Dine and Dash
A NEW GENERATION OF RESTAURANT STAFF HAVE AN APPETITE FOR CHANGE. SO THEY STARTED A RUNNING CLUB.
Restaurant work can be brutal. It’s all about long hours on your feet, working without breaks and nibbling all day, without ever sitting down to a full meal until the last diners have settled their bill – by which time, you just want fries or ramen noodles. Then there’s the constant access to booze on the job and the crazy after-hours party scene. But a new generation of food-industry pros are turning to running for a better life-work balance.
Restaurant work can be brutal. It’s all about long hours on your feet, working without breaks and nibbling all day, without ever sitting down to a full meal until the last diners have settled their bill – by which time, you just want fries or ramen noodles. Then there’s the constant access to booze on the job and the crazy after-hours party scene. But a new generation of food-industry pros are turning to running, for a better life-work balance.
“I was in the back alley, smoking as I read the e-mail, inviting me to join the Food Runners,” says Alexandra Feswick, chef de cuisine at Toronto’s Drake Hotel. “And I was thinking: ‘Should I do this?’” Founded in the summer of 2014, the Food Runners is a drop-in running club for Toronto chefs and servers. It’s the brainchild of Chuck Ortiz, editor-in-chief of Acquired Taste magazine. Anybody in the industry is welcome, and staff from some of the city’s top restaurants, such as Bar Raval, Dailo, Buca, Canoe and Biffs, lace up together once a week and pound the pavements downtown and along the Lakeshore boardwalk, before sitting down together to share a healthy smoothie, juice or soup.
The initial commitment to this new running club was only eight weeks, so Feswick signed up, along with nine of her peers. Still the first training run – 1.5k – was a challenge. “We were all dying,” recalls Feswick, laughing. But she persevered, and almost two years on, she’s still getting up in the wee hours every Wednesday – even after late-night shifts – to hit the pavement at 8:15 a.m. with a gang of 20–30 chefs and servers.
Many of the Food Runners have gone on to set athletic goals. Feswick scheduled in extra training sessions last spring, with some of the other female members, for the Nike Women’s 15k, which she ran 30 weeks pregnant. “It was the same as working in a restaurant – we had to be a team,” says Feswick. “During training, if you couldn’t keep up, people would circle back so we could start and finish together.” Food Runners have also raced together in the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon and Run Barbados. Ortiz completed his first half marathon in September 2015. John Koplimae (sous-chef at the Drake) is gearing up for his first ultra. “Before I joined this group, I was still putting back two or three beers a night at work” says Koplimae. “Now, I’m like: No, I really want to do this.”
With a healthy body comes a healthy mindset. “You have more energy, and you can think more creatively, when you’re running and feeding your body properly,” says Feswick. “You’re in a better mood at work and you start making your cooks feel better about coming into work, too.”
Meeting to train once a week is also an opportunity to network. While they’re burning up the sidewalks, the Food Runners talk everything from staffing issues to industry news to meat suppliers. “We all support each other and go to each other’s restaurants now,” says Feswick. “It’s good to take the time to see what’s going on outside your own kitchen.”
Not surprisingly, the after-training refuel is a highlight. Ortiz says, “We couldn’t get chefs together and not have some kind of
eating component.” Dubbed Project Refuel, the process is modelled on restaurant staff meals, where every week a different cook takes charge and taps into their creativity. “Dennis Tay’s smoothie was amazing – he went all out,” recalls Oritz. “It was Filipino street food-inf luenced, based on this snack called turon with plantain, brown sugar and jack fruit, wrapped up in a spring roll wrapper and deep-fried.” The Dailo chef added caramelized notes to his smoothie by bruléeing banana sprinkled with brown sugar before tossing it in the blender.
“Can you put me down for worst smoothie?” asks Dan Janetos, a Chopped Canada runner-up. The other Food Runners laugh. “Healthiest,” interjects Ortiz. “Healthiest!” Janetos has a smoothie designed for him each month, by a nutritionist. “It’s purely functional: it’s got all these seeds and greens and all the micros and macros I need,” Janetos explains. “I had 13 made for the Food Runners one week and everybody was just hating on it – it’s a cup of discipline!”
As well as signing up for their own wellbeing, the Food Runners are on a mission to inspire others. On their website, thefoodrunners.co, they post videos and blog posts about their favourite nutritious dishes – think buttermilk panna cotta with honeydew salad or pickled shrimp with wakami and tomato salad. “Many magazines run nutritionists’ recipes, and you get used to seeing the same old stuff, but when you ask amazing chefs who cook all day to come up with something nutritious, they’ll do it and their first priority will be making sure it’s delicious,” says Ortiz.
