FOOD CULTURE REVEALED
Jay Walker’s Resto Mundo explores the city’s eats
The concept of Resto Mundo couldn’t be simpler — or more appealing.
Host Jay Walker takes viewers on a tour of Montreal’s vibrant multicultural reality via profiles of some of the city’s more intriguing restaurants.
“The idea of this show is to discover culture through food,” Walker said in an interview this week at Café Bazin on Victoria Ave. in Westmount.
The second season of Resto Mundo debuted on the Zeste network Wednesday at 6 p.m. and runs weekly in that time slot, with numerous repeat broadcasts. Zeste is a French-language network focused on food and other lifestyle programming.
People have said Resto Mundo reminds them of the popular food shows hosted by American chef and author Anthony Bourdain.
“It is a Bourdain type of show, but it’s in our own backyard and that’s the best part of Montreal,” said Walker. “You don’t have to travel to taste the world. It’s about meeting the people who have come from their homeland to do traditional food here. There are places that have been open for 15 years that I haven’t been to (that are cooking) Congo food.”
Congolese food is the focus of the fourth episode this season, shining the spotlight on the restaurant Gracia Afrika, on NotreDame St. W. near the Atwater Market, and its chef/owner Bibi Ntumba.
The other thing that sets Resto Mundo apart from many of the other food and resto shows out there is the fact that Walker kind of plays the Everyman as host. He is not a celebrity chef. He is, rather, the host of one of the city’s coolest radio shows, Montreal Rocks, which plays the best in local indie music every Sunday night on CHOM. He also contributes entertainment columns to Global TV.
He is married to Anne-Marie Withenshaw, who has hosted and produced many food shows, and is also a close pal of Montreal star chef Chuck Hughes.
But Walker himself isn’t necessarily a food expert, which lends the show some of its charm.
“I’m not a chef,” Walker said. “I’m no pro on food of the world. So all questions are valued. I’m not saying I’m completely in the dark when it comes to food, because I’m not. My wife works in food TV. Chuck Hughes is a close friend. I know food. But to say I know every ingredient from every country would be a lie. So I’m discovering at the same time that everybody else is discovering.
It’s not pretentious. Is it goofy at times? Sure, it’s goofy at times.”
The cuisines and restaurants featured in the second season of Resto Mundo also include Malagasy (and the restaurant Tsak-Tsak), Chinese (Orange Rouge), Jewish (Arthur’s Nosh Bar), Greek (Rodos), Lebanese (Trip de bouffe), Colombian (Chez Tina Gourmet), Swiss (Le Léman), Indonesian (MIA Tapas), Spanish (Pintxo), Indian (Thanjai) and Mexican (Maria Bonita).
The other very cool thing about Resto Mundo is that it’s one of the only franco Quebec TV shows hosted by an anglophone. Walker said he was pleasantly surprised that the producers at Groupe Serdy, which owns Zeste, were not the least bit put off by the fact that he isn’t a pure laine francophone.
“I was at the industrial kitchen at Zeste, and I’m sitting down (for the audition) and there are three people in front of me,” Walker recalled. “And I said, ‘You guys know I’m English, right?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, yeah, but your French is perfect.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ve been speaking French since I was seven years old, but I’m still an anglo.’ And they said, ‘You’re fine the way you are.’
“I was just like, ‘Wow, this is so amazing.’ It was really cool. It was an acceptance. It was such an amazing casting to go to.”
Walker worked particularly hard on his intros to each episode to make sure the French was perfect.
“We’d nail these intros,” Walker said. “You may not be able to speak the language as well as people who were born with it, but you’ve got to make sure you do it justice. You have to make sure you’re respectful of that language when you’re working in that language. So we made sure that the intros were knocked out of the park.”
AT A GLANCE Resto Mundo airs Wednesdays at 6 p.m. on Zeste.