Jon is incredibly direct and creates a straightforward answer about the array of topics including naming the contradictions that can be challenging within the questions. Please do enjoy listening!
Please click on the blogpost to listen from the site directly and see the full transcript.
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Some of my favourite quotes:
I’ve always told new cooks to get the flavor bible because it’s sort of an eye-opener on what actually goes with what and why.
This Bar Laurel is Spanish tapas, wine bar, lots of cocktails. ⁓ But Fauna is very Canadian, very locally sourced.
He used take me out and pick mushrooms so we would make mushroom perogies with wild mushrooms.
Because you have great, great wine growing region. You have the best farming in my opinion. You’ll probably say the Okanagan, but they’re both very good. I mean, they’re the only two places where you can grow apricots and quince and, you know, really cool product that… that’s the only two spots in Canada you can do it. But I find the food culture is not anywhere near what they do in terms of agriculture.
Duck dishes with local berries, that kind of thing is a very Ottawa dish. A lot of game dishes here too. I mean, of course it’s not wild because we’re not allowed.
Well, fauna is definitely quite strictly local. Sometimes painfully so in the middle of winter. And you don’t want to look at another root vegetable ever again.
Well, think farming is crazy. It is maybe the only job that is harder and makes you less money than cooking. And people do it out of passion. They do it because they see a need to provide for people. They’re not necessarily getting into it because they think they’re going to make a ton of money. Sadly, that’s why you’re getting these giant commercial farms, because the little guy can’t really compete anymore.
There’s people growing it and taking care of it and watering it and picking it and cleaning it. A whole bunch of stuff happens before you get to pick up your nice little neat baskets in the grocery store.
Defined nutritious food. ⁓ mean, no additives. As few preservatives as possible. ⁓ Mostly fresh. A lot of raw or very lightly cooked vegetables. ⁓ I like, I love meat. I could never be a vegetarian. ⁓ But I do like the recent sort of growth of the vegetable forward.
There’s people doing cool stuff. I feel like everyone’s suddenly realized, hey, this is the capital city of the country. We should be doing some good stuff.
Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you think – I have attached the full transcript here as well – let me know if you think this is interesting or helpful!
Thank you and Happy Tasting!
Irena
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Full Transcript Below:
Irena (00:01.208)
Let’s Taste Canada is a tasty food adventure. are traveling around to explore, celebrate, laugh and learn about food. So let the conversation begin.
So we’re on the Let’s Taste Canada Food Talk podcast and I’m here with Jon in Ottawa. So I will let you introduce yourself.
I’m Jon. I’m the chef owner of Bar Laurel and Fauna. Very cool.
Do you want to add a little bit more about where you came from? I trained with John Taylor mostly. don’t know, he’s actually on the west coast right now. He was definitely the grandfather of Book of Cuisine in Ottawa, maybe in Canada. He was doing like seed loans and that with farmers, I mean 20 years before Noma was the best restaurant in world. So I gave him huge props for what he did when he did it way, way ahead of his time. I worked for him for six years, opened one of his restaurants for him. He just recently sold his restaurants and moved out west. His son’s out there, he wanted to travel out there. I give him a lot of props for making me who I am in terms of cooking, and a lot of other people in the city as well. That’s most of my cooking background. I’ve had other jobs, but I would say he’s the guy of note that really got me into the local, especially with fauna. This Bar Larela is Spanish tapas, wine bar, lots of cocktails. But fauna is very Canadian, very locally sourced.
This is a bit more of fun thing because no one in Ottawa was doing the Spanish thing and I like the way they sort of snack and eat and try a bunch of different stuff but Fauna is more of a passion project. little bit more refined and very local, very Canadian.
Irena Cool. And where did you grow up?
Jon: I grew up in Niagara, actually. Cool. So I worked on a lot of farms when I was a teenager, sort of my summer job, working at orchards, picking fruit, pruning, doing a lot of hard work related to it. So I think that gave me a definite respect for food. It’s not just this magical stuff that shows up on your table, there’s people growing it and taking care of it and watering it and picking it and cleaning it. A whole bunch of stuff happens before you get to pick up your nice little neat baskets in the grocery store. And I think a lot of people have lost touch with that. Very fair. Yeah. When did you first fall in love with food? It’s weird. I went to University for Urban Planning. kind of liked it. I liked certain aspects of it, but I hated certain aspects of it. And I came to realize that I was not a desk person. I did construction for a while, wanted something a little more. Maybe not white collar, but creative. I found construction to be too boring, very dull. Same thing day in and day out. I’d always kind of enjoyed cooking and had friends over to make dinner, have a good barbecue. Everyone was always liking it. I was 26 and I was like, I don’t really know what I want to do. My sister was like, you’ve always been a really good cook, why don’t you go to cooking school? So I did. I did one year and…
Irena (03:28.266)
You really have a good close family for that.
