MEET THE MAKER: CUTTING EDGE
He’s worked under some sharp-tongued chefs, but at The Guild, Ryan O’Flynn is more concerned with maintaining a razor focus in the kitchen.
He’s worked under some sharp-tongued chefs, but at The Guild, Ryan O’Flynn is more concerned with maintaining a razor focus in the kitchen.
want to succeed as a chef at one of the world’s greatest restaurants? Here’s advice from someone who’s been there (and lived to tell the tale): get tough. And get a bike. “You start work before public transit starts and you’re done at least four hours after public transit stops,” says Ryan O’Flynn. “You need to have a scooter, a bike or live on a night-bus line.”
O’Flynn—now head chef at The Guild in Calgary—no longer has to worry so much about his daily commute. The restaurant, which opened last July in the Bay building downtown, is on the CTrain line, and there’s parking nearby, too.
But for a year or so, O’Flynn toiled in the kitchens at Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin-starred restaurant, Petrus, under chef Marcus Wareing. He followed that with a stint as the executive chef at the prestigious Milestone Hotel, also in London.
Neither gig was particularly easy, he admits. But the opportunity changed his life for the better. “I learned a respect for ingredients, attention to detail, and how to survive without food and water,” he says with a wry laugh. He’s kidding about the food and water bit, of course. “But you get a lot out of the experience if you’re willing to stick with it.”
He, for one, learned plenty, but then, he’s never been a stranger to hard work or the culinary world. Born in Edmonton, O’Flynn grew up in both Alberta and the United Kingdom. His father, Maurice O’Flynn, is a well-known British chef who has worked in both Europe and Edmonton; the younger O’Flynn was learning his way around the kitchen at a very young age. “I grew up surrounded by some of the best chefs in Canada,” O’Flynn says. “And my dad would take me to culinary championships around the world. Cooking is pretty entrenched in my life.”
Competition, too. O’Flynn won the 2015 Canadian Culinary Championships; this year, he’s a judge at the prestigious competition. “My dad is why I won,” he says. “I didn’t want to go home and plunk down a silver. Silver is not our favourite colour.”
O’Flynn has no plans to compete again (at least, not for a while). Instead, he’s focusing on building the culinary program at The Guild. He focuses on locally raised meats, cooked over charcoal, and he’s talking about creating a garden next spring, too. “I don’t want to be a British chef or a French chef,” he says. “I want to be the best Canadian chef I can be, and work with what’s around me.”
Does that mean becoming a shouty tough guy, like the famous British chefs he once worked under? Or does his Canuck niceness shine through in the kitchen?
A little of both, perhaps. “I expect things to be done the right way. I like to have discipline,” he admits with a laugh. “I learned from some of the world’s best chefs—their skills as well as their flaws. There’s a way to get things done but you don’t have to yell to do it.”