working with. We do a lot of rabbit, so we were at ease with that. And there’s a guy who has wild boar, we really love him and wanted to work with him. If I was not doing a protein that was unique or original then my thought was to sandwich two proteins to make one new animal, so we created the ‘boarabbit.’

Omnivore’s: So which ingredients will you be taking with you on the plane to Kelowna?

Marysol. Everything. The whole kit and kaboodle.

Omnivore’s: That’s a lot of stuff. How many large cooler containers do you think will go on the plane?

Marysol: I don’t want to think about it. We have no choice because we have just four hours to get ready, so obviously you can’t do any prep. And with the black box competition, there’s just two of us doing everything. So you cannot go and do prep during the black box, there’s simply no time, so we have to do everything in advance.

Left, the yummy stuff at Edgar in Gatineau (Hull).

Omnivore’s: Where in heaven’s name did you find the lichen? What were you thinking?

Marysol: We have two good friends who do a lot of foraging. We experimented with a lot of woodsy stuff with the proteins as well, marinating them with mushrooms and moss to give a taste that would capture and reflect some of the things we tasted in the wine as well, with a woodsy feel. And lichen was what we liked the most, as a garnish, with a little sweetness from the maple whisky, a bit of textural crunch because we fry it.

Omnivore’s: You’ll be pairing it with the same wine as well, the Clossen Chase ‘The Brock’ Chardonnay 2011 VQA Niagara River?

Marysol: Oh yes. It’s a big wine with a lot of taste that changes with variations in temperature. It goes from being very juicy and full to some notes of tartness. And there is a little bit of acid to cut the rich fat in the meat.

Omnivore’s: What are your concerns about cooking so far away, in a strange city in an unfamiliar kitchen?

Marysol: Our main concern was more to get the food over there, in time, safely. I’m not so concerned about cooking in a different kitchen because there is Michael Lasalle, my sous chef, and we’ve worked in catering so we’re used to arriving somewhere, having 20 minutes to set up and maybe 40 minutes to cook in someone else’s kitchen. You just have to deal with it.

Omnivore’s: The black box competition in Kelowna on Saturday morning gives you five or six mystery ingredients, typically representing different regions in the country you must use. You must produce two recipes in 60 minutes – that’s 12 plates of each dish for each judge, plus one for photos, and all the deadlines and rules are strictly enforced. How are you preparing for the black box event without knowing in advance what those mystery ingredients will be?

Marysol: We’ve had a few customers prepare and bring us black boxes, some have brought us mystery ingredients, so we’ve timed ourselves and limited our kitchen equipment. We have our pantry, because we know what the pantry items will be in Kelowna [but not the mystery ingredients]. It’s been good practice because we know we can work together well, and we do it on time. So that’s satisfying as well. Mostly it’s a lot about how well you’re able to work with someone else. We’re been working together so long, I know Michael will do this while I do that. I know what he’s good at, while I’m good at something else. We each know our strengths and we don’t really need to speak about it, and that’s good. We’re good with panic as well.

Omnivore’s: How many practice runs at the black box will you have done before Kelowna?

Marysol: I think we’ve done four or five so far, but I don’t know how much time we’ll have to do more before the event.

Omnivore’s: What concerns you most about the black box?

Marysol: Like everyone, it’s the unexpected. We don’t really know what kitchen equipment we’ll have, so here we’re practicing with very basic kitchen equipment. If you have all spices and all the vegetables in the world, and all the equipment, of course it’s easier. But if not, you have to work really hard in your brain.

Omnivore’s: Who among previous Gold Medal Plates winners have you consulted from Ottawa-Gatineau?

Marysol: Jamie Stunt, and a bit with Marc Lepine. Mostly Jamie, we’ve had lunch together.

Omnivore’s: What’s the most valued advice you’ve been given?

Marysol: Sleep a lot, and put your running shoes on.

Omnivore’s: This is not a small, casual adventure for a restaurant of your size. In previous years, competing chefs/restaurants have estimated costs could be in the neighbourhood of $10,000. Have you any estimate of costs for you to compete, not including limited costs covered by the competition?

Marysol: Obviously I had no idea when I was getting into this. Once you get the rules, that’s when it all starts clicking – oh, dear. You don’t get a lot of money. But it’s a fun experience: When else when you get the chance in your life to experience this? Of course, it’s OK to put a bit of money towards it, and it’s for a good cause too.

Omnivore’s: Do you have any idea what this will cost you at the end of the day?

Marysol: No. But I’m the kind of person who doesn’t want to think about it. We have to do it, so we’ll just do it.

Omnivore’s: How important is it for you to know you’ve got a very supporting cheering section back home? The chefs here, led by Jamie Stunt, are organizing a fundraising event at Urban Element on Feb. 2.

Marysol: It’s very humbling, it warms your heart so much to think there are people thinking about you, that it’s not just, well, wishing us good luck. This really doesn’t just end in November, it keeps on going and people are still cheering for you up and until the event. I remember for the last two years I have stayed awake reading Twitter to see who would win. We have a great region for that, in that we are competitive yet everyone supports each other. So it’s so, so nice to see people so supportive.

Omnivore’s: So this is important to you, because it’s a personal challenge?

Marysol: I think so. I’ve always been very competitive, but mostly with myself. I’m treating this as an individual sport, I’m going to do the best I can, and the best I can is only what I can do. It’s the same with Michael, we work well together and I think it’s the same for him.

Omnivore’s: Do you think this a life-changing experience?

Marysol: I don’t think it’s life-changing, it’s a whole lot of fun. It’s going to be the biggest challenge we could have ever imagined. When we got the rules we didn’t expect to be serving so many people in such a short time. It may be life-changing in that way, but career-wise I don’t think it’s changing things so much. Maybe that’s a question to ask afterward.

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Twitter: @roneade

Email: ronlorne[at]hotmail[dot]com

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Food, drink and schmooze fundraiser planned Feb. 2
at Urban Element to help with competition costs

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Chef Jamie Stunt’s advice to Team Marysol:
wear running shoes and be calm, even if you fake it

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JAN 15 14 – 12:01 AM — With only three weeks left before Gatineau chef/owner Marysol Foucault, 37, and her team jet to Kelowna, B.C., friends and those who have gone before reflect, in this post, on what she may expect during the intense three-day Canadian Culinary Championships where literally anything can happen and the ability to think quickly is not just a good idea — it is essential.

There, Marysol joins 10 other top chefs from St. John’s to Vancouver, each a qualifying winner from a regional Gold Medal Plates competition to raise money for Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Catch Monday’s first Omnivore’s Ottawa installment of this pre-competition series by clicking here.