Jon:
So they were, I was like, that’s good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. But yeah, that’s how came about. It wasn’t like something I thought of when I was young and I was like, I want to be a chef. It just sort of happened naturally and then it seemed like a good idea. And that’s when I started, I started in hotels first and then I transitioned to Domus with John and then that’s sort of when I was really liking it.
Irena This is really cool.
Jon
It’s a lot of work, but it’s cool. It’s fun to do. What did you really find enjoyable about cooking the culinary school aspect? Because there had to be something in there that made you say, yeah, I want to least stick out. With the culinary school, school was good for getting me in a kitchen every day, you know, developing my knife. So it’s getting you used to sort of, there is repetition in cooking, obviously. So it sort of got me used to the idea of how it would go. In terms of learning, not to speak ill of anyone, I school could have done a little better. I won’t say where I went, but I felt like the class sizes were too big. There was too many people who were just there as sort of a hobby and there wasn’t enough focus on local, there wasn’t enough focus on more current trends. Most of the learning happened after school.
Was there a dish that you really found that you were super impressed with early on that you made? The first food I started making was Asian of all sorts because it was all ingredients that I’d never used before and I found it exciting. can’t really narrow it down but I would definitely say Japanese. I liked making sushi a lot when I first started. I never worked in sushi restaurant but it was definitely a fun thing to do. My friends were coming over.
I like Thai food, that kind of stuff. I also love the classic French and more European style and that’s more what I actually do. But in terms of the first food I was really excited about it was Asian because everything was cooked completely different.
Irena Cool. Do you have a favorite food memory?
Jon Oh, that’s interesting. Yes, I do actually.
I’m Lithuanian and German, so Eastern European. And my grandma, making perogies with my grandma would be probably my fondest food memory. She was fantastic cook. Right up until 99, she was making her own ricotta and always doing something new in the kitchen. She was very cool.
Irena That’s amazing. So do you want to talk a little bit about the process of making these for me? Because it’s not like a simple thing.
Jon Yeah, it’s I mean, you have to we would do a potato based dough with sour cream in it, egg, flour, if sort of make the dough, let it rest. Then you make the separate fillings. So we would do potato cheddar. So again, you would do I opted after and would make part Bachelorette, part potato with the cheese so the inside was super melty and people are like this is not a normal perogy. Yeah I took it a little bit further. We also did a lot of mushroom. My dad likes to wild mushrooms or did he’s a bit too old for that now but he used to take me out and pick mushrooms so we would make mushroom perogies with wild mushrooms which is pretty cool. So I would say
That was, that was, that’s my best food memory. It’s like making perogies to my grandma.
Irena Cool. Do you have a pet peeve around food?
Jon: have lots. I hate food trends.
Irena: Anyone in specific or just in general?
Jon: It’s not that I don’t like, I like all food. If it’s done well, I like it. I just hate that like. Do we need five million taco restaurants right now because tacos are cool? Do we really need more burger places? Do we? I don’t like kitschy trendy. I like just do a good job. Not to say that there aren’t people doing a good job of tacos and burgers, but I find the Canadian populace gets really wrapped up in trends and tends to ignore people who are actually putting in a huge amount of effort to bring you something special.
That high-flying, that’s my, I would say my biggest pet peeve.
Irena Don’t just look at the shiny?
