Culinary Dreams Do Come True: Chef Ami DiPasquale’s Story!

Being a woman in the culinary industry is rough. I wanted to follow in my grandmothers’ footsteps and learn how to cook. So, in 2009, I enrolled in the Culinary Skills / Chef Training program George Brown College. My class had 20 people in it, and I was 1 of 4 women. I was 20, and didn't know how to hold my knife unlike the others who came to school to refine their skills. I had a slow start.  People told me to give it up and go towards a different career, but I didn't listen.  I dealt with down talk, sexual power tripping, sexism, inappropriate behaviour, and disbelief in my skill…but my love for sharing my heart through cooking kept me going.

My first job at Origin Restaurant in Toronto refined my skills and cooking technique. I came to the job as an apprentice without knowing how to work basic equipment and without ever having worked a dinner service, but the chefs were patient with me. I went from being a oyster scrubber to first cook in my 2 years of employment at Origin. I learned discipline and I learned how to be strong and hardworking…skills that would get me noticed in the future.

I knew after I left that it was my sole goal -- and reason for going through everything I had -- to open a restaurant and own my business.  Be my own boss.  After leaving Origin, I worked as a sous chef at Blue Goose Pure Foods / Common Food in the summer container market at Harbourfront Centre. For the first time, I ran a staff of 12 and created my own menu.  I witnessed people eating my food and appreciating my vision.  I loved it!

To save money, I worked full time, 6-7 days a week and 12-hour shifts, as a junior sous chef at a large catering company. If only the people who told me to quit could see me now!   I headed weddings for 200 people with teams of ten under me. I catered private sit-down dinners for 6. Clients requested my services. The urge to open my own restaurant was becoming more and more pressing.  It would be a tapas restaurant named Ragazza with a Italian Fusion menu.  All homemade with love with a fine dining twist…

However, I wanted a business partner, and that's when -- out of nowhere -- I met Steffen Marin, the chef/owner of Heirloom Food Truck. 

At that point, I had spent two years in an elite position at the Food Dudes and was making good money.  After meeting Steffen, I quit my job and dropped it all to join him in his vision of promoting local and artisanal cuisine from his food truck.  Steffen’s vision soon became my own vision. We worked together to revamp his menu and make a name for the food truck. Together, we were getting attention with our food, and our love and passion for feeding our customers.

In June 2016, my dream finally became a reality.  I became co-owner of Heirloom.  After 6 years of cooking under other chefs, I finally had a chance to show people what I could do!  We've done catering, private events around the city, and we have worked the summer and winter markets. In 2017, we plan to open our first restaurant together, called Heirloom 2.0, promoting our local and sustainable cuisine, an extension of the food truck.  And I know that my dream tapas restaurant has a place in our future.   

Pretty good for a girl who was told she would never make it in this industry! 

Food for thought: How my co-op at a local eatery led to multimillion-dollar success

By Katherine Murphy, General Manager, Nourish Kitchen & Café,  BCom ‘13

Katherine Murphy (left) and Hayley Rosenberg with a signature dish, “CultivateSharing,” made up of local harvest produce, cultured cashew cheese, beet pâté, herb pesto, buckwheat seed bread and house crackers. Delicious! 

When I was first looking for my original co-op job before entering the BCom program at the University of Victoria, I was searching for a restaurant placement, with the idea of finding a business that was small and still in the start-up phase. My secret vision was to help grow the business as well as become involved in the creation of food culture in Victoria. Food has always been the cornerstone of my family and the main way we created connections, taught values and fostered a family environment.

 During that time, by sheer serendipity I met Hayley Rosenberg, the owner of Nourish. Nourish was located at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific in Saanich, had seven tables, casual counter service and a four-burner electric range.  It had been open eight months. With values that echoed my own, Nourish was involved in the local community, harvested some of the vegetables grown on site at the garden centre and was very much in the start-up phase. It was a perfect fit!

Launched with no capital investment, growing Nourish as a business has taken creativity, problem solving and a huge amount of determination every step of the way. From day one I was invited to be part of that growth. My first eight months were intensive and full time.

I began my first semester at Gustavson after those eight months and I remember looking around my class and wondering if anyone else knew just how relevant the course content was. I know for a fact that without my prior involvement in Nourish I would not have taken nearly as much value from my courses. 

Over the winter break, Hayley and I spent each day working our way through the marketing plan, a class assignment I had been given by Professor David Boag. We literally wrote the first official draft of the business plan based on that outline. The business plan allowed us to formulate our vision enough to re-open the following spring with the concept for the restaurant that Nourish has now become.

