Since the pandemic, the world has changed in the food service industry. The mom-and-pop shops that each community was famous for, have slowly been replaced with chain restaurants, skip the Dishes, Door Dash. The free-standing restaurant has taken a kick to the groin the past 4 years.
What can I do? Probably not much, but I can offer my 2 cents. With my 40-plus years of culinary experience, I wanted to take the little snippets of life in my industry and share them with the people I know and people who want to know.
I grew up in Saskatoon Saskatchewan, my mom was an amazing cook, and baker, she can and she can still do it all.
When I was about 10 years old my mother returned to school to become a nurse. Once she graduated and got a full-time job my life kind of changed in the food department. Dad and myself were left to fend for ourselves, this was a bit of a disaster as my dad couldn’t cook shit to save his life except a steak. My mom pre-did meals with meal plans and we would have to Micro Wave it. I got a little tired of the microwave express and started cooking on my own, simple things like grilled cheese, omelets, French toast almost anything in a frying pan I could master. In grade 8 we were offered as an elective, Industrial Arts or Food. I decided to take Foods as it was in
My school and didn’t have to travel across town for a class. I learned a few things but it wasn’t hey I want to be a chef. I went through high school and got a part-time job at Safeway the local grocery store where I just turned 15. My father worked in this industry for 20-plus years and I learned from going to work with him and visiting him at work. Working part time I worked in several different departments including Grocery, Dairy, and Produce. I enjoyed learning about new items that would come to the store and trying new items.
Fast forward to High School graduation, I applied to go to Hotel School and wasn’t accepted because I wasn’t old enough. I was working almost full-time hours and thought working a year was in the plans. But on the Sept long weekend our neighbor KP Gunn who was principal at Kelsey Institute ( trade school) approached me and my parents and said someone dropped out of the culinary program, he told me that year one of the Hotel would take direct credit from the culinary program, if I wanted that position in the program could be mine. I agreed even though I missed the first couple of weeks of school, I knew I could make it up.
Fast forward a year, I graduated culinary school, I won a scholarship and a major award in baking. All while working 20-plus hours a week at Safeway Bakery.
That’s how I got into this profession, I apprenticed for 4 years at different hotels and restaurants and worked under some amazing chefs, I wrote my journeyman’s exam and passed it with a mark of 92. 6 months later I had my red seal journeyman certificate in Sept of 1985.
The rest is history, in 1986-1987 I entered the Hotel and Restaurant program, and things changed in 4 short years, my credits from culinary were not being accepted, it was a long 18 months of political internal fighting in the hospitality department. I left with being short 2 credits( Typing and Sociology ). Fast forward to 2005 I took online and spent a month at the University of Guelph to complete the Hospitality Program.
This is the path I took to become a. chef. If the journey continues like I hope it will, I will blog and tell my story, is it sexy, hell no, it puts in perspective how I see this industry.
The reason I decided to take this journey is to show how much our business has changed in the last 40+ years.
The mom-and-pop restaurants of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s were a staple in every town and city’s food scene. Since Covid they are slowly starting to die off with rising cost of goods, shortage of staff, skip the dishes, there are many factors.
My goal is to review local restaurants and rate them on a bite system on, taste, presentation, value, and how the items are cooked and whether are they homemade.