Jon: It’s the trend and the value hunting. That bothers me. There was an article in the National Post recently about why there’s no Sam Pellegrino listed restaurants in Canada. And I read the article and it basically said, look at a reflection of your spoon because you’re not willing to spend money.
that’s going to support a restaurant that can be on the leading edge of creative cooking. Sort of stated that, you know, if you’re sitting and eating a Korean fried chicken sandwich, which is delicious, but it costs you seven bucks and it makes you very full, and then you have a fine dining meal, that’s six or seven courses, and you’re like, well, I was more full off of the fried chicken sandwich. You sort of missed the point of…
fine dining experience. And not to say everything needs to be fine dining either because there’s great casual spots. Our meal at Pigeon Hole was great. Like very elemental, very simple, but everything very well done. And it verged from like sweet food to fine dining throughout the meal, which I thought was cool. But yeah, it bothers me that people are sort of bargain hunters when it comes to their meals and…
It’s hard to convey how much work it is, not only for what we do in the restaurant, but for what farmers do before it even gets into our hands. And then we transform it again, and then you get this perfect meal in front of you. And people often don’t want to pay for it. It’s a bit of a peeve. Yeah, that’s a legit peeve in my opinion. Yeah.
Irena:
Do you want to expand a little bit more on the work behind the food as well? You talked about the farming aspect as well as the creative aspect in the kitchen. Do you want to leave it at that?
Jon:
Well, think farming is crazy. It is maybe the only job that is harder and makes you less money than cooking. And people do it out of passion. They do it because they see a need to provide for people. They’re not necessarily getting into it because they think they’re going to make a ton of money. Sadly, that’s why you’re getting these giant commercial farms, because the little guy can’t really compete anymore. The way we look at food and deliver food, it’s too profit based here, I think. And it sort of takes the… human side out of it. But yeah, just I’ve picked cucumbers. It is the worst thing you will ever do.
Irena cucumbers?
Jon:
You are walking in a field that is prickly and itchy. Everything is below your knee and you are bent over with a basket tied around your neck basically and you’re picking. Now they have machines that will do it, but I think you lose something when you, you know, mechanize absolutely everything.
But yeah, people don’t think about it, it’s like here’s this awesome cucumber, somebody watered it and picked it and cleaned it. Now with automated farming, it’s less and less, but I think there’s a disconnect between how much work goes into farming and providing what we take for granted.
So everybody should pick cucumbers at some point?
Jon:
I think everyone should work on a farm and in a restaurant. I think would make for a more informed populace.
Irena: Fair enough. So do you want to comment a little bit on the food culture here? And you can also comment on Niagara as well if you want to.
Jon: I don’t go back to Niagara that often. My parents still live there, but we always meet them. It’s just cottage. But when I go back, it’s a bit sad because you have great great wine growing region. You have the best farming in my opinion. You’ll probably say the Okanagan, but they’re both very good. I mean, they’re the only two places where you can grow apricots and quince and, you know, really cool product that that’s the only two spots in Canada you can do it. But I find the food culture is not anywhere near what they do in terms of agriculture. And agri is either
sort of bedroom community or tourism. So we were in Niagara-on-the-Lake a couple years ago. Beautiful, beautiful town. Like it’s almost too nice, picturesque. And we’re looking around to have a bite to eat and like was chicken, Caesar wraps and wings and burgers. I was like, we are in the middle of the best growing region in this country or second best depending on where you’re from. And we’re on the water.
looking like on the Great Lakes, looking across Toronto and I can’t find a real meal that I want to sit down and eat. It’s depressing. Some of the wineries have great food, but then it’s more of a, it’s more of a, you know, an occasion. So Trius, we had a great meal. my parents there for the 50th. It was, you know, fine dining, but there was nothing in between that you could just go sit down and have like.
something real to eat. I think the back house is open now in Ireland Lake and I think they’re doing a pretty good job if I haven’t had a chance to try it out. But like this town is spectacular. You’re in the middle of wine region and it’s like processed food. So someone could take advantage of the opportunity there. Yes, definitely.
It was somewhat depressing. I really, can’t sit down and just have somebody make me a proper lunch. So what you’re saying is that that area is really focused on agriculture, but perhaps it’s still… Agriculture and tourism, dealing with the wine, but I feel like the cities haven’t really taken advantage of what is growing down there. Very interesting. And then here…
Ottawa’s come a long way, especially in last five years. The restaurant scene is booming. There’s people doing cool stuff. I feel like everyone’s suddenly realized, hey, this is the capital city of the country. We should be doing some good stuff. Also, there’s, at the same time, been a real rise in chain restaurants, which I’m not a fan of
It’s the same thing repackaged in a slightly different way and I’m confused as to why people wrote them. That’s right. I called them out. So yeah, the chains confuse me. think.