Marysol, owner of the tiny 11-seat Café Edgar in a residential neighbourhood in Gatineau (Hull), earned her spot at the grand championship by defeating seven challengers at Gold Medal Plates held at the National Arts Centre in November. (The 2012 regional winner from Ottawa-Gatineau was chef Jamie Stunt, formerly of Oz Kafé on Elgin Street, who moved on last February to win silver in British Columbia. His advice to Marysol appears, below, along with observations from Marysol’s former employer and a good friend, Carley Schelck of Urban Element.)

Both Marysol and Jamie have no formal culinary training, by the way.

Above L-R, chef contestant Marysol Foucault, chef Jamie Stunt (national silver winner 2013), and Carley Schelck, friend and co-owner of Urban Element.

Team Marysol will include boyfriend Simon Guibord, and Edgar chefs Michael Lasalle and Anna March. A few students are provided by organizers in Kelowna to help prep and serve at some events, but their role is strictly limited.

Consider the gruelling schedule, each day with its own tight deadlines and limited resources:

Thursday Feb. 6: Arriving chefs meet for an early afternoon briefing, followed by tours of kitchens they must work in. A private late lunch for contestants is scheduled at 4 p.m., followed by a reception at 7 p.m. when chefs will be handed  a mystery wine and a small amount of money for groceries they must purchase the following morning to create a matching dish.

Friday: Contestants use their limited budget to shop for food in Kelowna, then serve the wine-and-food pairing dishes for 500 guests by 6 p.m. Judges do not reveal the victor of this contest until after the three-day event.

Saturday: Marysol faces what must be her most difficult day, starting with a Black Box Competition where she, with only assistant chef Michael Lasalle, receive five or six mystery ingredients. They must use each item to create and present two dishes for 12 judges, plus two for photography (total: 26 plates) within just 60 minutes. Scores are deducted if they do not plate exactly what they promised after opening the box, or if they fail to use one or more of the surprise ingredients, or if they run late by even a few seconds. The same day chefs are faced with the grand finale, where by 6:15 p.m. they begin serving 640 guests the dish they planned and prepared for back home.

Once they are done, chefs are called to the stage and winners are announced by about 10:30 p.m. (that’s 1:30 a.m. Sunday in Ottawa).

As you can see, not much time to mess around. Remaining focused is key.

To assist back home, chef Jamie and the folks at Urban Element culinary studio on Parkdale Avenue, where Marysol worked before she opened Edgar in October 2010, plan a fundraising reception Feb. 2 beginning at 6 p.m, when a dozen Ottawa chefs have volunteered to create hors d’oeuvres and tasting plates to raise $3,500. For tickets at $75, click where indicated on the box below:

Fundraising “Food Court” style

Gold Medal Plates Fundraising Event in support of

Chef Marysol Foucault, Edgar (Gold Medalist)

Hosted by chef Jamie Stunt & urban element

Sunday, February 2, 2014

6-8 p.m., $75 pp Purchase tickets by clicking here.

“Takeover” dinners have been held the last two years to help cover the costs of Ottawa chefs competing in the Canadian Culinary Championships of Gold Medal Plates in Kelowna. Since this year’s winner’s restaurant has just 11 seats, urban element is honoured to play host to a stand-up meal/walk about/schmoozefest in lieu of Edgar’s space. Urban element resident chef Anna March will welcome an array of chefs into the kitchen this evening for a night of great fun, fabulous food and drink. The following chefs will be paired up and collaborate on an appetizer each: Chris Lord (Union Local 613), Katie Brown Ardington (Beckta), Matt Carmichael (El Camino), Marc Lepine (Atelier), Marc Doiron (Town), Trish Larkin (Black Cat Bistro), Chris Deraiche (Wellington Gastropub), Simon Bell (Oz Kafe), Jason Duffy (Arc the.hotel), and Steve Mitton (Murray Street). Beau’s Beer and Ashton Brewery will provide frosty cold beverages and urban element will offer their latest creative collaboration with Stratus Vineyards and unveiling their house red and white wines. All proceeds are dedicated to pay for competition expenses.

What would you tell Team Marysol heading into the competition?

Below, sage advice and observations from last year’s national silver-place winner, chef Jamie Stunt, and long-time friend Carley Schelck of Urban Element:

Chefs Marysol Foucault with Jamie Stunt in her natural habitat, Café Edgar, in Gatineau.

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Jamie Stunt

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Omnivore’s Ottawa: Just to quickly update, after winning silver at the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna last February, you left the position as executive chef at Oz Kafé in July to spend summer with your family and to ‘stage’ in kitchens at other restaurants to hone your skills. What have you been up to since?

Jamie Stunt: I went travelling in Europe for a month, Paris and Poland. I staged at a restaurant in Poland for a little bit, and other than that I’ve been in different restaurants around town, I’ve filled in at Allium and Murray Street, Oz Kafé and Zen Kitchen, just doing little events and things like that, just figuring out what to do next. I should have things figured out soon. I’ll let you know.

Omnivore’s: What has been the effect on you of winning gold regionally, then silver at the national championships?

Jamie: It was a great experience, but beyond that it’s tough to say because I’m not in employment right now. But it was a great experience.

Omnivore’s: What was your biggest surprise at the Canadian Championships in Kelowna? Either pleasant or otherwise?

Jamie: I think the lamb neck as a secret ingredient in the black box was a pretty rude awakening. We went in really focused and these things came up and we had to deal with them. Everything was a surprise.

Right, lamb neck among the mystery black box ingredients in 2013 stumped some contestants, but not Jamie Stunt. Other must-use surprise ingredients from across Canada included red fife wheat flour, farmed sturgeon caviar, goat gruyère, black kale, Anjou pears, bone-in lamb shoulder.

Omnivore’s: How exhausting was the competition?

Jamie: Very exhausting, you don’t get a ton of sleep and it’s pretty go-go-go. The first day is the wine pairing, so you’re up at the crack of dawn shopping for ingredients to pair with the wine, then you’re cooking all day. The next morning is the black box competition, then later that day you have the finale where you have to prepare for something like 600 people and you only have a couple of hours.

Omnivore’s: With the wine pairing, you have 24 hours to create and prepare a dish for over 400 guests and judges with a tight budget of about $1.25 a plate. That’s not a lot of money. What were your considerations?

Jamie: We did as much research as we could the first day in Kelowna, so we visited local butchers, fishmongers, supermarkets, so we had a layout of the town product-wise. We spotted a few things we could afford, so if we got a red wine in a certain style we could go in one direction, or with a different kind of wine we could go in a different direction. We got the wine, tried it, and started to piece together our dish based on what we’d seen in town. But obviously we had to be very frugal, and that was a challenge with food costs for a chef.

Our mystery wine turned out to be Norman Hardy Pinot Noir, which I happened to have tasted previously. I thought I recognized it, and turns out I was correct. We ended up doing a lamb tartare using Abbortsford lamb we found at butcher in Kelowna, with roasted and marinated beets, pistachios, a smoked turkey mayonnaise and sweet potato.