We now have two bustling locations, one in downtown Victoria and one still situated at the Horticulture Centre in Saanich. The Garden restaurant still has a four-burner stove, but has grown to 50 seats, offers full service,  and regularly sees 150 guests for Sunday brunch. Our inner harbour location sits in a beautiful three-story heritage home where we hope to host workshops and conferences, as well as fill our open and airy dining room with happy people. We have 35 employees between the two locations and I have been fortunate enough to grow with this ever-changing and exceptional business. (If you haven’t heard of us, visit Nourish visit  to get a sense of just how far we’ve come.)

At 25, I find myself the general manager of a multimillion-dollar small local business. Throughout my time at Gustavson, the single most valuable part of my education was the hands-on experience that I gained through my co-ops. There is no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to be a part of this business from the beginning I would be in a very different stage of life now. 

This story, reprinted with permission, originally appeared in Business Class Magazine, a publication of the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria.    Photo Credit: UVic Photo Services.

The “Kid” Kept Dreaming: A Chef’s Story

By Jesse Baker, WorkStory Ambassador at University of Windsor

Photo credit: Freeman LaFleur

Curtis Bell is one of those rare young people who decided what he wanted to do with his life shortly after it began. According to Bell, he knew he wanted to be a chef when he was about ten years old. He told his dad that he wanted to go to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) by age twelve, to which his father responded: “keep dreaming kid.”

He did.

Bell’s main source of inspiration came from a chef at The Trinity Grille, a restaurant Bell frequented with his father when he was young, “The chef’s name was Micah, he was there for a really long time and always talked to me about food” Bell recalled. “He also happened to attend the CIA. I think I was also very inspired by my father and his home cooking, as well as taking me out to some impressive restaurants. I was a sponge, and he helped foster my passion.”

Photo credit: Freeman LaFleur

Bell attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, a school many consider it to be the best culinary school in the country. “I agree with that,” Bell remembered fondly. After earning his associate’s degree Bell decided not to pursue a bachelor’s degree. “My reasoning was that much of the education within my industry is found in the field, not a classroom. During the two years that my peers spent chasing their bachelor’s, I worked my way up in the industry. I was in a well-respected management position by the time they were graduating and entering the field. I think I got the better end of the deal.”

Photo credit: Freeman LaFleur

Curtis Bell wasted no time. The morning after graduation, he drove out to Montauk, NY, where he had a job waiting for him. “I worked at The Surf Lodge, where I worked into becoming something of a Chef Tournant, which meant I was knowledgeable about all stations and held a decent amount of responsibility. After a summer there, I came back to Denver because I had another job waiting for me [as a personal chef] as long as they liked me. I did a stage, and was offered a job at the end of the night. I was really glad that opportunity panned out.”

As a personal chef for an affluent couple in Denver and an entrepreneur working to build different companies all related to food, Bell describes himself as “almost sickly passionate person when it comes to food”.  He’s constantly working to try new things and learn more about the science and art of food.  Becoming a personal chef was never as aspiration. “Coming up in the industry, it’s not a job one thinks of as a reality, more like a fantasy,” Bell said. The opportunity totally fell in his lap, “and I ran with it”.  He was only 21 then, didn’t feel necessarily qualified, but went for it anyway and got the job. According to Bell that opportunity has opened a lot of doors for him and he is incredibly grateful for it. 

Overall, Bell thinks his success boils down to a few things: Luck, passion/ambition, great social skills and networking abilities, and general technical skills. “The industry is aggressively competitive, so it is absolutely vital you work on being the best you can in all the previously stated categories”.  Future goals include a business that would continue to allow Bell to work in many different culinary facets. The current dream is to get paid to travel in some way, and do something that makes a difference in people’s lives for the better. Bell said he thinks he’s on the right track so far.

Q&A with Curtis Bell:

Would you have done anything differently?

“I could have gone back to Cape Cod to where I did my internship and learned more than at any other job I have ever had. I could have stayed in New York after graduating and worked my way up in that vicious arena of restaurants. I could have stayed working as the Sous Chef of La Tour in Vail. Considering where I am today though, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. No regrets”

Talk about your recent trip to Vietnam and Phocomentary!

“Vietnam. What a trip! I went out there with my great friend Freeman LaFleur and his other half Josie. We had a serious goal in mind: to find the roots and true story of pho, as well as its progression to what we know of the dish today. What we experienced was far more than we expected, and I am forever changed by our journey. The culture and environment of Vietnam is so mind blowing. The people are almost too nice, and the way of life there is impressive.