Ottawa was maybe behind in restaurants, but it was also behind in a good way of not having chains. But I guess growth is growth. You can’t really do anything about it. But it confuses me why people go to those places. I’ve been. I’ve been and been like, maybe I’m being overly harsh. And then I’m like, no, I’m not.
What do think is the mindset of people in the way that they look at food here? Do you think that they’re interested in it? They are and they’re becoming more interested in it. Ottawa is a very educated city. We are very lucky in that it’s a very big, almost strictly middle class city. We don’t have too many extremes. mean, every city’s got its problems, but I think there’s less here.
The federal government being the main employer gives a lot of people a pretty nice life. And then we have some tech and some other spin-off industries. There’s hydro generation. There’s some aerospace. So it’s a pretty well-rounded, well-educated city, which creates a nice setting for restaurants overall. I’m pretty happy people have been supportive. They need to stop going to chain restaurants. Bye.
Overall, I think people care and I think it’s only getting better.
Irena: Awesome. So what does food actually represent your meaning to you?
Jon: That’s a tricky question. I mean, it’s my way of making a living. I’m married to have two kids, so it’s important that I actually can create some money out of it. It’s also a passion for me. It’s fun. It’s a way of communicating. It’s a way of sort of letting people know like this is Ottawa food. think Ottawa has developed a distinct style. have a lot of advantages here. We have, think, one of the best dairy regions in the world. Cheese is from here consistently winning world-class prizes. So we have… that to work with, which is fun. We a pretty good growing climate. The winters are too long for sure, but the summers other than this one has been rainy but are generally hot and they go well into September and sometimes October, so we have a decent growing season. We have Montreal very close by and there’s some good regions there where they grow stuff that doesn’t grow here because it’s slightly warmer, so they have some micro climates.
So can get almost anything, which is nice. Like, I get fresh artichokes. I can get, you know, all the stone fruit I want. I still draw that from Niagara as well. it’s a good region for inspiration. There’s a lot of nice green areas as well. I can go pick mushrooms if I want here. Wild garlic. It’s a pretty easy city to be inspired by in terms of food.
Like I said, the population is only becoming more aware of it.
Irena: What would you say is the sort of regional dish for this area?
Jon: it’s a bit of challenging question, but… I would say the duck we get around here is the best in the country. It’s funny, we had duck… just now and like we got the cured duck prosciutto and the meat strip is like this big and the fat cap and we get whole ducks we dry-age whole ducks here sometimes and they’re the size of a turkey so like one magre is like that big so definitely like duck dishes with local berries that kind of thing is a very you know Ottawa dish
A lot of game dishes here too. I mean, of course it’s not wild because we’re not allowed to do that. Only Newfoundland, which is pretty cool. They can serve what they catch, which I think is awesome. In Ontario, that might be detrimental to the deer population, but we do a lot of game at Fauna, and I think that represents the area well, because it’s always been like, you know, it was a lumber town. It was very frontier, pretty rough for a long time. It’s only now sort of growing up, but…
I think duck would be our regional protein, I would say. would you say is sustainable food for you? For me, best farming practices, know, least amount of pesticides, no Monsanto bullshit. Respect for land, crop rotation, in terms of produce, I think that is the way to go.
Making sure you’re not just growing giant fields of, you know, monocultured corn. You need biodiversity. It helps the environment. Seafood. Seafood is tricky in Ottawa. We are pretty far inland. Luckily we have Montreal close by and we can get some pretty decent fish. But I always go sustainable. People always ask me if it’s the seafood local. And I was like, no, not.
We try to get Canadian stuff, but for me, when it comes to seafood sustainability is much more important than locality. So if I can get a, what’s it called, kingfish from Panama, I will get it because the farming practices are much, better. We have the Wells Vone here who does a great job of bringing in sustainable seafood. Ontario first shrimp is cool, so it’s like a land-based shrimp farming in Ontario, which that product is pretty neat. I believe currently it’s not always possible, but I try to make it like 90 % of the time our seafood is all ocean-wise. So we take it pretty seriously some of your restaurants and valleys and some of your workroom food that way. I know you’ve kind of woven it in, but does anything speak specifically to you? Well, fauna is definitely quite strictly local. Sometimes painfully so in the middle of winter. And you don’t want to look at another root vegetable ever again.
