On the pressure to be precise

Was cooking an important part of your upbringing?

When I was young we had family dinners where we wouldn’t leave the table for three hours, and I feel really lucky that I had that experience–even if we were in a fight we sat down together and ate. I lived in France for a bit when I was a kid and later spent many summers there because my dad’s family is French. Looking back I realize how my time there instilled in me the notion of food as life. We would go to a friend of a friend’s farm and have these six hour lunches. Growing up my mom was the cook, my dad probably cooks three French things but he’s not in the kitchen so much. My mom is a great cook, both of my parents worked full time and my mom would come home and cook a beautiful meal for us from scratch every night and now as an adult I’m like, “how?”

I worked on an organic greens farm when I was 21 which is when my passion for food really blew up. We planted seeds and got to harvest what we grew. I had never really thought about organic food or growing my own food. We had a garden when I was young but to see the whole process and to be able to bring that produce home and cook from it was really formative. I was living in Australia at the time working front of house in a restaurant and at the greens farm at the same time. On my days off I would go to the grocery store with so many recipes in mind and then spend all day making food. That experience really deepened my connection to cooking.

Can you talk about your shift from working in restaurants to freelance and what initiated that leap of faith?

I moved to Montreal two and half years ago and before coming here I was head chef at two restaurants. It was amazing and I learned so much but it was largely during Covid and I got burnt out. I was really overwhelmed and wanted to keep working with food but needed to find new ways of doing it. Since living in Montreal I’ve been exploring different avenues of working with food. At the moment I’m feeling a little discouraged with the freelance lifestyle. I’m going to keep trying but I’m also going to be applying for jobs at restaurants this week. I’m a bit emotional about it and also excited to re-enter the restaurant, and work and learn with people in a kitchen.

Freelance is hard, thriving in Montreal in February is hard.

Yeah, it’s been really hard. In the summer I was doing quite a bit of private cheffing and meal prep for people but what I really want to do is more creative things–pop-ups, food installations in galleries or catering for art spaces and brands and modelling the food off the art that’s being shown. I have lots of ideas for very elaborate food experiences that require a lot of money so I have been marketing myself for that, but only very recently. It’s just not materializing fast enough to pay rent.

Where do you draw inspiration from and are you able to maintain that inspiration through difficult moments?

I draw a lot of inspiration from seasonal vegetables. The times where I’ve had the most ideas have been when I was working in a restaurant and we were ordering from local farms. Being in a cycle of receiving fresh produce and feeling connected to its source seemed to encourage all of these ideas to bubble up. Also, working in a restaurant kitchen where you have access to a fridge of ferments or different vinegars, for example, many different things to draw from, that’s really inspiring. At the moment I have a lot of ideas but feel a bit caught in the weeds of marketing, social media and doing all of these things to develop a platform and find employment that would give me the freedom to explore the creative stuff. It’s hard to be fully in the practice of cooking when I’m doing all of these other things.

Can you elaborate on the importance of cooking with the seasons and your process for sourcing food while living in a big city?

It’s definitely harder living in Montreal and I feel more out of touch with the seasons living here. I try to stay in tune, and I’m lucky to live within walking distance from Jean Talon Market, but that market isn’t necessarily a reflection of the seasons. I do have my favorite little vendors at the market, and on summer weekends I’ll go to the local farm stalls. I want to make better connections with farms, that’s a goal. In Victoria where I’m from I had way more connections to farms, it’s a smaller place and the climate is more temperate so it’s easier to find what’s in season.

What’s your relationship to growing your own food?

I think it’s really important, even if you’re just growing a basil plant on your windowsill. We can’t be growing all the food we eat but having a connection to something that you’ve grown and are going to eat plays a bigger role than we realize. It connects us to the earth and being human and the importance of food. It also fosters more respect for where you’re buying your food from. My patio is tiny but I pack a lot on it. Growing food makes me really happy. One of the restaurants where I was the chef had a permaculture farm on the property. The gardener would come every day with a wheelbarrow full of the day’s harvest, it was amazing. The place in Victoria where I was a chef had a garden too. Connection to the source is the foundation of how I think about food. Starting small and having a connection to something that you’re going to eat, by growing it, is so simple and powerful.

Totally! I could probably grow a green onion in my bedroom if I wanted to.

You can just plant the white part in water and it’ll grow. I plant way too many seeds every year and end up with 50 little tomato plants which I inevitably end up sharing. It’s a small action but it’s really cute to have friends or acquaintances come by and get a tomato plant and then hopefully they’ll eat a tomato they’ve grown themselves, little things like that do a lot for our soul. A lot of planters in Montreal grow kale in the summer, I’m eating kale out of the city planters all summer.

What is it like having your creative work be something that is essential to human survival? There is something really deep about the fact that your creative medium is something we need to stay alive.

