Cheftimony Episode 001 – The Vancouver Food Scene - Early Days all the way to Burdock & Co.
Cheftimony Episode 001 started the show in the right place, at Burdock & Co in Vancouver, BC with Chef Andrea Carlson. As I described in the Cheftimony Backstory episode, I made a change to my legal career in 2008 and added weekly volunteer cooking shifts to my law schedule. Restaurants and cooking have been a huge part of my life since, and it was Andrea Carlson (who was then the Executive Chef at Vancouver’s Bishop’s restaurant) who gave me my start.
Five years ago, after leaving Bishop’s, Andrea opened Burdock & Co with her partner Kevin. Kevin is the architect responsible for the room’s beautiful design, and Andrea is the Executive Chef, responsible for the amazing kitchen. Andrea and Kevin also own Harvest Community Foods, a wonderful noodle shop and local grocery store in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
During our interview, Chef Andrea spoke about restaurants and places that have been important parts of her development as a chef. In the very early days, it started with a cookbook from the New York Times. Andrea cooked with Chef Robert Clark (now of the Fish Counter) when he was Executive Chef at C Restaurant and helping to develop the conservation program Ocean Wise with the Vancouver Aquarium. Later, Andrea was the Executive Chef at the Raincity Grill where she created the first Canadian 100-mile restaurant menu. Throughout her career - from the “turnip moment” she described at the Sooke Harbour House to baking bread by candlelight on Savary Island - Andrea has created some unique experiences for herself and for her lucky dining guests.
These days at Burdock & Co, Andrea is a passionate supporter of food security and sustainable agriculture. She works with local producers who grow beautiful produce through healthy practices, and their best winds up on the Burdock menu. Andrea also works internationally with like-minded chefs to support sustainable agriculture. At the time of our interview, Chef had just received a delivery from Row 7 Seeds. Row 7 is a seed company that gives priority not to things like crop yield, shelf life and uniformity, but instead to flavour - to making delicious things from the seed on up. Chef Andrea mentioned that one of the people behind Row 7 is Chef Dan Barber from New York’s Blue Hill farm and restaurants, and she is excited that a local producer, Glorious Organics, will be growing the Row 7 vegetables for Burdock & Co.
Finding like-minded chefs and food enthusiasts around the world is something Andrea Carlson does very well. We spoke about a recent dining experience that she and her business partners had in Tokyo, walking into a neighbourhood restaurant with incredible food and naturalist wines. That restaurant was Tokyo’s Kantera, whose Chef Fumihiro Matsumoto and Maitre d’ Kenji Kawamura welcomed Andrea and her team to a beautiful late-night dinner. When the Burdock team returned to Vancouver, they participated in Tourism Vancouver’s World Chef Exchange by inviting Chef Fumihiro and Maitre d’ Kenji from Kantera for a collaboration dinner at Burdock & Co.
Toward the end of our interview, Chef Andrea gave some tips on how we can all improve our cooking at home. Chef’s number one recommendation for a piece of cooking equipment? The Vita-Prep blender. Almost a decade ago, I bought the home version (one of the Vitamix models by the same company) and I use it almost every day. Andrea also talked about techniques to try at home, and Chef is a fan of extremes these days, loving both long, slow braises for dishes like cassoulet and the beauty and simplicity of raw plant foods. Listen to our interview and give these approaches a try!
I also asked Chef about restaurants she likes to visit as a guest, and she gave us three gems in this Cheftimony interview. For beautifully-prepared sushi and an outstanding omakase experience, Andrea recommends Masayoshi on Fraser Street in Vancouver. Andrea also reported that she just had a lovely meal at Burnaby’s newly-opened Stem Japanese Eatery. And for some of the best pastas - hands down - in Vancouver, Chef Andrea looks to the work of Chef Lucais Syme at Cinara Restaurant.
After my talk with Andrea Carlson, I met up with my friend Mark Tweedy at Gastown’s Revolver Coffee for a talk about the Vancouver food scene from the 1980s forward. Mark practised law in Vancouver for decades and recently made a switch in practice to mediation, so he now resolves disputes instead of arguing them.
Throughout his career, Mark has been a student of restaurants and chefs in the city, and we had a great talk about the early days. When Mark first started practice, he worked at a firm located in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood above the restaurant Al Porto. In those days, the lawyers in the firm would ride the elevator directly from the office into the restaurant (known within the firm as “the cafeteria”) where they would enjoy fantastic lunches and occasional interruptions as they were called on to sign a letter or take the elevator back upstairs to a meeting.
Mark told me about chefs in the early days all knowing each other, and we found a thread from the 1980s restaurant scene directly to Chef Andrea at Burdock & Co. One of the most important influencers in Vancouver dining has been Umberto Menghi, and many chefs worked in his Il Giardino restaurant before moving to other places or opening their own restaurants. One of those chefs was John Bishop, who went on to open Bishop’s where Andrea worked as Chef and where I started volunteering in the industry. Later in our talk, Mark told me about a personal connection he has to the industry in the present day – Mark’s son Adam Tweedy is the Head Chef at Earls Restaurant in Kelowna, BC. The cooking community remains a closely-knit one!
Much of my interview with Mark focused on the changes he has noticed to food and to restaurants over the years. Mark commented that food is lighter these days and that there is much greater emphasis on absolutely fresh ingredients. Mark also remarked on specialisation in the industry. In present-day Vancouver we have so many choices that simply didn’t exist before. These days, there are restaurants with very limited menus and hardly any seats, but they do well because they put out great food.
And Mark’s favourites? As I say, Mark is an enthusiast, so he speaks highly of a number of spots. Jules Bistro is a constant for Mark for great bistro food, and he and his girlfriend often go to Gastown’s Flying Pig. Last year, Mark and I had some fantastic BBQ at Peckinpah, which Mark likes both for a quick bite and for take-out. Speaking of small spaces with great food, Mark pointed to Di Beppe and to Ask for Luigi, although we agreed you have to get to Luigi’s before it opens to have much chance of getting in! And though he wouldn’t describe himself as a tapas enthusiast, Mark gave high marks to the tapas offerings at Cuchillo. He’s also a fan of Tacofino for quick, delicious Mexican food.
During our talk, Mark and I discovered that we had something in common beyond our interest in Vancouver restaurants. It turns out that in our younger days, we were both waiters at the Keg Steakhouse! That’s given us a healthy respect for the tough job servers do. The interaction between server and guest is something both Mark and Andrea commented on in this episode of Cheftimony.
Cheftimony 001, I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for taking it in. Cheftimony is just getting started, so if there’s a topic you’d like to hear discussed, or a chef (or a lawyer!) you’d like to hear interviewed, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you, and you can find me at graham@cheftimony.com. Please follow the show on Facebook and Instagram, and I’m looking forward to seeing you next time, on Cheftimony.