Chaotic as hell, but they make everything work somehow. I could explain the trip more, but you would be better off watching the  Phocumentary which is  the reason I went to Vietnam. Freeman LaFleur is a very creative entrepreneur and quite talented with a camera. He invited me to be the film’s food expert and help him to find the true story of one of the world’s favorite noodle soups. The motivation to chase the story stems from Freeman and I enjoying pho all the way back when we first could drive and get down to the Little Saigon district of Denver, where we first went crazy for the stuff. Having recently lived near L.A, home of the largest concentration Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, Freeman ate lots of pho, and realized that no one had tried to figure out where the dish came from. The idea was born as a joke, but became more serious as he found the story to be much more complex than first thought. When he asked me to be a part of the project in January of 2015, I jumped on board immediately. In May, we did a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project. Although we were going to Vietnam whether it was a success or a failure, halfway through our trip in Vietnam, the campaign ended a success and our project was fully funded! … The film is now in the process of being put together. I am very happy with the story we found, and I think it will make for a great documentary.”

Talk about Rogue Food Works!

“Rogue Food Works is a fun little venture in Denver that my talented friend Dan Gullickson pulled me into. He had an idea to have an underground dinner club where there is only one rule: that we have fun! We have a big party once a month for anywhere from 10 to 40 people. The party usually consists of a crazy meal that is 5-12 courses and quite intricate. We have used it as a platform to experiment and foster relationships with not only the guests, but also local farms and ranches. The whole thing evolves a bit every month, and has been a lot of fun to be a part of.”

Advice for an aspiring Chef?

“I would tell any aspiring chef to ask him/herself how passionate they are about food. This is a very hard industry and you have to commit your life to it. Try not to pick up bad habits, work with a purpose, and never stop learning. Any seasoned chef can tell immediately if you are worth your salt, so you better take extreme pride in what you are doing, or you will be chewed up and spit out.”

Curtis Bell is patiently waiting for the edited version of the Phocumentary, which should be available before the end of 2015. If successful this project could be a launching pad for Bell’s ultimate goal of being paid to travel AND create beautiful edibles around the world!

The Meal Deal: A new social enterprise is providing innovative hunger relief

by Carol Crenna 

Taking their parents’ dictum “Don’t waste food on your plate; there is someone less fortunate” to heart, Derek Juno (BCom ’11), Jeremy Bryant and Andrew Hall (BCom ’11) left their lucrative jobs to launch Mealshare, a social enterprise that partners with restaurants to help feed the homeless.

“At age 24, we considered whether we wanted to continue our current careers for the next 20 years or try something unique that’s in keeping with our values,” says Hall. “We considered opening a restaurant and giving away unused perishable food, but our expertise is in creating partnerships, not running a restaurant.”

Mealshare makes it easy for the public to give not just spare change to a homeless person for food, but a hot, nourishing meal. When dining at a restaurant, you simply choose a Mealshare - branded menu item and the restaurant then provides a meal to someone in need. The innovative concept, which combines corporate social responsibility with the “buy-one-get-one-free” model, has Mealshare covering the food costs of the charities’ donated meals.

As part of the partnership agreement with its restaurants, Mealshare completes all marketing including designing, printing and delivering collateral material, event promotions, and traditional and social media campaigns. The resulting promotion and community relations can translate into financial and community profile gains for the restaurant.

Three years ago, Hall, formerly a tech strategy consultant, and Juno, a retail development manager, completed their BCom specializing in Entrepreneurship from UVic and now share these tasks in Vancouver for the BC market. Bryant, an accountant and UAlberta BCom grad living in Edmonton, directs operations in Alberta.

Launched in late 2013, Mealshare today “shares” approximately 8,000 meals per month—1,000 each in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and Edmonton, and 4,000 internationally (half of the meals are distributed through a Third World charity). By summer this number is expected to double with six new restaurant partners already slated in BC and Alberta.

Mealshare currently works with 40 restaurants: 15 in Victoria, 12 in Calgary, eight in Vancouver and five in Edmonton. The non-profit organization chooses non-denominational, solution-oriented charity partners. “Someone comes in the door for a meal, but then has the opportunity to get job training, counselling or just a shower to help get their life back on a better track,” explains Hall. “If we help support meal costs, charities can spend more time and money on these initiatives.”

For example, The Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre found that after only seven months, Mealshare’s donation covers a day’s worth of meals and made a significant difference in its fundraising budget. 

“Approximately one-million Canadians get food support each month and eight-million Canadians dine out each day. If we can turn some of that dining out into helping out, there is an incredible opportunity ahead of us.”

This story, reprinted with permission, originally appeared in Business Class Magazine, a publication of the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria.    

   
PS…Mealshare is also now in Toronto!