Food is sustenance and can be so simple, but when I’m in a creative mode I can go extravagant with it which can feel quite frivolous at times when people are starving. I think it’s important to remember that it’s a huge privilege to be able to cook food that’s beautiful and delicious, but that none of that matters when people are hungry, it’s more important that people can eat. It trips me out sometimes that this simple thing that everybody on earth does, can turn into such a complicated production–that in certain contexts it has to be super delicious and visually appealing and have a story. And then as you’re cooking it, everything has to be so precise, you don’t want to burn it, you don’t want to undercook it. It can be so simple and also the most complicated thing in the world.

What do you think about social and economic barriers to people accessing and enjoying certain types of food?

I think that there’s so many ways that food can be elevated even when using extremely inexpensive ingredients. It comes down to cooking techniques and just a few spices, and it can still be super cheap. At home, I’m usually cooking really cheap. There’s so many simple tricks in the kitchen, and a lot of it has to do with timing, just having a little bit more patience with how long you let the pan heat up, simple things that can make a dish taste so much better, even if it’s just beans and cabbage. And if you have the time, flour and water can create a million different things!

Your YouTube channel is a great resource for practical tips like these.

Yes! In my cooking videos I sprinkle in tips about simple things that will make your food taste better. I also share places in Montreal where you can get cheaper groceries. The big grocery stores are almost always the most expensive. The fruiteries are where it’s at for sure. The Jean-Talon Market always has sections where the produce is a bit ugly and really cheap. There are also services where you can sign up and receive ugly vegetables–you get a lot of produce, enough for probably a family of four. I buy really cheap groceries and I mainly eat vegan or vegetarian. Beans, rice and veggies go a long way. Often things that are in season and local are going to be cheaper and taste way better. I know it is really hard right now, but if you have one little herb growing in your window or you pay attention to what is in season and you go somewhere local, that helps.

What kind of emotional state are you in when you’re cooking? Are you flowing and improvising or does it feel more methodical?

It really depends on what I’m doing. Some of my favorite cooking moments are when I’m in my kitchen and I feel like I have no food and challenge myself to make something amazing from what I’ve got. That feels more like a flow state. If it’s for an event the ideas form beforehand, and the challenge is [to see] if I can make what I imagined come to life. During an event, I would go as far as to say that sometimes I’m not enjoying it because there’s so much pressure and I’m really hard on myself. I was talking about this after my pop-up in December, and questioning whether I need to get so worked up, but then I wonder if I didn’t get so worked up would it work out as well. I always ask myself why am I doing this? Do I hate doing this? But as soon as I put the plate down or the event is over and everything went well I have this rush of happiness and reward and it all feels worth it.

What differences do you notice between working solo and working as part of a team?

This year I’ve had huge imposter syndrome. Putting on events is so different from working in a restaurant kitchen. Even when I was the head chef, the name of the restaurant protects you and you have a whole team. This year I’ve been really solo in my cooking, doing private chef gigs and going into people’s homes that I’ve never met to cook for them. I have a mental breakdown before every single one. If I’m the only one in the kitchen, it feels like the whole world is on my shoulders. It’s only been a year that I’ve been doing more things solo and a year isn’t a long time to be doing something totally new. I think it’ll come with time.

I love putting on the pop-ups because I get to collaborate with people I admire and realize my ideas. I did a pop-up in Toronto this past summer with my friend who is a baker. Her business is called Smiley Drop, and she does really creative stuff and we have wanted to cook together forever. We finally made it happen and it was so much fun. We came up with the menu together and we trusted each other. I still felt pressure because I wanted it to go well but I didn’t feel the same level of anxiety or stress because it was the two of us. I think it’d be really cool to have a culinary partner to do things with. I wish that she lived here, doing everything alone is challenging.

Is there a project right now that is standing out to you as particularly exciting or joyful?

Two things are coming to mind. The first is the YouTube channel. It’s been on hold for a while but I’m hoping to get back to it soon. The thought of being able to make money off of YouTube and share recipes and cooking tips and have a little community is exciting. It’s a lot of work but in a dream world it would be really cool if I could mostly live off of that, to then give space for the bigger dreams that I have. I love doing the pop-up events, but it doesn’t feel like a sustainable thing to be doing all the time.

The second is an idea for a food experience which involves building different structures that have edible and performative components to them. I recently worked on a project called Scent Supper Club in collaboration with Chimie. I created dishes based on different scents, their notes, their stories and the imagery that the perfumer had written. That was such an inspiring project and I’d like to continue something similar. A senses supper club, dinners centered around the different senses.

How do you hope to inspire people through your work?

I’ve been thinking about this recently because a friend and I are going to make a cookbook zine. I want it to inspire people to be creative in the kitchen because I think a lot of people don’t like cooking, and even if you like cooking, it’s hard to do if you’re feeling depressed or it’s the winter and energy is low. I would love for food and cooking to connect people to their creativity. I hope the food events that I host can open people’s minds to different and new ways that food can make them feel, help them tap into their emotions and inspire them in some way beyond food. On an even more basic level I want to inspire people to feel free in the kitchen, it doesn’t matter if you mess things up. I mess things up all the time. The pressure to make something really good every time we cook can make us stiff. It’s good to remember to try things, and sometimes maybe you have to eat a really weird stew and that’s okay. And there’s a lot of ways to fix it.