Controversial U.S. chef takes over Calgary spot
Think of it as a prolonged pop-up. Or a temporary takeover.
Preferably, think of it as a whole new restaurant that will open and then disappear after only four weeks.
However it’s framed, the plan is as simple as it is unusual. For the coming four weeks, a U.S.-based chef currently opening his own restaurant in Indiana will be taking over one of Calgary’s.
It’s the latest project for unconventional chef Brandon Baltzley who has made a career over the last two years of criss-crossing North America doing popup dining collaborations. This time, though, he will take over Winebar Kensington for a month, creating dishes that will use only ingredients from Western Canada. (All wine and spirits will also be Canadian.)
“To take a restaurant, change every single thing about it four times in a month and then have it go back to normal ... I consider it a performance art piece instead of a pop-up,” Baltzley says.
Through his Crux tour, Baltzley has been travelling around North America, bringing his unusual dishes to a whole new audience. Now the nomadic chef is putting down roots on a parcel of land outside of Michigan City, Indiana, where he and two partners are opening TMIP, a garden-to-plate restaurant that will serve only food they have grown or raised on the property.
Still in its infancy, TMIP will take some time to get up and running. Until then, the restless chef needs a project.
Knowing the next two years will tie him to the farm and restaurant, Baltzley has one more shot at a last hurrah.
“I had a month or two to do something wild and crazy before I don’t have a life again,” he says.
He will do that here in Calgary.
Baltzley has been charmed by this city since his first visit last November after Petroleum Club executive chef Liana Robberecht suggested he come do a Crux dinner here.
Diners and chefs here have been equally captivated by the chef with unexpected creations and checkered past.
He is prone to profanity and has left a trail of jobs at high-profile restaurants in such places as New York and Chicago in the wake of addiction and personality clashes. Baltzley pulls no punches about his history, which he’s catalogued in his autobiography Nine Lives: A Chef’s Journey from Chaos to Control.
“A controlled recklessness,” is how Cam Dobranski, chef owner of Winebar Kensington and Brasserie Kensington, describes his friend.
But he also has an intensely creative and unconventional approach to food, one that still emphasizes ingredients’ flavours. One week before taking over, Baltzley is playing with potential dishes: A carrot covered in carrot dust, served with a carrot caramel and brined carrot tops; lamb cheeks, tongue and brains — soft and souffle-like — with crostini, cauliflower soup where the vegetable was roasted in the lambs head and a side of roasted cauliflower florets with lamb’s eyeballs.
“I’m making a point to make things as approachable as they can be,” Baltzley says. “We’re trying to get people to open up a little.”
Response to Baltzley the two other times he’s visited the city has been strong with the handful of small dinners he collaborated on with other local chefs, including a last-minute, 21-course lunch, selling out quickly.
“When we did that lunch thing, it was super successful in a matter of 12 hours,” says Dobranski.
He suspects buy-in from Calgary’s culinary community for this undertaking will be strong.
Baltzley once had plans to open a restaurant in Calgary but couldn’t make it happen.
Taking over Winebar is the next best thing.
“I was like, ‘Yo, give me your restaurant,’” Baltzley says he told Dobranski.
Starting Monday, the space under Brasserie Kensington will become This Is Not Winebar. There will be new logos on the door, Baltzley’s music selections playing, a Twitter account (@thisisnotWBK1) and Baltzley will be at the helm, training the crew and creating the menu, which will change weekly.
“It’s basically TMIP, but in Calgary,” says Dobranski.
TMIP — an acronym for “the most important part” — reflects Baltzley’s philosophy that ingredients, particularly those local to an area, must be the focus and not the hyper manipulations of them as seen with the molecular gastronomy craze.
“I don’t want to serve a gel inside a gel outside of a birthday cake,” he says. “I want to wow people through simplicity rather than chemicals. It’s amazing what you can do with an onion, just an onion.”
The small plates dishes he expects to serve while in Calgary will be creative but simple — something he showcased during his previous visits to the city, including that last-minute lunch at Winebar. There, he and Dobranski rolled out 21 courses over four hours to about 20 people seated along the bar of the open kitchen. That lunch had been planned in 12 hours, Baltzley says. This time around will be better because more will have been planned in advance.
No reservations will be taken during the four weeks and only those seated at the bar will have a chance to take on a tasting menu that will be served by Baltzley and the other cooks in the kitchen.
For the rest of the restaurant, a chalkboard menu will outline the options.
Each week will have a theme: plants, sea creatures, land wanderers and the unborn (eggs, seeds and pollens).
Calgary, Baltzley says, is a good fit for the undertaking.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Toronto and Quebec. The biggest difference in Calgary and other Canadian cities I’ve been to is the willingness, the excitement around food,” he says. “It’s very childlike how excited people get about food there. You guys know good food.”