Left: What Jamie did with the mystery ingredients: Top, red fife flour and goat gruyère bannock with caviar, cream, pickled onions, and crispy thyme. Bottom, lamb stew with pan-grilled kale, pickled pear, and crispy onions.

Omnivore’s: What’s the single most important piece of advice you have for Marysol Foucault, our Canadian Championships contender this year representing Ottawa-Gatineau?

Jamie: I would just say, stay focused. Little things are going to come up that will stress you or throw you off your game. You could get a weird ingredient in the black box, as we did with the lamb neck. With the wine pairing, you have to tour the food suppliers in a taxi but you’re given a limited amount for cab fare, and in our case the cab went in the wrong direction to the other side of town and we almost didn’t make it back in time. Stressful. So you just have to refocus on what you’re doing and stay calm.

Omnivore’s: How does a chef retain composure and a sense of calm?

Jamie: The calm part you just fake. You try to remain focused. I had a really good team, and you use your team for support. You just head on down and go for it.

Omnivore’s: How important was it for you to know you had a cheering section of supportive chefs running the Oz Kafé kitchen back home?

Jamie: That was amazing, a huge support. It was a huge kick in the butt to make us do our best, knowing so many chefs were back home filling in. It was a great feeling to know so many people I respect so much were so willing to help us while we were out of town. Marc Lepine organized the whole thing, and I just woke up one day to get an email saying ‘these are all the chefs coming to your restaurant’ and I almost cried.

I had no trouble getting chefs for the Marysol event Feb. 2 at Urban Element. Everyone I asked said yes, immediately, they were more than keen to do it.

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Carley Schelck

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Omnivore’s Ottawa: What stands out in your mind about Marysol Foucault from Edgar, representing Ottawa-Gatineau at the Canadian Culinary Championships?

Carley Schelck: She has guts. She knows herself, and I think it’s that silent confidence that’s allowed her to excel, whether working with us or on her own. It takes guts to open a business and she’s definitely proven she can handle it, and with this accomplishment.

Right, Marysol at the Gold Medal Plates competition in Ottawa in November, when she placed first.

Omnivore’s: How does she respond under pressure?

Carley: I think when we worked together it was like watching a duck on water – calm above the surface, but paddling furiously under the surface. So while you might be unravelling inside, you just keep a calm and cool, collected exterior. That’s very important.

In the environment we work in, if chefs are late or don’t show up, we just have to grin and bear it, play the part and make everyone feel comfortable. That’s what hospitality is all about, right? Whether she does that here or elsewhere, the show goes on. You put your smile on and make it happen.

Omnivore’s: How do you think Marysol will handle the curve balls thrown her way in Kelowna?

Carley: The black box will be interesting for her because from what I know of her, she tends to think things through a lot. She analyzes things. That will be an interesting challenge for her, for sure, to get her mind wrapped around the moment. But I think a lot of people, given the opportunity, will rise to the challenge and I have no doubt she will too. She is very methodical, she likes time to analyze and scrutinize and get things perfect, but in that moment you have only a few minutes to devise a plan. So that’s going to be a great opportunity for her to bring something awesome to the table.

Omnivore’s: The purpose of the event on Feb. 2 at Urban Element is to raise money to help with her costs. Do you have a target amount?

Carley: Marysol has let us know she wants to raise $3,500 to help cover costs associated with this event. That’s the goal. I think people will come to support her. When she worked for us she treated Urban Element with the same care and attention as if it were her own. We appreciate what she’s done for us, and that’s why I want to show our appreciation and support her now.

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Twitter: @roneade

Email: ronlorne[at]hotmail[dot]com

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‘I feel like hugging them all and crying’

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‘It lifts your spirit’

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JAN 19 14 – 11:30 AM — The organizers were correct: A fundraising reception Feb. 2 at Urban Element to help defray costs for Gatineau chef Marysol Foucault to attend the prestigious Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna, on Feb. 6 to 8, proved so popular tickets at $75 a pop sold out within less than five days. In fact, organizers added about 10 seats beyond their target of 65 places for the public — and still there’s an appetite for more, Ottawa being that supportive of its community of talented chefs.

“The support of Ottawans has been overwhelming!” says Carley Schelck, co-owner of the Urban Element culinary boutique where the event will be held on Parkdale Avenue from 6 to 8 p.m.

“But it’s not entirely surprising as we live and work in a very generous community. We also work in such a supportive chef network as well, and it’s absolutely amazing to have this incredible lineup of chefs volunteering their time and energies for the event — all the while donating food product as well to ensure that proceeds are maximized.”

Right, winners at the Ottawa-Gatineau Gold Medal Plates competition last November at the National Arts Centre, which qualifies Marysol Foucault to move on to national championships in February in Kelowna. L-R chefs Jonathan Korecki (silver) of Sidedoor, Marysol Foucault (gold) of Café Edgar, and Katie Brown Ardington (bronze) of Beckta.

Recall that Omnivore’s Ottawa has followed Marysol’s spectacular success since before the owner of tiny, 11-seat Café Edgar in residential Gatineau (Hull) beat seven challengers at the  Gold Medal Plates culinary competition held in November at the National Arts Centre, one of 11 regional contests pitting top chefs in each community in competition to raise money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic atheletes.

Marysol’s victory in Ottawa — it surprised even her — qualifies the restaurant chef/owner to join 10 other top regional chefs from across Canada in a tough, three-day competition in Kelowna called the Canadian Culinary Championships.

But it’s not without sacrifice as flights, accommodation and meals not covered by organizers (only for the chef herself) can add up — especially for a tiny gourmet shop, suddenly faced with huge bills to send its modest four-person delegation, to say nothing of air surcharges to schlep many containers of refrigerated food ingredients across the continent. (See also Omnivore’s Ottawa posts January 13 and a follow-up quest-and-answer session on January 15.)

The fundraiser at Urban Element, to raise about $3,500 to help with Marysol’s costs, was organized by chef Jamie Stunt, who won the top regional Gold Medal Plates spot in fall 2012 and, later, silver on the national stage in Kelowna in February 2013. Jamie is carrying on a tradition originated by chef Matt Carmichael (now of El Camino) in February 2012, when he enlisted volunteer chefs to “take over” chef Marc Lepine’s small kitchen at Atelier to keep the cash registers ringing while he was away in Kelowna winning the top Canadian Culinary Championship prize.

Marysol’s tiny restaurant is too small for well-meaning chefs to “take over” the kitchen — even briefly (although Jamie will be helping with “brunch” service at Edgar on Feb. 8 and 9). So, an alternative reception-style event was organized — even now, a stunning success before the first plate is served.

