Local chefs reach out with community spirit, long table
He’s a co-owner of two of the city’s hottest restaurants and a chef in his own right, whose newer establishment hosted the likes of The Weeknd, Shawn Mendes and Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea during last year’s Juno Awards.
Yet, while John Jackson’s life these days has its glamorous moments, the 42-year-old has never forgotten his humble roots.
“I had a single mom who was working and going to university,” says the Saskatchewan native, who remembers a childhood where his mother, Helen, creatively sourced good food at bargain prices and tended a vegetable garden to keep down grocery costs.
“We were alone for lunch and dinner a lot, so my sister and I had to fend for ourselves in the kitchen.”
It was as a kid when he developed both his love of cooking and a fervent desire to share his culinary knowledge and good fortune with others. “A lot of people supported my family through those lean years,” he says. “It definitely contributed to my wanting to help out.”
Those who know Jackson won’t be surprised to know that on Aug. 9 he’ll be playing a major role in the East Village Long Table Dinner, an event in support of Mealshare Calgary, an organization that partners with industry to fight youth hunger.
Those willing to shell out $200 per person will have a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to sit at a table on the George C. King Bridge, the pedestrian bridge that links the East Village to St. George’s Island, while dining on a five-course meal provided by five of Calgary’s top chefs, working alongside some of the city’s favourite food trucks.
“It’ll be a unique food and community event,” says Jackson, whose Charcut restaurant was named one of the best new restaurants in the country in 2011. These days, he can be found mostly in the kitchen at Charbar in the Simmons Building at East Village.
This isn’t the first foray into culinary philanthropy for Jackson and his business partners, which includes his wife, Carrie Jackson, nor is it for the other chefs participating.
While it has been more than 15 years since I was the editor of the Herald’s food and lifestyle section, I do clearly remember that — other than the stories of the late Mike Hatzistamatis of Mykonos restaurant and his Thanksgiving dinners for the city’s needy — Calgary wasn’t quite the hotbed then of local chefs and restaurateurs at the forefront of charitable and community causes.
I enlisted John Gilchrist to help confirm my sense that this is indeed something of a contemporary phenomenon. “A couple of decades ago, these things were out of the ordinary,” says Gilchrist, a longtime Herald columnist, broadcaster and author who has been reporting on the city’s food and restaurant industry for 37 years.
“It’s been more of a slow but steady progression.”
Gilchrist names other businesses like Hotel Arts, Foreign Concept, Teatro, Oliver & Bonacini and the Creative Restaurants Group as big contributors to this growing trend. The worldwide slow food movement and the food-to-table movement, he says, has been the inspiration for many.
“There’s a symbiosis now with the producers of food, the chefs and the customers,” he says.
With the current economic downturn hurting the industry — Divino, a three-decade stalwart on Stephen Avenue Mall, is closing this weekend — it’s also a smart way to build customer loyalty.
“It’s good marketing and it’s good for the community,” says Gilchrist.
For one of the earliest Calgary adopters of such communityminded practices, Sal Howell of the River Cafe and the Deane House, it’s also about being a good local and global citizen.
“The more you know, the more you can’t ignore it,” says Howell, whose passion for sustainability, community outreach and supporting worthy causes has won her numerous awards, including Canada’s best restaurateur in 2014.
That’s in the back of Jackson’s mind this week as he plans out his Greek-inspired, slow-cooked Alberta beef dish with his partners from the Lil Truck on the Prairie.
“Making people happy with something I could create from start to finish,” he says, “is what attracted me to food in the first place.”