But yeah, we take it pretty seriously at Fauna. We do our very best to source locally, source sustainably, and present the food in a sort of modern, progressive manner. You know, some of the newer techniques are fun to use. People who get this molecular gastronomy thing, I don’t, I think that term is kind of dead. It’s just cooking techniques that have developed in the last 50 years as opposed to the 400 years before that. So I think it’s a bit of a misnomer, but I do like to dabble. The food science, I think it makes for better, more consistent food. It maximizes.
Flavor, it minimizes waste. I mean, with dehydrators and we’re getting a freeze dryer, which I’m super excited about, there is no waste. Everything goes in the dehydrator or freeze dryer and is used to flavor something else. That’s what we’re about at Fano. Laurel, I love Spain. I love Spanish wine. I like how casual it is there. You just sort of wander around in half little bites. And this place is sort of my recreation of that.
That being said, we do bring in the vellota hams and charcuterie from Spain because you cannot replicate it. I would like to learn how and I’m going to work on getting someone locally to feed acorns to a Berkshire pig. But I still don’t think you’ll be able to mimic the Patanegra. So I’m a bit guilty of going against the locality here, but you can’t have a Spanish restaurant without vellota products. It just doesn’t.
It doesn’t work. But yeah, we keep it very traditional. Anything outside of the imported ham, we’d still stick to very local. So it’s just sort of one component that we shop out because it’s… I want some authenticity. that brings it. As well as the… We serve the kombanos, which is the tin seafood. So it’s funny, over there at Sacadalica Sea, everyone eats it here. People get a little weirded out when you get served razor clams in a tin.
But they’re all hand-packed. They’re sustainably fished. It’s from a tiny village in Galicia. So it’s a cool product. You talk a lot about having fun with the food. So what’s most fun part for you? Coming up with a dish is pretty fun. Thinking about where you want it to go. Thinking ahead about products. Preserving products. Fermenting. So you like the challenge as well? Yeah.
I find it fun. mean, know, service can get very, very stressful. If I get to be in the basement prepping new dishes and coming up with new stuff, it’s fun. What was your last food adventure? I mean, I find any time I go to a new city and go into their farmers market, it’s kind of adventure. You get to see what’s grown there.
depending on what time of year it is. I mean, even going to Calgary, it was a lot of fun going to Pigeon Hole. They did a great meal. There’s definitely a little bit of a local difference on how they cook. I find that interesting. I love going to markets whenever I travel. have like…
Always want to cook at least one meal. When we went to Spain, not the last time, but four years ago, we went to La Bucurria in Barcelona and that market was mind-blowing. you know, half a kilometer of live shellfish is pretty crazy. We went to the apartment, I cooked almost every day. And you just can’t get that here. So it’s fun to sort of dive into another.
cultures, market, and see what you can make of it. That’s super fun. Cool. What are some staples that you always have in your fridge? Here or at home? Or here, I guess. I survive on hummus and tabbouleh and pita. A lot of long days, a lot of later nights, and I think that’s got to be in my fridge or I have to get a bit a panic attack.
That’s my comfort food. I know it sounds like a bit of a weird one, but Ottawa’s got a really big Middle Eastern population, so we have some really good places to grab hummus, pita, meat pies, cheese pies. that’s one I… It’s just so easy to open a fridge and it’s there. My son’s favorite food is salmon, so there’s always a pretty big chunk of cooked.
West Coast salmon in the fridge. I’m happy that it’s his favorite food because a lot of kids won’t even touch fish. But I think those are the ones that are like always have to be there. I’m pretty into not having the same thing in the fridge all the time and trying to get my kids to eat as much different stuff, which generally works. They’re pretty good. It’s hard work, but we’ve got there. They can order their own meals in the restaurant now and ask them what they want.
Try new things, most of the time.
Irena: That’s great. So if you were going to travel somewhere and you lived for a couple of months and you could buy some of normal stuff that’s fresh and herbs, what would you take with you as two to five spices that you would take with you?
Jon: To bring from here to somewhere else? Other than salt and pepper. I’m trying to think of where I would go, where I would want to bring…things from here.
Irena: This question came out because I literally had to travel for school for like three or four months and I got tired of rebuying spices so I had to take a few with me so that’s fine.