In addition to Jamie and Urban Element chef Anna March, participants on Feb. 2 who will collaborate on appetizer-size dishes include Chris Lord (Union Local 613), Katie Brown Ardington (Beckta), Matt Carmichael (El Camino), Marc Lepine (Atelier), Marc Doiron (Town), Trish Larkin (Black Cat Bistro), Chris Deraiche (Wellington Gastropub), Simon Bell (Oz Kafé), Jason Duffy (Arc the.hotel), and Steve Mitton (Murray Street).

Beau’s Beer and Ashton Brewery will provide frosty cold beverages, while Urban Element will offer their latest collaboration with Stratus Vineyards, also unveiling their house red and white wines.

For her part, Marysol says she’s flabbergasted and grateful for the support, even from people she has not met. She has since told chefs:

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“A bit under a year ago I went to a reception to congratulate Jamie on his silver-place showing in Kelowna.

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“I spoke with Jamie and Marc Lepine mostly, and both were so appreciative of the support from other chefs — being part of the takeover, I simply said that it was actually fun for us to do it, and really no big deal. But when it is actually your turn, it feels like the most incredible gesture of support ever. It is beyond comprehension.”

“I was to make a list of people I knew and loved, and they accepted to do this evening,” Marysol says. “I feel like hugging them all and crying — but I won’t do it (hugs and tears) because I work in a kitchen, you know, and I need to maintain this tough image

L-R, Edgar chef/owner Marysol Foucault, chef Jamie Stunt.

Carley says originally the plan was to sell 65 tickets, but that number got bumped up a bit to something more like 75.  “We have had quite the demand even after the event sold out and calls still flooded in,” Carley says.

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“I think that Oliver (Schelck, her husband and partner in Urban Element) and I are opening up another to seven tickets for those people who contacted us personally, but that will be the absolute max. So I’d say we will end up being between 70-75 total attendees. It will definitely be a lively room full of Marysol fans and all around well-wishers. I hope attendees are up for a party!

Twitter: @roneade

Email: ronlorne[at]hotmail[dot]com

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Restaurant E18hteen

18 York St., 613-244-1188, restaurant18.com

Prices: Mains $30 to $59

Open: Sunday to Thursday, 5 to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 5 to 11 p.m.

Access: Steps to restaurant and dining rooms, washrooms downstairs

Are you marking a special occasion?” asked the person on the other end of the line.

So said Restaurant E18hteen’s reservationist, a few weeks ago. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d heard that question. It’s 2013, and we’re firmly in the era of accomplished Ottawa chefs opening the likes of neighbourhood restaurants, taco counters and food trucks. In fact, in my year or so of writing this column, focusing on new restos, I’ve only once or twice been to a place where jeans might have appeared too casual and where a server called me “Sir.”

But it was indeed a special occasion, and we snared a table on a recent Friday night at E18hteen. We strode through its imposing three-metre-tall front door, hoping to celebrate in its lavish surroundings and enjoy a splurge-worthy dinner as impressive as the setting.

Pork belly appetizer at Restaurant E18hteen. Photo by Peter Hum, The Ottawa Citizen.

The ByWard Market venue that my predecessor Anne DesBrisay in 2010 called “the city’s most beautiful restaurant” remains a plush, gorgeous space. When E18hteen opened in 2001, people swooned at the sheer and unprecedented drama of its dining room. With its striking mix of high, mirrored ceilings, over-sized tables, stone walls, inviting fireplace and soft curtains. E18hteen still looks the same, and it still looks very good.

You could even say this room looks like money. It opened in 2001, when the expense accounts of federal bureaucrats allowed for more entertaining and not long after the dot-com boom inspired dreams of dollar signs. If you can call 12 years ago a long time, then E18hteen feels almost old-fashioned in its opulence.

But the groovy music still signals a hip, youthful vibe, in line with E18hteen’s sleek bar. Good thing that neither the house sound system, nor chatting at neighbouring tables, makes conversing difficult.

Since my predecessor weighed in with the last of three very positive reviews, there have been changes at E18hteen. Chef Matthew Carmichael left in the spring of 2012 after roughly four years and his young sous-chef, Walid El-Tawel, was promoted.

A few months ago, El-Tawel, now 26, introduced a larger raw bar component. This change brings to mind the crudo- and sashimi-based successes at some recently opened chef-run neighbourhood restaurants, and it underscores E18hteen’s serious commitment to sustainable seafood.

Our special dinner began with the kitchen sending an amuse-bouche of smoked tuna with caramelized butter and grapefruit juice. A small bite that impressed with clear and significant flavours, it raised expectations for what followed.

Among the appetizers, there were two hits. We thought highly of the meaty dungeness crab cake ($19), sandwiched between slices of melon and a yuzu crema, and the heritage-breed pork belly starter ($17), although the meat in the latter app was under-seasoned and needed help from its zingy chutney to deliver its thrills.

The raw bar selection for two ($30) did the least for us. A three-item flight included slices of salmon with a ponzu dressing, chayote and white radish, a tartare of albacore tuna on beet greens and spot prawns with kimchi. While the various combinations intrigued, the items were a little flat in flavour and mouth feel.

Salmon Tartare at Restaurant E18hteen. Photo by Peter Hum, The Ottawa Citizen.

Crudo is such an ephemeral, expensive treat. The memory of how supremely fresh morsels of fish felt and tasted ought to live on long after. Happily, I had that kind of raw-bar experience at a second visit to E18hteen — more on that below.

The main courses reflected well on E18hteen. Without exception, they were attractive plates with properly cooked proteins and thoughtful, even complex accompaniments, signalling impressive technique and culinary flair.

Lacquered black cod ($38) has been one of E18hteen’s calling-card dishes for years now, and the restaurant has this dish down. A plump filet of rich, white-fleshed fish arrived well coloured by honey, lemon and ginger and perfectly cooked, mounted on carrot purée and flanked by sugar snap peas.

Two cuts of wild boar ($38) were succulent and distinct, attesting to El-Tawel’s fondness for and expertise in sous-vide cooking. Tenderloin medallions were a lovely pink from edge to edge, ringed by a uniform sear. Bits of shank, which sat on a rich square of potato pavé, had benefitted from a longer immersion in the water oven.

The lamb rack ($44) was more satisfying still. The stars of the plate were substantially sized and perfectly rosy and they tasted even better than they looked — gnaw-off-the-bone good.

Then came an acknowledgment of our special occasion — a plate of mignardises for the table on a plate with “Happy Birthday” written on it. Even better was the maple-themed dessert ($13) suggested by our server (who, it should be said, was otherwise just a touch too quick and casual). The slice of pie was nicely refined and the maple granité was more refreshing than sweet — in other words, how I like it. Ditto the beer ice cream.

