Cheftimony Episode 016 – Looking Back and Ahead
“As you’ll hear, training new cooks is a passion for Robert so knowing him as I do now, it doesn’t surprise me that he was so welcoming.”
On today’s show, Chef Robert Belcham helps me look back over some shared years in the industry but also ahead at what’s in store for restaurants, for cooks, for chefs and for all of us as restaurant guests.
Only two years younger than me, Robert has been at this chef game for quite a while! Early in his career, Robert answered a call from Chef Thomas Keller and took a position at The French Laundry in California where he honed his skills in butchery and fine dining. Chef then returned to Vancouver and started his remarkable contributions to the restaurant scene here.
Robert worked at the famed C Restaurant, rightly regarded as a pioneer of sustainable menus, both in Vancouver and across Canada. At C, Robert worked with a who’s who of Vancouver culinary talent, including Chef Robert Clark, Chef Andrea Carlson and Chef Merri Schwartz.
Later, Chef started to build (quite literally) his own restaurants: Fuel and ReFuel in Kitsilano, Campagnolo on Vancouver’s Main Street, Campagnolo Roma in Hastings Sunrise, Fat Dragon on Powell Street. More recently, Monarch Burger has joined the fold, and Robert – with some superstar chef partners – opened Popina on Granville Island.
It was at ReFuel that I first came to know Robert. He’s the second chef in Vancouver to invite me into his kitchen, and it was Robert’s name that came first to mind when I asked Andrea Carlson if she could recommend any other chef in town who just might be open to the concept of having a lawyer ditch his suit at the end of the office day, change into chef whites and get to work peeling vegetables, picking herbs, watching the real cooks…
As you’ll hear, training new cooks is a passion for Robert so knowing him as I do now, it doesn’t surprise me that he was so welcoming. For Robert, it’s not just his restaurants that are important, not just his successes. He genuinely cares about sustainability, of food and farmers certainly, but he’s got his eye on the sustainability of the restaurant business as a whole.
For that reason, Robert works with the Chefs’ Table Society of British Columbia, and right now they’re well into the planning for what sounds like it could be an industry-defining event: Cooks Camp 2020. North Arm Farm in Pemberton is going to host hundreds of chefs, cooks and others in the fall of next year for workshops, fellowship and what looks to be the world’s largest staff meal. The farm is raising animals for the menu as you read this!
Toward the end of our talk, I asked Chef for his recommendations for equipment and a super-fast recipe for home cooks. His answers for both are brilliant. You don’t want to miss them. So join me now at the back room of Campagnolo for my talk with Chef Robert Belcham.