FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Aboriginal eats served with a side of education
There are said to be 6,909 spoken languages in the world.
Yet, even with all those words and tongues available for communication, they don’t mean much if one or more parties don’t understand the conversation.
And, that’s where food comes in. The deep, almost seductive “mmm” elicited by a mouthful of amazing food is a universal language signalling something is delicious. Same goes for the twisted grimace of a failed taste test. (It’s bad!)
With one bite, food can excite, it can explain. And, it can help people to understand.
“If you can speak through food, then you can speak through a ton of different concepts and platforms,” says Shane Chartrand, the executive chef at Sage Restaurant at the River Cree Resort & Casino in Enoch, Alta.
Telling a story is exactly what Chartrand and fellow chefs Saskatoon-based Rich Francis, Calgary-based Bill Alexander and Vancouver-based Tobias Grignon hope to do during the Indigenous Canada dinner on Jan. 24, as part of Dine Out Vancouver Festival’s World Chef Exchange.
Other chefs joining forces for the various World Chef Exchange events include: Bangkok’s Chef David Thompson and local Chef Angus An at Maenam; Tokyo’s Chef Fumihiro Matsumoto and local Chef Andrea Carlson at Burdock & Co.; Beijing’s Chef Jiuxin Fan and local Chef Kamal Silva at HJU:Z Lounge at the Westin Bayshore Hotel; and Nashville’s Chef Trevor Moran and local Chef David Gunawan at Farmer’s Apprentice.
The evening meal will have the chefs create dishes inspired by traditional Indigenous heritage and cuisines, while also offering an entry point into an open, educational conversation about the Indigenous population’s history in Canada.
It’s not, the chefs acknowledge, the easiest conversation for some people to have.
“There are a lot of people who don’t know how to break down the walls of Indigenous communities. They don’t know who to speak to, or they get nervous,” Chartrand says. “The Indigenous community has tons and tons and tons of struggles. It doesn’t matter where you go. But, on the food side, people are now more interested in the Indigenous food and cooking more than anything else.”
Chartrand says the interest is flipping the script on typical conversations.
“Instead of someone saying to me, ‘Chef Shane, why are there so many homeless Aboriginal people living on the streets?’ You don’t start a good conversation with a negative — in any culture,” he says. “The good thing about the Indigenous food scene, is people seem to be really excited about Aboriginal food, Aboriginal cuisine and Aboriginal stories. And that’s a big positive.”
The Indigenous Canada event won’t be a deep dive into the long history and sordid treatment of Indigenous nations. Instead, the chefs will be serving a sampler, of sorts.
“For something like Dine Out, it will be more of an introduction. Baby steps,” Francis says, with a laugh. “But, if you were to come to one of my private dinners, I’d throw you off into the deep end. This is just an introduction.”
Francis says he hopes the meal, which will feature eight courses, wine pairings and cocktails, will help attendees “go beyond the current paradigm that we’ve always carried about Indigenous cuisine.”
“The biggest misconception, from a chef’s perspective, is that we’re only about the Indian Taco and Pow Wow food. It’s a challenge, and it’s kind of annoying now, too,” Francis says. “One of the biggest challenges is ignorance.”
Francis says the roles of the growing ranks of Indigenous chefs go far beyond just cooking up creative dishes and feeding them to people. It’s an expansion of his original job description he’s happy to accept.
“I never realized I’d be doing what I’m doing now. I’m more of a cultural ambassador, and we’re using food as a vehicle to address reconciliation and things like that,” he says. “There’s a lot of education. It’s getting rid of stereotypes, and breaking barriers. And doing it all unapologetically because, no one was ever given information about us. And now it’s like, whoa, we’re finding our voice.
“Our work has become much more important because it now has a sense of purpose attached to it.”
And, according to Grignon, who is the director of culinary operations at Edible Canada, it couldn’t come at a better moment.
“It’s about time,” Grignon says. “There are a handful of really incredibly talented Indigenous Canadian chefs working right now. So, the movement is starting to get a little more attention. And it really is a natural and necessary step to finding and bringing in this really key part of what Canadian cuisine is.
“We talk about all these immigrant cultures that influence Canadian cuisine and what we would normally think it is. Finally, the Indigenous community is getting a seat at the culinary table — and being recognized.”
When looking to understand the depth and breadth of Indigenous cuisine, one of the first places to start is recognizing how diverse the food is across Canada’s more than 50 Indigenous nations.
“People tend to lump Indigenous cuisine into one big melting pot, but I don’t know if there’s any more diverse cuisine out there today,” Francis says. “Region to region, across Indian country, there are so many different techniques and so many different cooking methods available. It all depends on which area you’re in.”
The diverse approach to food and ingredients, and the misunderstanding of both aforementioned areas, is something Chartrand says he experienced during a cooking event in Vancouver.