We left feeling pretty pampered. But we also wondered if E18hteen could do better with its raw bar. I returned more recently and embarked on a raw-bar raid, enjoying salmon tartare, a salsa-verde-spiked beef tartare and a flight that included more spot prawns, some salmon topped with roe in a dashi-enhanced puddle and, best of all, some meaty swordfish that stood up to a jerk/jalapeno sauce.

Wild boar main course at Restaurant E18hteen. Photo by Peter Hum, The Ottawa Citizen.

These efforts struck me as better crafted, more generous and more deeply flavoured and textured than the raw items we had tried earlier this month. Notably, it was El-Tawel himself manning the raw bar when its food shone.

The amiable chef said that the raw bar, which was very popular this summer, was winding down for the season. It might be gone in just two or three weeks, but will be back in 2014.

Having enjoyed the raw bar even more the dinner proper, I’d say go while the getting’s good — even for a special occasion.

phum@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/peterhum
ottawacitizen.com/keenappetite

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Two chefs bring Toronto flair and flavour to ByWard Market restos

Two talented young chefs from Toronto have recently moved into Ottawa kitchens, raising the bar for ByWard Market restaurants.

Kyrn Stein, who took over as executive chef at Social, on Sussex, in October, comes home to Ottawa with experience at such top Toronto restaurants as The Grove,

Kyrn Stein, executive chef at Social (Jean Levac, Ottawa Citizen) Mark McEwan’s ONE and Colborne Lane. He also worked with Jamie Kennedy at two of his Toronto restaurants and at the Michelin-starred Pied à Terre in London.

Mark Esguerra, who took over the kitchen at Stella Osteria, on Clarence, in August, worked at Toronto’s Canoe and Auberge du

Chef Mark Esguerra is the new chef at Stella Osteria (Jean Levac, Ottawa Citizen)

Pommier, as well as at Fraticelli’s in Richmond Hill, where he learned from celebrity chef Massimo Capra.

Both have introduced new menus in the last few weeks that add flair and a dash of Toronto flavour to their ByWard Market establishments. They also buck the trend for Ottawa restaurants to promote from within, and for Ottawa’s top chefs to move on to open their own restaurants, or out to bigger cities.

“It rarely happens that you get a chef to move here from a bigger city,” says Ida Firestone, co-owner of Stella Osteria, Luxe and Blue Cactus. “If anything, it goes the other way. People think they’ve outgrown Ottawa.”

Stein says the last high-profile chef to move to Ottawa from Toronto was probably Matthew Carmichael, nearly a decade ago. With his experience working under Susur Lee and travelling in Asia, Carmichael brought a fresh flavour to Ottawa that’s still apparent at his popular El Camino on Elgin Street and on the menus of many young chefs who apprenticed under him.

Like Carmichael before him, Stein, 31, is moving home by moving back to Ottawa. He attended Lycée Claudel and Nepean High School before heading to New York’s prestigious Culinary Institute of America for four years of training.

“I think there are a lot of great things going on here,” says Stein. “There are some great Ottawa chefs — Supply and Demand just came in No. 4 as a best new restaurant in Canada in enRoute magazine. But there’s always room for a fresh set of eyes, the influence of new styles. The things that are happening in Toronto happened in New York, and before New York in London.”

Stein says his new menu, launched at Social on Oct. 28, is a bit of blend of the influences of ONE, where dishes are presented very simply, and The Grove, known for its intricate plating. He hopes to amp up the Toronto experience even more by bringing in some of the top Toronto chefs he’s worked with, such as Ben Heaton of The Grove, to cook at special guest-chef dinners at Social.

Esguerra, 27, was born in the Philippines, but he and the owners of Stella say he brings an authentic Italian influence to the osteria (which means a place for serving simple Italian food).

“I grew up in a very Italian neighbourhood in Markham,” says Esguerra. “I was left with our Italian neighbours while my parents worked. I’ve kind of adopted the whole culture.”

Noah Firestone, co-owner and manager of Stella, says it’s rare to find a chef in Ottawa who doesn’t revert back to French training in the kitchen.

“I’m done with hunting for chefs in Ottawa,” he says. “You get great cooks who develop beautiful Italian menus, but French cooking is still stuck in their heads. Mark brings true Italian training, a fresh way of plating and a kind of youthful vibe too.”

Stein and Esguerra also bring new ingredients to the table.

Ida Firestone says she always thought that Stella had the best pizza crusts.

“Then we did a blind taste test and we all liked Mark’s crusts better.”

Esguerra has used his connections from Fraticelli’s to get his favourite Toronto supplier to custom-make pizza crusts and fresh pasta — something Stella has not had before — using Esguerra’s recipes.

“I think we have a more authentic bolognese sauce than we’ve ever had,” says Ida Firestone. “Mark simmers the meat with milk for eight hours, which is something he learned from Massimo Capra, and it’s served on fresh pappardelle.”

Stein is getting wild mushrooms from a Peterborough forager he met while working in B.C., as well as such rarities as huckleberries, elderberries and sea buckthorn.
He also went out of his way to source locally some ingredients, such as parsley root, and meat cuts, such as lamb saddle, that he had worked with in Toronto.

“I drove out to Navan to Lavergne meats. It’s a great place. That’s one of the things I love about Ottawa — there are all these farms just 30, 40 minutes away.”
Stein says that because there are so many chefs working in Toronto’s booming food scene “suppliers have to work harder to get them unique products.”

The menu at Stella is larger than it’s ever been, says Firestone, while Stein has completely rewritten the one at Social, adding such dishes as carrots presented in canoes of bone marrow with a parsley salad in between; scallops with jerk pork belly and chicharrón (puffed, dehydrated pork skin); and a dessert called Rocky Road, which includes “cereal milk ice cream” (à la Momofuku Milk Bar) and handmade Lucky Charms marshmallows.

Neither Stein nor Esguerra want to present themselves as better or more sophisticated than Ottawa’s chefs. But they do allow that their experience brings some exciting influences.

“Ten years ago, Ottawa was mainly pub food,” says Stein, who worked in Ottawa restaurants even when he was in high school. “Now the food scene is blossoming and there’s a good sense of community here. I could be part of an influence. There’s good things to come to Ottawa.”