Jon: Like dried spice? Or fresh herbs? I use mostly fresh.
IrenaSo you wouldn’t bring anything with you?
Jon: I just yeah I think if I was traveling somewhere I’d be wanting to more immersed myself in what they have there, then bring something with me. Fair enough. If I were to go to Japan, which was, if I were to go somewhere for an extended period of time and like sort of learn cooking, it would probably be Japan. I don’t think I’d be bringing anything with me. I’d be like, show me what you guys do here.
Irena: Fair enough. Cool. How would you define nutritious food?
Jon: Define nutritious food? I mean, no additives as few preservatives as possible. Mostly fresh, a lot of raw or very lightly cooked vegetables. I like, I love meat, I could never be a vegetarian, but I do like the recent sort of growth of the vegetable forward menus that are coming out and having the vegetables sort of be the star if you want them to be or order a meat dish.
You know, use of healthy oils, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, know, no hydrogen, fats, grass-fed meats.
Irena: Now, what would you define as a healthy relationship with food?
Jon:
Respect for where it comes from, appreciation for where it comes from, appreciation that we live somewhere where you can basically get anything you want, anytime you want it. I mean, obviously not for everyone, but Canada’s a pretty blessed country to live in, I think. Not taking it for an advantage, like not taking advantage of it. Not just stuffing your face with… shitty take out. yeah, an appreciation for being lucky enough to, you know, walk down the street, go to a market, and buy something directly from the person who grew it and not wasting it. Wasting food is annoying. Yeah. That’s added to your pet food at least. Yeah.
Irena: And what do you think influences the foods that people end up eating?
Jon:
Unfortunately, think advertising does seep in. People are a little bit too obsessed with convenience and not having to do anything with their food. I think it makes for the rise of 600 different burger places. And the perceived value, I think, is one that people… It baffles me a little bit why people make some of the decisions that they do.
I people think if they’re going to an independent restaurant, it’s immediately fancy and they’re going to spend more money, but that’s not really the case. Again, to bring up the chains, which I love. Like you go to – people think they’re getting better value because they’re going to a chain, but if you look at the prices on the menu, they’re the same or higher than any of the independent restaurants that I know of.
Obviously barring a taste in any only place because you’re going for an experience not… you’re not paying for the food, you’re paying for… I mean you are, but you’re paying for everything that surrounds it. Yeah.
Irena (31:15.822)
I’m still working on this question so bear with me a little bit but how does or does the fact that some people struggle to get enough in terms of quality and quantity of food to meet their nutrition needs affect some of your work?
Jon: do you mean like in terms of their ability to afford it? mean sadly I don’t think it affects my work because I’m lucky enough to deal with a pretty privileged class of people. I’ve already said Ottawa’s, it’s a fairly cozy place to live, not to make people go wanting. I don’t think it directly affects my work. I would like to be more involved in helping people get access to healthier food.
There are like good food boxes here that are grown from community gardens and delivered to people who otherwise wouldn’t be buying nutritious food. Because unfortunately when you have no money, you buy carbs and calories. It’s been proven. You buy what fills you up for the least amount of money you can possibly spend. Which is a pretty crappy way to eat. So I think it’s unfortunate, but I don’t really think it affects.
my industry, per se. Sure. If you want to pass on the next one, it’s totally fine, but I’ll ask it anyways. Do you have an example or story or experience that involves either food access, food bias, or food shaming that you wanted to share?
Jon: Food shaming, I’m not super familiar with. Is it the same thing as like fat shaming? Same idea? mean, it’s not like a technical term or anything else, but just like… I mean, there’s definitely some misinformation out there about fat being bad for you. It’s sort of a 1970s thing that never went away. mean, obviously eating tons of fatty food is not going to be good, but you also do need some healthy fats to be healthy. And I think people have a strange attitude towards it get very freaked out by fat, especially if you’re ordering a ribeye steak and then complaining that it’s fatty afterwards. you’re seeing a lot of fear of food you didn’t eat. There’s a lot of weirdness surrounding, I would say, fats. Now with avocado oil and coconut oil, people are starting to be like, oh, it’s OK. And a lot of people don’t know if your beef is grass-fed, it’s healthy fat. Your body eats it.
