Niagara’s rock star chef
Music just edges out food among his favourite things
Consuming Passions is a multipart series of Eating Niagara about passion projects of the people in Niagara’s food and beverage industries. This is part five in the series.
Everyone knows in rock bands the drummer always gets the girl. Just ask Chef Ross Midgley. In junior high band class, Midgley wanted to be play the trumpet, which, according to the Urban Dictionary, builds great lips, likely putting trumpeters a few dating rungs above drummers were there room for a horn in a rock band. But as the last kid in class to pick an instrument, Midgley got saddled with the drums.
“It was fate for me,” the executive chef at Ravine Vineyards said.
So, too, were a few lessons in love: The drummer gets the girl, sure.
“But drummers get the weird ladies or the ladies who stay,” Midgley said with a laugh.
For a guy dreaming of being a rock star and enjoying all the trappings that come with it, well …
“Guitar players have a greater frequency of ladies. I thought, ‘You know what? I should learn to play guitar.’”
So he did.
Still, those early days of pounding the skins, particularly in a high school jazz band, helped define Midgley’s passion for music, which plays out today in his side hustle as the (happily married) guitarist in a cover band called The Hopyards.
Saving up his paper route money in Grade 6 to buy The Beatles’ Blue Album was another influential moment.
“I played that record until there no grooves left in the vinyl,” Midgley recalled.
As simple as all that sounds, Midgley talks about his love of music as eloquently as the accomplished cuisinier puts duck leg confit together with puy lentils, spiced date sauce, and rapini with chilli-garlic soffritto on a plate.
Yet for as much as Midgley has done behind the burner, music edges out food in the hierarchy of his favourite things.
“Even today, if someone said, ‘You can do music,’ I’d never touch a pan again and I love my job,” he said. “Music is my spirituality. Aside from silence, it’s the closest expression possible to express the inexpressible. There’s something so atavistic about music. It’s like staring into a fire.”
In other words, it has nothing to do with getting girls — anymore, at least.
Midgley did switch to playing guitar after carrying the beat for horn bands, acid jazz troupes, rock/top 40 groups, and even a country ensemble in university. He picked up a six-string, playing and singing solo in coffee houses instead of relying on others to perform.
His admirable sense of duty ultimately compelled him to focus more on cooking than crooning, however.
When The Queen’s Landing kitchen in Niagara-on-the-Lake called in 1998, he brought his guitar with him to Niagara along with a growing sense the instrument would be the path to a fulfilling hobby rather than a career.
After all, cooking promised regular pay cheques, and by this point, Midgley got the girl. Stability more than his musical talents would get her to stay.
“Music is even more risky than cheffing,” he said. “By the time I started to get involved in food, I had a very serious girlfriend, who ultimately became my wife, and we had two kids. I couldn’t look her in the eye and say, ‘You know what? I think I’m going to write songs.’”
Midgley worked intently, becoming sous chef at Hillebrand Estates, now Trius, a few years later. There he met a young busboy and audiophile named Shawn Spiewak.
They found common ground through music and started jamming after hours. But their day jobs soon took them in different directions, pulling a Yoko Ono on the duo.
In 2015, they reconnected working at Ravine and talked about playing tunes together again.
Meanwhile, Midgley moved to a property outfitted with a barn and a beer fridge stocked with Old Vienna. It was perfect for a jam session with more than two musicians.
“He said, ‘I’ve got this friend who plays bass.’ I said, ‘Bring him over,’” Midgley recalled.
Enter Mike Pillitteri, general manager at Riverview Cellars Estate Winery. Next to join was Tim Balasiuk, drummer and owner of Paddle Niagara, followed by guitarist Nick Serbina, a master at making charcuterie.
They called themselves The Hopyards, designating Tuesday nights for covering classic rock tunes and writing a few originals.
They take turns singing and have landed paying gigs, providing the soundtrack at Corks Restaurant in Old Town, and at a Terry Fox fundraiser at Niagara Oast House Brewers. Midgley is eyeing the old Federal Truckturned-stage at Oast for a future Hopyards show.
“It’s just about fitting it in. It’s not our vocation. It’s truly a passion,” he said.
They’ve made a few bucks, though. That money bought a PA system and, most recently, lights — a purchase that made Midgley’s inner rock star giddy.
“This is one step above a pool light. This is not Pink Floyd,” he joked.
Still, he basks in its glow, and especially in what it symbolizes: that you can have your toque blanche and your rock band, too.
“You sort of look at one another, you’re making music … and you feel in your heart this connectivity,” Midgley said. “It’s kind of like cooking as well. When you’ve been on a brigade, you’re very much sharing something unspoken. It’s very special and something to hang onto.”
Tiffany Mayer is the author of Niagara Food: A Flavourful History of the Peninsula’s Bounty. She blogs about food and farming at timeforgrub.com. twitter.com/ eatingniagara