Mark Esguerra’s Sweet Potato Risotto

This is one of Esguerra’s signature dishes on his new menu at Stella. He says he ran it by some of the chefs he worked with in Toronto and some suggested using roasted squash, but he prefers the more unusual sweet potato.
Makes: 4 servings

1 tbsp (15 mL) extra-virgin olive oil

Chef Mark Esguerra's Sweet Potato Risotto (Jean Levac, Ottawa Citizen)

Half small white onion, diced
¼ cup (50 mL) white wine
1 cup (250 mL) boiled and mashed sweet potato (one medium sweet potato)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1½ cups (375 mL or 300g) risotto (Arborio) rice
4 cups (1 L) chicken or vegetable stock
Parmesan, fresh grated, to your liking
2 tbsp (25 mL) unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp (15 mL) ricotta cheese
1 tbsp (15 mL) candied walnuts (store bought is fine)
8 sage leaves, fried until crispy

1. On moderate heat, add the oil to a large sauté pan. Add the onion and fry 2-3 minutes.

2. Add the wine and let simmer for 1 minute to cook off the alcohol.

3. Add mashed sweet potato and garlic, stirring continuously for 1 minute to prevent sticking.

4. Add the rice to the pan and stir in. Add one cup of the hot stock and reduce to gentle heat, stirring continuously. Once the stock has been absorbed, add one more cup and repeat until most of the broth is used.

5. Gently stirring here and there, test a spoonful, add more stock if not cooked through, and repeat as necessary. It should take about 25-30 minutes to cook until al dente.

6. Remove from the heat and add freshly grated Parmesan to taste. Add butter, salt and pepper to taste and fold in.

7. Plate immediately and garnish with ricotta, candied walnuts and fried sage.

Kyrn Stein’s Yukon Gold Gnocchi with Wild Mushrooms

A variation on this dish debuted on Social’s menu Oct. 28, has been a huge hit. It’s also one of the most accessible recipes for home cooks. “It’s the simplest gnocchi I’ve ever made,” says Stein. At Social, the gnocchi and wild mushrooms are served with a cheddar foam. Stein suggests that home cooks can substitute a bit of browned butter and fresh tarragon.
Makes: 4 to 5 servings

A bit of cooking oil, salt and pepper

Kyrn Stein's Gnocchi with wild mushrooms (Jean Levac, Ottawa Citizen)

4 Yukon Gold potatoes
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
Zest of one lemon
1 egg
2 tsp (10 mL) butter, melted
4 tsp (20 mL) Parmesan, rasped
¾ cup (175 mL) all-purpose flour
Sautéed Wild Mushrooms (recipe below)
2 tbsp (25 mL) butter
Squeeze fresh lemon juice
Fresh sage and tarragon

1. Oil and season unpeeled potatoes with salt and pepper roast at 375 F (190 C) for 35 minutes, or until tender. Scoop out potato meat and put through a ricer.

2. Put the scooped out potato into stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid) with a paddle attachment; add salt, lemon zest, egg, melted butter and Parmesan; turn machine on and add all the flour at once. Mix until dough is formed — 3 minutes on a medium setting.

3. Pull dough out of bowl onto a floured surface and kneed into a ball. Let rest for 30 minutes, covered with a cloth.

4. Roll out one-inch diameter tubes (2.5-cm) and cut into your preferred size of gnocchi.

5. Blanch the gnocchi in a pot of boiling salted water. Once they come up and float they are done; transfer onto a parchment-lined baking sheet with olive oil.

6. In a hot pan, sear gnocchi until golden brown.

7. To finish the dish, serve the Sautéed Wild Mushrooms over the gnocchi, topped with a bit of butter you’ve browned and to which you’ve added a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Garnish with some sage and tarragon.

Wild Mushrooms

Stein says “if you don’t have a mushroom forager, you can find these mushrooms at the ByWard fruit store, or just use whatever mushroom you’d like.”

2 tbsp (25 mL) vegetable oil
½ cup (125 mL) chanterelles, cleaned
½ cup (125 mL) hen of the wood mushrooms, cleaned and torn into chunks
½ cup (125 mL) yellow foot chanterelles, cleaned
2 tsp (10 mL) butter

1. Coat the bottom of a pan with vegetable oil. Heat to its smoking point, then add mushrooms in, being sure to use a big enough pan so that the mushrooms sauté, don’t steam.

2. Once there is a nice colour on the mushrooms, finish with butter.

Wednesday, Matthew Carmichael appeared sober and contrite.

“I’m using the opportunity to take ownership of my actions and shed light on my behaviour,” the acclaimed Ottawa chef told a television interviewer.

Speaking softly, Carmichael offered himself as a “champion of change” on the issue of sexual harassment.

His demeanour was a far cry from his actions of earlier this year that led to his admissions that have sent shock waves through Ottawa’s restaurant community.

The 46-year-old chef and part-owner of Riviera, Datsun and two El Camino locations — all downtown dining hot spots — fell from grace Wednesday with his own admission that he had sexually harassed three women with inappropriate comments, and that cocaine and alcohol abuse factored into his behaviour.

A woman who worked at Riviera earlier told this newspaper Wednesday morning that she received an inappropriate message via Facebook from Carmichael.

The woman, who was at times tearful when speaking to a reporter, said she left the restaurant when she learned that Carmichael had targeted other women.

“I didn’t want to stay. I was angry, and I didn’t want to support Carmichael with my services as a worker,” said the former Riviera worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Chefs Matt Carmichael and Jordan Holley in their Sparks Street restaurant Riviera.

Carmichael also said that in June he sought therapy for drug and alcohol addiction and that he has removed himself from the operations of his restaurants for the past five months — but did not say he would be leaving them entirely.

The admissions were all the more startling given that just last week, Riviera, a Sparks Street hot spot popular with Parliament Hill denizens, from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on down, was feted as one of Canada’s Top 10 new restaurants of the year by enRoute magazine.

Yet, Carmichael’s admission was also not entirely surprising to many in Ottawa’s restaurant community, who had been swapping rumours for months.

If anything, the timing of Carmichael’s admission is of a piece with similar sexual harassment revelations involving prominent men in high-profile domains across North America, from film mogul Harvey Weinstein to New Orleans celebrity chef John Besh to Montreal Just For Laughs Festival impresario Gilbert Rozon.

The Riviera worker who spoke to this paper said that Carmichael messaged her that he liked certain clothes she wore. She did not respond to the message, she said.

“I didn’t need to feel that type of gaze when I am working,” she said.

(Riviera servers wear jeans, an apron and a dusty rose uniform shirt, and the work outfit was unisex.)

Star chef Matthew Carmichael opened El Camino in 2013

The woman spoke to York Street Entertainment, the management company behind the restaurant. Administrators there listened to her and presented her with options, including taking her complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, or another job at a different restaurant managed by York Entertainment, she said.

(In response to an inquiry, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Ministry of Labour said it does not have any records of harassment complaints about any of Carmichael’s restaurants in the past two years. A similar request to Social Justice Tribunals Ontario also found there have been no complaints about Carmichael and his restaurants.)

The woman said that one day in late May, several workers started talking about the issue. “Things changed that day for myself. Things were out in the open,” she said. She left Riviera.

She said it was more difficult when she believed she was the only one targeted. “When things like this happen, you feel isolated. When you find out it’s other women, there can be change. There’s an open dialogue now.”

