WHERE DREAMS, FINE TASTE MEAT
Couple’s charcuterie hits the spot
Along a metal table in the subterranean kitchen below Una, Dave Sturies butchers, grinds meat and turns it all into unexpected cuts, flavourful sausages and charcuterie that evoke lazy afternoons in Europe spent sipping wine over a selection of cured meats.
Hours later, upstairs, patrons at the dark and cosy Frenchie Wine Bar — nestled in behind Una Takeaway — will tuck into country pate studded with apricots, a silken chicken liver pate, and paper-thin slices of finocchiona, perfumed with fennel and speckled with generous pockets of fat mixed into the pork, among other creations.
The basement table, and small cooler next to it filled with a collection of curing meats, serves as the current headquarters for Empire Provisions, the charcuterie, sausage and butchery business started earlier this year by Sturies and Karen Kho.
The couple has begun building a serious following for their craveworthy creations.
The list of their offerings rolls off Sturies’ tongue: guanciale, lonza, coppa, bresaola, not to mention a variety of fresh sausages and meat cuts like the so-called ‘porkerhouse’ — a porterhouse steak but pork.
“We sell all the things I want to eat,” Sturies says simply.
Through trial and error, Sturies has tweaked recipes until he has created edible memories of the couple’s travels, all packaged up neatly in fresh and cured meats. The ideas have come from their backgrounds — the Philippines for her, Italy for him — along with their trips together.
It’s about the taste of a specific country, an adaptation of their experiences, those spices and flavours that go into their creations.
“I don’t have an amazing memory for life events,” says Sturies with a laugh. “I have an amazing memory when it comes to food and flavours and meals.”
Kho’s favourites are the grelot salamis that they first had while attending a wedding in France. They had grabbed a couple of the sausages and some cheese from a tiny shop and then ate them together in a park.
Sturies recreated those sausages here. “He can recreate a memory special to us and we can share it with other people,” says Kho.
Empire grew from an inside joke they’d make as they sat on their patio overlooking Vancouver’s English Bay, eating gourmet sandwiches they fixed at home or dishes made from the guanciale that had cured while dangling from a kitchen cupboard handle — the first meat Sturies attempted to cure. As they nibbled, they would talk about the empire they would create, one of sandwiches or oysters or whatever dish they were eating at the time.
Kho had worked in the restaurant industry in Calgary before the couple briefly relocated to Vancouver and she signed up for culinary school.
“It was a box I wanted to check,” she said.
Sturies, on the other hand, had a passion for food and wine that his career in environmental sciences couldn’t equal.
When they returned to Calgary, he went to work at Second to None Meats, learning all he could about butchery, meat cutting and curing. From there, he moved to Teatro to do their butchery, charcuterie and sausages. (Kho returned to the restaurant industry and is currently the operations manager for Teatro Group.)
Then came the leap of faith. Una owners Jayme McFayden and Kelly Black approached them, saying they were opening a wine bar and wanted Empire to make the charcuterie. McFayden and Black believe in making everything in house, right down to their cured meats, and offered Empire the space for their operation.
“We pay our rent in charcuterie,” jokes Kho.
Neither Kho nor Sturies believe Empire would have got off the ground in another city. In Vancouver or Toronto, there wouldn’t have been such a warm welcome from industry the way there is in Calgary.
“There are amazing people in our community who have done well and want us to do well too,” says Kho.
While their mutual love of food, entertaining and travel underpin Empire, Sturies’ environmental consulting background and the couple’s drive to be good stewards of the Earth serve as its backbone.
“We want to know where our meat is from and the impact it’s having on the environment,” says Kho.
Meats are sourced from local producers, with the majority coming from Broek Pork Acres, along with Red Tail Farms and lamb from Ewe-Nique Farms for merguez.
“The way the animal is raised — you taste that,” says Sturies.
And every part of the animal is used, with Empire offering fat and lard for sale through a mailing list. Even the bones are available for purchase.
“Butchery is the art of using everything,” says Sturies.
Eventually, the plan is to open a retail space and get their charcuterie into more restaurants and bars. They talk of having condiments to go alongside their cured meats.
Until then, their charcuterie and sausages can be found at Frenchie, Una Takeaway, Cookbook Co. Cooks, Our Daily Brett, Janice Beaton, Metrovino, Proof and the Beltliner, or through a mailing list which can be signed up for on their website, empireprovisions.ca
Empire Provisions turns owners’ edible memories into a charcuterie and sausage business, writes Gwendolyn Richards.