I don’t know if that’s exactly food shaming. It’s an element of… I think… I mean, there are some foods that should be shamed. I mean, we have all these, you know, taxes on our alcohol and cigarettes, which I understand they’re there to provide health care. I’m not against it. But then why can you go buy a piece of processed garbage that will do just as much harm to you as smoking a cigarette? And you can get it for two bucks.
It’s sort of the reverse of foodshaming. Maybe some foods should be shamed and our access to them is way too easy and unfortunately people who don’t have enough money are sort of forced into buying them.
Irena
Cool, thanks for that. What does food security or if you’re familiar with the term food security, community food security or household food security mean to you?
Jon:
I mean it’s access to nutritious food as far as I can tell. I have done some reading on it. I know that a lot of northern communities are having issues getting in no healthy fresh vegetables, fresh foods due to shipping costs or whatever else the problem may be. I think I was reading about Labrador in particular having a lot of problems where indigenous communities can no longer hunt and fish enough to sustain their populations but they also can’t get access to healthy fresh products which is a pretty crappy problem. Something I would like to help with but don’t really know how to engage in helping but that’s what food spirit is to me. – and the whole country was kind of like pulling its breath and I remember going to a couple grocery stores and the selection had dropped considerably and everything kind of looked like crap and it was the first time ever in my life that I’ve been like hmm we’re not as like high and mighty as we might think we are because people didn’t want to pay for the product in American dollars. recovered fairly quickly and it was only a couple instances, but I remember going to the store and being like, I don’t want to buy any of this crap. It looks like garbage. And it’s clearly because the wholesaler was selling everything to the states for a higher profit.
It’s going to sound weird, but I I profit from food. I have to, but I think there might be a little bit too much profiteering from food, especially on the wholesale level, wherein you should maybe just make sure everyone gets to eat.
Irena One of the definitions that I like to use, I don’t often always share it, but – availability and accessibility of nutritious, sustainably grown food that’s affordable, culturally appropriate, and can be obtained with dignity
Jon: I read an article about heart disease and people who live in Southern Ontario in the GTA are much less likely to develop it because they have anything they want all the time. It’s easy to eat healthy when it’s just…
Irena: So obviously you are a business so that’s totally fine. I’ve gotten lots of very interesting answers to this question. I know it’s hard one. What would you do if you had a project related to food or food security that with about $500,000
Jon: That’s a lot of money. I think I would like to… Establish a supply chain with some northern communities and allow indigenous people to hunt and sell products to restaurants. think it would be cool. I think it would support a traditional way of life while giving them an income and getting me a product I would be super excited to use. And establishing, you know, just a better… I think the delivery system we have for food is strange and…
There’s still a lot of middlemen marking up the price every time it changes hands. And I feel like with the internet we have now, why can’t there be a better established, more direct, cheaper way to get access to good food? having a chain that makes sure things get to where they need to go, because food should be a right, not a privilege. And it doesn’t make sense that it’s completely profit driven.
Even though I own a restaurant. It’s hard not to contradict yourself with some of these questions. You did that on purpose.
Irena: They’re hard questions and it depends on which angle you look at it for sure. So thanks for bearing with me. So what dish, I mean in terms of talking about being excited to create something, what dish on your menu right now is your favorite?
Jon: Let me think. Here I love the octopus dish. It’s… It’s a sous vide octopus, cooked for five and a half hours. Very tender, then we char it up. We have a wood-fired oven here, which is… We’re very lucky, I inherited it when I bought the restaurant, so that was here before. It was a settling point when you bought the Definitely. Because to install them is a crazy amount of money. So I like combining the more modern technique of sous vide, but then…
putting it in the wood fire oven to give it that rustic charred smoky flavor. Along with the Morthia that we use from Spain, it’s like a classic Spanish dish, but it’s got a lot of technique behind it that the person eating it doesn’t know why it’s so good. I find that kind of fun. I like understated when it comes to food. At Fana currently.
I mean my chef cuisine Billy Koo has done an awesome job there. He’s got a smoked bison bavette on that’s very cool. So we use trans-vitaminase to layer the bavettes and it glues the proteins together. Then he cold smokes it and then it’s sous vide and then it’s butter based in a pan. So a lot of steps to deliver you this unassuming perfect cube of meat. That’s one of the reasons why you’re talking about the work behind everything.