The woman said she had been proud to work at Riviera.

“It was really enjoyable,” said the woman. “I was mad. He took that from me.”

The revelation of Carmichael’s behaviour claimed another Riviera worker on Wednesday afternoon when Stelios Doussis, the restaurant’s general manager, issued a statement through his lawyer, saying he had resigned.

“There is no place for sexual harassment in the workplace or in society,” the statement read.

“When these allegations came to light in June, management took immediate action and removed Matt from his managerial position and offered support to everyone affected.

“I took steps to put in place a structure to protect and support staff at Riviera and implemented support programs and benefits for staff who need assistance.

“However, I resigned from Riviera at 6 a.m. this morning, because I could not in good conscience continue in this workplace environment.”

Doussis is the husband of Seamus O’Regan, the federal minister in charge of veterans affairs.

In response to the news, enRoute, Air Canada’s inflight magazine, said it was unaware of the harassment issue when it drew up the Top 10 list, and added: “We have since updated the digital version of the piece to reflect the fact that Chef Carmichael has stepped away from daily operations of the establishment.

“We do not condone this behaviour and believe harassment has no place in the restaurant industry or anywhere else.”

Carmichael was contacted by this paper about the harassment claims on Tuesday night via email. He did not respond.

In a widely distributed email statement Wednesday morning, he said: “my fiancée Kelly Landry and I have decided together to speak out about harassment as part of my recovery. I feel this is a crucial step in this process.

“In a clear state of sobriety I feel its full effect and to the women I have harassed, I apologize.”

He also told CTV News that thanks to rehab, he was a changed person spiritually and emotionally, and that his rehabilitation is ongoing.

Meanwhile, others in Ottawa’s close-knit restaurant industry drew a line between Carmichael’s admissions this week and his departure five years ago as the chef overseeing several high-end ByWard Market restaurants.

In the fall of 2009, Carmichael was at a triumphal point in his career. As the executive chef at Restaurant E18hteen on York Street, he won the regional Gold Medal Plates competition and then finished third at the Canadian Culinary Championships.

Chef Matt Carmichael T Restaurant Eighteen in 2012.

But in the spring of 2012, Carmichael left E18hteen, SIDEDOOR and its sister restaurant, Social, with no subsequent career move charted.

E18hteen’s co-owner, Caroline Gosselin, said Wednesday that she and Carmichael went their separate ways because the chef’s behaviour was difficult, and she suspected that perhaps drugs or alcohol were factors.

Gosselin says that while Carmichael was E18hteen’s executive chef from 2006 to 2012, and held the same position at Social from 2008 to 2012, there were no reported incidents of sexual harassment.

Gosselin said that she was surprised when Carmichael came forward Wednesday, but added that she and others on Ottawa’s restaurant scene had heard whispers of turmoil at Riviera months ago.

In light of the news, Grayson McDiarmid, a sommelier and restaurant manager, and his wife, Anne-Marie McDiarmid, an event planner, have reached out to Ottawa restaurants to create a “safe restaurant list” for employers who are committed to a harassment-free workplace.

“There are a lot of great restaurants out there. I’m worried that our industry will be tainted today,” said Grayson, who has worked in close to a dozen Ottawa restaurants, including, briefly, Riviera.

“It might make it easier for people to come out. We don’t want to know what happened to people. And if something happened to a guy, they can come to our site, too. We’re hoping to make some good come out of this. We know there’s a lot of good people out there. We know there’s a lot of places to work out there.”

Ottawa chef Matthew Carmichael is not alone in abusing the power that comes with success in the restaurant industry.

On the same week that Carmichael admitted to sexually harassing three women at his acclaimed Ottawa restaurants, John Besh, a high-profile New Orleans chef, stepped down from the restaurant empire that he founded after 25 current and former female employees levelled sexual harassment allegations.

Besh made the announcement Monday, days after The Times-Picayune published stories that described a workplace rife with unwanted sexual touching and lewd comments from chefs and managers.

Chef John Besh is stepping down from the restaurant group that bears his name after a newspaper reported that 25 current or former employees of the business said they were victims of sexual harassment.

Several employees have said Besh tried to coerce them into sex — allegations that he has denied.

Like Besh, Carmichael has taken a step back from his quartet of Ottawa restaurants — Riviera, Datsun and two El Camino locations — while he deals with the substance abuse he says contributed to his behaviour.

Carmichael and Besh are both stars in the restaurant industry. But a review of records from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario suggests similar problems exist in much more modest kitchens, cafés and bars across the province.

In the past four years, the tribunal has dealt with more than a dozen sexual harassment complaints from restaurant staff. Among them:

• In June 2016, the tribunal awarded almost $30,000 in damages and lost wages to De Ana Granes, a server at the Houston Avenue Bar and Grill in Barrie because of inappropriate sexual comments and touching by one of the restaurant’s co-owners, Rajneesh Dutta. Drunk at his own restaurant, Dutta propositioned Granes, tried to kiss her and groped her in front of other staff members. “My back was turned,” Granes testified. “He came up beside me, put his arm on my arm and grabbed my right boob. It wasn’t a graze.” She resigned when her complaints were ignored.
• In September 2015, Toronto pastry chef Kate Burnham reached a confidential settlement with the owners of Weslodge Saloon, a high-end downtown restaurant, after alleging sexual harassment by three former bosses. Burham said the harassment went on for a year-and-a-half, and included repeated jokes about her sexual orientation along with regular groping incidents. A former chef, her application alleged, would “reach through her legs to grab her crotch and hold it while humping her from behind.” The allegations in the complaint were denied.
• In July 2015, Hayley Dacosta was awarded $17,000 in damages for the sexual harassment she suffered at Crabby Joe’s Tap and Grill in Napanee. Dacosta said she was harassed by the restaurant’s general manager who slapped her on the buttocks and put his genitals on her shoulder when she knelt down to get something out of the fridge. Dacosta quit her job and went to work elsewhere. 
• In March 2015, the tribunal awarded Julie Costigane $1,000 in damages for the sexual harassment that she faced upon trying to collect unpaid wages for her work as a sous chef at Toronto’s Nyood Restaurant and Bar. The former owner, Moise Bensadouin, called her “a b—-” and “a c—” — actions the tribunal found constituted sexual harassment.
• In April 2013, bartender Deborah Smith was awarded $35,000 in damages and almost $5,000 in lost wages after being propositioned, sexually harassed then fired by Bruce Dorman, owner and manager of The Rover’s Rest in Ajax. Smith testified that Dorman was particularly fixated on her buttocks and “frequently patted her buttocks with his hand, made noises when she bent over, told her that she had a ‘nice ass.'” He became jealous when she flirted with a bar patron, sent her profane letters and fired her for insubordination.
• In April 2013, Toronto waitress Hilary Vipond was awarded $18,000 for the sexual harassment and unwanted advances that she endured at the Ben Wicks Pub and Bistro. The tribunal heard that David Doherty, the pub’s manager, became so drunk that he passed out in a booth. When she woke him, he massaged her hands, tried to kiss her and offered to perform oral sex. After the incident, the woman’s weekly hours dwindled because she refused to work a closing shift with him again. She eventually quit. 

