NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE FOOD BEING CREATED HERE BECAUSE WE HAVE HARDLY BOTHERED TO CARE ABOUT IT OURSELVES.

worth Michelin’s while.

Does our reputation for poutine precede us? Is there an anti-Canadian bias at work? Or are our nation’s culinary talents simply not up to snuff? In our rush to bemoan Canada’s place outside the rankings of the world’s elite restaurants, we typically misdiagnose the problem.

It has nothing to do with poutine, an international conspiracy against chefs that say, “eh” or the expertise present in kitchens across Canada. Instead the answer is simple, although it’s not one we’re likely to enjoy: Canadian restaurants aren’t recognized outside of Canada because they’re made for Canadians, and Canadians have neglected to create room for fine dining in this country.

We value trends over consistency, and cheap eats over fine dining. Thanks to the rise of street food, truck food and sharing plates, there are more affordable and delicious meal options than there have ever been. If you can pay $7 for a fried chicken sandwich that will satisfy your cravings, why would you want to spend $300 on lunch?

If you’re like most Canadians, you wouldn’t. Steep prices and tiny portions can make the world of fine dining feel pretentious and inaccessible. Experimental and deconstructed dishes do not resemble how most of us eat, or even what we think of when we think of a good meal. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.

Tasting menus from the world’s best influence what’s on our plates more than many of us care to know. Trends that start in fine dining institutions trickle down to our everyday eateries and grocery store shelves. Noma Chef René Redzepi’s insistence on using ingredients exclusive to Denmark – leading him to swear off olive oil – helped bring Nordic cuisine to the mainstream while fueling a local food movement that has since made its way to your local Subway sandwich shop with Subway’s proud use of local Ontario vegetables. The rise of Asian-inspired comfort foods no doubt owes credit to David Chang’s Momofuku empire, which reimagined Asian American cuisine with its signature pork buns and innovative ramen. The trendy risotto boom of 2012 can be attributed to Massimo Bottura’s invention of risotto cacio e pepe – a recipe Bottura created at Osteria Francescana in an attempt to save nearly 1,000 wheels of damaged Italian Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

Canadian chefs do not influence global culinary culture in the same way, but not because they don’t have the desire. We, as diners, have not given them a platform to do so. At best, trying to talk about Canadian cuisine outside of Canada warrants a blank stare or an anecdote about poutine and the occasional butter tart.

No one cares about the food being created here because we have hardly bothered to care ourselves.

Our tasting menus are shy and muted compared to those of cities like New York, Chicago, Paris and Tokyo. When Toronto’s Alo – recently named Canada’s best restaurant by Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants – charges $105 a head, we complain that it’s too expensive. Where Alo offers a respectable six courses, the fine dining establishments of other countries offer a bold and meticulous progression of fifteen. Whether or not Alo’s Executive Chef Patrick Kriss or other Canadian chefs want to embark on such a lengthy traditional menu is immaterial. The audience for them to do so in Canada is simply nonexistent.

Other countries don’t have this problem. Diners in America, Europe, Brazil and Japan value the work being done by their best chefs enough to fork over the big bucks. They support the development of their country’s culinary identity and the experiences that identity can provide. At Alinea in Chicago the tasting menu ranges from $265 and $280 per person. At Eleven Madison Park in New York the price is $395. The menu at D.O.M. in Brazil is $335. Dinner at Japan’s Narisawa is $360. And all of these prices are before wine pairings (and are in Canadian dollars).

Cost per head is not an overcharge for sustenance, where chefs laugh behind closed doors at how they got away with charging $300 for a few meager plates of food. Similar to visiting the opera or ballet, well-executed fine dining provides an immersive, transportive and ultimately enlightened experience. To compare the price to groceries from Loblaws is to miss the point.

And yet we are hesitant to support homegrown culinary talent.

“When Thomas Keller opened The French Laundry he had essentially just come from two failed restaurants,” says Jonathan Gushue, who recently opened The Berlin in Kitchener, ON after working as executive chef of Langdon Hall. “Americans supported him. Americans are like that. They’ll always pick you up, where Canadians will stand back and wait till you do well before supporting you. I don’t think anyone’s doing it to be malicious. As Canadians we think we have to be reserved and quiet. We’re not allowed to say anything.”

Gushue is among a generation of chefs defining new Canadian cuisine, but we are hardly listening. Similar sentiments are shared by Justin Cournoyer, executive chef and owner of Actinolite in Toronto. “Everybody in our own town doesn’t even look to appreciate what we’re doing for Canadian food,” says Cournoyer. “Right now I’m so proud of the way we’re running things and what we had to do to get here. But we’re not getting recognition. And I need recognition in order to keep doing this. When you’re still worried about dollars and bills to push forward and the impact it has on your family – you need a reward to keep going.”

If we struggle to convince Canadians to eat at our country’s best restaurants, how are we supposed to persuade anyone else?

When we do decide to dine out, a growing number of us are hardly eating at all. Nearly every chef that I have spoken to in Canada in the last year has complained about the number of customers who come in to order half the menu, take pictures of all the dishes and then leave before eating any of them. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that people want to share our food, but having customers who aren’t actually eating is not the type of environment you want for your restaurant,” says Suzanne Barr of Saturday Dinette in Toronto.

And restaurant environments are not the only thing we’re ruining with our amateur photography skills. Our eagerness to find the next big Instagram-ready meal has turned us into a country