“I was gifted chum salmon from the Haida Gwaii. The Haida Gwaii believe if you ingest chum salmon, its strength and power will enter into your bloodstream and your mind. So, you will be physically strong and mentally strong after you eat chum salmon,” he recalls. “Now, chum salmon is the lowestgrade salmon you can get. And it’s funny, because the chef that was at the kitchen said, ‘Your fish came in and it’s all bad. I would never serve this.’ ”
Chartrand said he was asked to make the call whether to toss the 200 pounds of fish the night before the event and start over. Knowing there was no way he could source that amount of fish in so little time, Chartrand went to inspect the delivery himself.
“And I clued in — the chef didn’t understand what chum salmon was,” he says. “It has a yellowy colour and a different smell altogether. They’re big, monster salmon. When I saw the fish, they were the best chum salmon I’d ever seen. This was beautiful fish.”
Chartrand prepped, smoked and served the salmon hung from driftwood planks for guests to tear the smoky meat off with their bare hands.
“It was amazing,” he recalls. The chefs admit they have faced the breaking down of stereotypes and re-education within their own communities, too.
“Even the Aboriginal people don’t know enough about their own food. And that’s not throwing the entire nation under the bus,” Chartrand says. “I don’t know enough about Aboriginal food. I’m learning. And this has been my journey for 12 years. I’ve travelled to many nations, and I still don’t know enough.”
Francis agrees.
“I’m still educating myself as to what’s out there. Learning from people what I can’t find in history books, let alone cookbooks, from people who used to live off the land,” he says. “It’s finding really humble products like this that we used to sustain ourselves with and turning it into something really remarkable. So, it’s rediscovering all this stuff we used to do before colonialism, before cultural genocide, and rediscovering — and making something remarkable.”
Francis says his personal path to better understanding Indigenous cuisine, both through his company Seventh Fire and his role as a TV show host, has been humbling — and emotional.
“I’ve been fortunate to serve and work with elders, and I’ve seen those pathways get reconnected. It reminds them of the time just before residential schools. They say, ‘Oh, this reminds me of my mom.’ ” he says. “And they’re in tears. It’s really, really powerful and really moving.
“Even when I’m working with the First Nations students, in urban areas, even though they’ve never had traditional food, something inside them recognizes it. And you see that light bulb go on. We do have an Indigenous food DNA. And it goes off, and I’ve witnessed this. It’s really cool work as a chef.”
While the whole “local” movement — what with the “farm-to-table” and “nose-to-tail” buzzwords — has helped to spur the interest in and exploration of Indigenous cuisine, the term isn’t something that sits well with many cultural chefs.
“It’s funny how … these little terms have become popular,” Chartrand says. “And they’re still coming! I heard fish-to-plate is the new one. Like, come on now.”
It’s not just the slight absurdity of the terms themselves that are proving distasteful, it’s the idea of resourceful and respectful eating that’s intrinsic to Indigenous cuisine being seen as a “trend.”
“I really take offence to that, because whose security and whose sovereignty is that? It has never been a trend. It has been our absolute survival,” Francis says. “That’s the only way we have been able to sustain ourselves throughout history. So, no, this isn’t a trend. It’s not a nose-to-tail, it’s not a farmto-fork. It’s not all that bull---t.
“It’s much, much more than that.”
The idea of eating what’s available in the area — whether that’s plants, animals, fruits, nuts or herbs — is congenital to Indigenous cuisine.
“This all came from the Indigenous community. From Indigenous people,” Chartrand says. “Hunters and gatherers are still hunters and foragers. It just depends on how you want to look at the word.”
Chartrand recalled growing up on an acreage in Alberta, having to help tend the garden for vegetables and care for the chickens and geese that were ultimately used for food. He says he failed to register the importance of his family’s connection to the homegrown food until he was in his twenties, when after growing increasingly troubled by where the meats and vegetables he was using in the restaurant industry were coming from, he revisited his time on the farm.
“The food just tasted way better from the garden. And it was natural,” he says. “That’s when I knew how off the restaurant industry had gone, with big-chain restaurants that can’t actually get local goods.”
At his own restaurant, Chartrand sources the ingredients for his dishes primarily from 12 growers and producers in the Edmonton area.
“I’m at a high-end casual restaurant in a casino setting, and to think that we’re getting that much local food is amazing,” he says. “And the reason that we’re doing it, is for many reasons, but the most obvious are because of the flavour influences. And we know exactly how the animals are being raised.
“At the end of the day, food reverence is something to take into consideration, that you’re respecting the food and you’re respecting where it comes from.”
A taste of that respect for ingredients and traditions will surely be on offer during the Indigenous Canada meal — among other things.
“Obviously a great experience,” Chartrand says, when asked about the hoped take-away for the evening’s attendees.
“But, because it’s an Indigenous dinner, I hope, and I know, that we’re going to have a lot of questions. And that’s the part I like. That, and to give people great food that they will love.”
So, prepare to go hungry — and leave informed.
The Dine Out Vancouver Festival runs until Feb. 4 at various locations. Visit dineoutvancouver.com.