Experts say female restaurant workers are susceptible to sexual harassment because management tends to be dominated by men, while kitchens are often macho places that embrace heavy drinking and lewd behaviour. “The ‘bro’ culture in kitchens is so deeply entrenched that it has become second nature for many of the people who work there,” Toronto restaurateur and author Jen Agg wrote this week in The New Yorker. “Cooks are just ‘just boys blowing off steam’ in an impossibly high-pressure, physically demanding environment.”

Agg said the only way to change the culture is to put more women into leadership roles in kitchens and management. 

aduffy@postmedia.com

As the Ottawa restaurant industry reacts to a high-profile admission, one local restaurant is serving up an information session about sexual harassment and assault Sunday.

The event is at Union Local 613 on 315 Somerset St. W. at 3:30 p.m.

Sgt. Carolyn Botting of the Ottawa police sexual assault and child abuse section and Jo-Ann Meloche, a lawyer who provides independent legal counsel to victims of sexual assault, will be on hand to answer questions and facilitate discussion.

“Obviously it’s been a rough couple of weeks in the restaurant industry but these tough conversations are important,” said Terrilee Kelford, a partner in the Centretown restaurant known for causes like challenging sexist industry dress codes.

“I think it gives you a window in or an opportunity to have a productive conversation that needs to take place.”

The event is aimed at Ottawans, especially those in the restaurant industry, “in light of recent events.”

Last month, prominent Ottawa chef Matthew Carmichael admitted to sexually harassing three women at his acclaimed Ottawa restaurants. Carmichael said he has stepped back from Riviera, Datsun and two El Camino locations, and went to rehab to tackle the substance abuse he says contributed to his behaviour.

But as allegations mount against high-profile leaders in many industries, a review by this newspaper of records from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario suggests similar problems exist in much more modest kitchens, cafés and bars across the province.

Kelford, who started her career as a sexual assault support counsellor and now works with foster children and serves on the board of PACT-Ottawa (Persons Against the Crime of Human Trafficking), says the first place to start is to talk about the rules and laws in place. Further sessions could tackle subjects such as employment standards, she said.

Media are being asked not to attend the event so people will be able to speak freely about a sensitive topic. A therapist will also be on hand to offer support.

Recent events have started a conversation, Kelford said, and people need to be able to channel that energy into getting the facts they need to take steps towards real change.

“Information is power,” she said.

The “predatory” manager of a ByWard Market nightclub has been found guilty of sexual assault for taking advantage of a drunken server who was too impaired to give consent.

It’s the latest in a recent spate of incidents that highlight the perils women face in Ottawa’s restaurant and bar industry.

The victim, 19, testified that the manager, Mariano De Marinis, followed her into an upstairs bathroom where she intended to vomit on the night of Feb. 15, 2015. 

The victim, whose name is shielded by a publication ban, told court she was so drunk that she was unable to resist — or give consent — as he penetrated her vagina and performed oral sex in a bathroom stall.

“At that point, she recalls being confused, unable to resist, blacking out and feeling unable to move,” Justice Calum MacLeod said in recounting evidence in the case. “She described herself as ‘feeling like a potato.’”

During the previous two hours, while training as a bartender during a private party, she had consumed about 10 shots of tequila or Jack Daniels. 

The manager told a different story. De Marinis, 32, testified that the server had shown him naked photos on her cellphone then led him by the hand into the bathroom for a consensual encounter that ended when he realized she had “hit a wall” and was too drunk to continue.

In a judgment delivered last week, MacLeod rejected the manager’s version of events. As a bar manager trained to identify intoxicated customers and as someone responsible for the safety of his staff, the judge said, De Marinis should have known that his employee was impaired and in need of protection — not predation.

“The accused made no effort whatsoever to ascertain that the complainant was sufficiently sober to consent,” MacLeod concluded, adding: “I consider the behaviour of the accused to be predatory.”

A date for sentencing has not yet been set.

Facebook photo of Mariano De Marinis. 

The case represents the second criminal trial this year to turn a spotlight on the vulnerability of ByWard Market bar staff.

In September, Philip Wilson, a downtown drug dealer, was found guilty of secretly drugging, raping and videotaping 14 women — many of them bar staff — between October 2013 and March 2015.

What’s more, in October, Ottawa chef Matthew Carmichael admitted to sexually harassing three female employees at his acclaimed Ottawa restaurant Riviera. He’s now dealing with the substance abuse that he says led to his behaviour.

In the most recent case, Justice MacLeod said De Marinis used his position of authority to engage “in the worst of kind of sexism.”

In the week leading up to the sexual assault, the bar manager asked the woman whether she had nude photographs on her cellphone; suggested she didn’t need to wear underwear to work; and made other “sexualized suggestions,” MacLeod said.

“She (the victim) says she was not particularly surprised by this ‘flirty’ behaviour because it is common in the bar business,” MacLeod noted in his decision. “She says she went along with it because she wanted a job.”

Court heard that on the night in question the woman arrived at 10:30 p.m. to begin training as a bartender — a position with the most earning potential. The club permitted staff to drink on the job: They were allowed to consume or give away up to five shots each night.

The woman drank those shots, court heard, and was supplied with more alcohol by the bar manager. At 11:30 p.m., two hours before the bathroom incident, she texted a friend to say that she was “so drunk, so happy.” 

During a 10-day trial, De Marinis told court that he believed the woman had consented to sexual activity. It was only when she stopped moaning during oral sex that he realized she was impaired and “not into it,” De Marinis said.

MacLeod discounted the manager’s evidence. “I found the evidence of the accused to be delivered in a manner that was bordering on glib,” he said.

“He was clearly an intelligent and sophisticated witness who admitted that many of his activities were immoral, wrong and perhaps even illegal, but he did so with no real conviction … His vagueness about the number of drinks he knew the complainant had drunk, the precise timing of her blackout, and his inability to describe what happened to the complainant after he left her alone in the bathroom left me entirely unconvinced.”

Court heard that after the sexual assault, De Marinis left the victim on the floor of the bathroom and took her phone and underwear with him. 

She later retrieved the phone, went to another bar and told her boyfriend about the incident. He convinced her to go to hospital that morning. She made a police complaint weeks later.

The owner of the bar where De Marinis worked could not be reached for comment. 

aduffy@postmedia.com