Active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the group posts tips and inspiring pics from their runs and refuelling sessions. That’s how Chef Neil Dowson of Agrarian in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County, Ont., got the idea to start a country cousin club of sorts. “Ten years ago we would have just met in the pub,” says Dowson, who for the past several months has been getting together on Wednesday mornings with local restaurant and winery staff from the county to run 5 or 10k. They start out from the Drake Devonshire Hotel and often circle back to share breakfast or coffee at the end, before heading to their own kitchens and dining rooms. Hotel guests who like to run often hear about the group and ask to tag along. “We’re very inclusive,” says Dowson.
English-born Dowson got the running bug as an apprentice chef at the Savoy, where his head chef formed a kitchen team that ran the London Marathon each year. “This guy drilled it into us to make time for fitness, even if it was the last thing we wanted to do, when we were working from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m. the next morning.” A relative newcomer to Prince Edward County, the Hinterland winery chef has been able to meet more industry peers through the informal running club he started. In this
“IT WAS THE SAME AS WORKING IN A RESTAURANT – WE HAD TO BE A TEAM.”
rural community with its seasonal and transient workforce, collaborative relationships are key. You want to be able to fill jobs fast in the high season and make sure you have the best wines and raw ingredients coming in from local suppliers. It’s important to keep creating and nurturing connections.
The County group tends to stay off road, following the Millenium Trail, which runs along an old railway track, through lush farmland and wine country. “When you run past fields and markets, you get to see what’s ripe and available – it’s a constant reminder of what’s in season,” says the chef.
Samantha Ravenda, who works at the pizza station and i n the t ast ing room at Norman Hardie’s winery, in nearby Wellington, joined the running group on the invitation of a pastry chef at the Drake Devonshire. “I did cross country as a kid, and I loved that feeling of running really fast at the end and not being able to feel your legs,” she says.
Working at the winery is intense, but the usual payoff is daily sipping with colleagues and friends. “Working at Norm’s, you’re surrounded by beautiful wines and great food, so there’s always a lot of temptation to indulge,” says Ravenda. But these days, rather than linger for a drink on the patio after work, she’ll often hit the trails. “I love my industry,” she says. “Running helps me keep a balance, so I can stay in it for the long haul.”
Over on the West Coast, in Vancouver, childhood best friends Ned Bell and Jed Grieve have also discovered this formula to long and productive careers, and they spur each other on to hit the trails. Lean and fit today, the 40-something food industry players were athletic in their youth, but each hit a high of around 220 lb. in their 20s. “You drink every evening and don’t eat or sleep that well as a young chef,” says Bell. “And all of a sudden you’re getting chubby.”
Bell has a heavy work schedule as executive chef of Yew Seafood + Bar at Four Seasons Vancouver and founder of Chefs for Oceans, a not-for-profit focused on sustainable seafood education and ocean protection. As well as cycling three times a week – he cycled from St John’s, N.L., to Vancouver in 2013 to raise funds and awareness for Chefs for Oceans – he laces up his running shoes every other day and fits a 14k into his working day. “I work steps away from Stanley Park, so after my work service I’ll run around the park for just over an hour,” he says. If he knows the schedule will be too tight, he runs to work and back – 7k each way.
“I don’t know of a better way to decompress than running home at night,” he says. “A lot of people drink because they’re looking to come down from the natural high and endorphins of working a busy service,” explains Bell. “Your brain is firing and your body is firing – you’re exhausted but still fired up, and you can’t get your body to relax.” But after his post-shift runs, Bell has no problem sleeping: “I get home and have a shower, then literally pass out.”
On solo runs, Bell likes to menu plan, but during the week he reserves one afternoon a week to run and chat with Grieve, who owns culinary school and store Cook Culture as well as having 16 marathons under his belt. The best friends talk family life – both have young kids – and have informal business meetings as they train.
“We often do work together, but we’re both strapped for time,” says Grieve. On the trails, there are no interruptions and they can brainstorm more dynamic ideas for collaborations. “Recently we did a really fun fall campaign with Ned in our stores,” says Grieve. “And we used to f ly him over to Victoria in a helicopter to give classes in our studio there.”
Today’s top-tier chefs need to be frequent f lyers: cooking at pop-up dinners, speaking at festivals and making media appearances all over the country and the world. Getting outside to run while they’re away from home transforms otherwise gruelling business trips into enriching travel experiences. Bell travels at least twice a month. Recently, he went to Malta to receive a sustainable seafood award. “I got to explore the ancient city of Mdina on my runs there,” he recalls. And back in 2014, on Canada Day, he had one of his most memorable runs, up Signal Hill, in St John’s, right before launching his Chefs for Oceans Mission. “It was dawn, and as I came over the crest of the hill, there were ceremonial bagpipes playing as I burst through the fog.”
Fanfares are admittedly rare on runs. As in restaurant work, 90 per cent of the time it’s all about the slog. But lacing runners when you’re not tied up with apron strings is an increasingly common food-industry recipe for success.
“WHEN YOU RUN PAST FIELDS AND MARKETS, YOU GET TO SEE WHAT’S RIPE AND AVAILABLE.”