Irena: Yeah. thanks for that. Do you have a piece of advice or a lesson or something that you kind of live by or that you think people should consider or could consider?
Jon: That’s a really open question. No such thing as a free ride. If you want something, you have to work for it.
If you want something don’t complain about the path it takes to get there. You just have to stick to it and do it
Irena: Do you have a book or resource or recommendation that you think would be interesting for people to take a look at?
Jon: There’s a lot of books. I use the internet a lot. It’s amazing now what you can find in terms of a cooking technique. If you know your keywords, you can find almost anything online. It’s actually pretty amazing in terms of being a chef. Once you get to a level where you know what you’re looking for, you can really be informed within a couple of minutes. In terms of books, mean… can be any research.
I’ve always told new cooks to get the flavor viable because it’s sort of an eye-opener on what actually goes with what and why. Modernist cuisine is fun. It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s like six volumes of 600 pages each of science behind cooking. But again, I think you can find all of it online now, so don’t spend the 600 bucks. I might get in trouble for saying that. But it’s pretty fun.
highlighted the parts that are, some of it is even for me, I’m like, okay, I’m never going to do this. I don’t have a centrifuge and a roto evaporator and maybe one day we’ll get them as toys, they don’t. Tybold was the head of technology, I think, for Microsoft before he decided to open a crazy food lab and hire great chefs to play with food all the way. It’s pretty cool.
Yeah. And not that I use it per se, but there’s definitely elements in the food. like I said, I like understated. I like the food to look like food. But I like the some of the hidden techniques that people are like, why does this taste so good? I find that fun. Awesome. So if you were going to be a food, what food would you be? Food, that’s hard. It’s only hard for food people. Yeah.
I don’t know if I want to be eaten.
Irena: You are not the first person to eat that at this point.
Jon: Maybe a tuna? Maybe a tuna? Is there a reason behind that? Oh, they’re giant, powerful animals. They get to swim around and eat whatever they want for a few years before we eat them. I don’t know you’ve ever seen what like a, you know, three to four hundred pound big-eyed or bluefin tuna looks like but it is a crazy impressive creature when it comes to water. I can’t say I’ve been tuna fishing yet. Well I’ve never caught one but you can you can see we watched a video about I can’t remember what it was called it was just about the sad fact that we’re probably just gonna eat them all and we won’t have them soon but some of the fish that they put in water in that documentary are insane. Crazy.
Irena:
you have a recipe that represents Canadian food that you think you would be willing to share?
Jon: I think so. I don’t know if I could describe it offhand. But I think we can send you something cool.
Irena: But actually, what is a food that think everybody should try? This is a good one and this is one that people don’t want to try.
Jon: If you are lucky enough to eat a very fresh prawn, you should suck the guts out of the head.
Irena Say that again.
Jon: So if you’re lucky enough to be able to get super fresh prawns or shrimp, you should suck the guts out of the head.
Irena: Interesting.
Jon: It’s delicious. It’s the best part of the whole creature. I say that’s something everyone should try. And it’s hard to get people to try it. We’ve done like, we get live BC spot prawns in May and we get them flown in. And I’m always like, you tell the customers to suck on the heads because it’s delicious and not everyone does it. But it’s, it’s very good. So where did you learn about this? I mean, everyone’s, anyone who really likes shellfish has, I feel like has always known that.
Irena: I missed this memo.
Jon: In Asia, for sure, I was lucky enough to go to Japan and Taiwan and Hong Kong. It’s definitely like, you know, throw away the meat, suck on the head kind of thing. Not that they do, but it’s the best part. I mean, in the South, they like doing it. Even with crayfish.
Irena: Cool. Do you have any other stories or parting thoughts or anything you’d like to share? or that I missed somewhere along the way?
Jon: I don’t think you missed anything. I feel like it’s been pretty broad interview, touching a lot of things. I just think people need to get out of their comfort zone with food and try something new. I do not understand how stuck people get in their eating routines. It is baffling to me. And I wish that people would go out and…
Try something different. It’s great to be in a multicultural country like Canada. We can get whatever we want all the time. I can go for Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai. I think people get way too focused and get tunnel vision when it comes to dining.
Irena: Yeah. Some great last words. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.
Jon: My pleasure.
Irena (46:58.936)
Thank you so much for joining us. May this be an invitation to explore the meal of ideas around what is our relationship to food.