ADDING A TOUCH OF T.O.
Chefs Mark Esguerra, Kyrn Stein raise the bar in ByWard Market
Two talented young chefs from Toronto have recently moved into Ottawa kitchens, raising the bar for ByWard Market restaurants. Kyrn Stein, who took over as executive chef at Social, on Sussex, in October, comes home to Ottawa with experience at such top Toronto restaurants as The Grove, Mark McEwan’s ONE and Colborne Lane. He also worked with Jamie Kennedy and at the Michelin-starred Pied à Terre in London.
Mark Esguerra, who took over the kitchen at Stella Osteria, on Clarence, in August, worked at Toronto’s Canoe and Auberge du Pommier, as well as at Fraticelli’s in Richmond Hill, where he learned from celebrity chef Massimo Capra.
Both have introduced new menus in the past few weeks that add flair and a dash of Toronto flavour to their ByWard Market establishments. They also buck the trend for Ottawa restaurants to promote from within, and for Ottawa’s top chefs to move on to open their own restaurants, or out to bigger cities.
“It rarely happens that you get a chef to move here from a bigger city,” says Ida Firestone, coowner of Stella Osteria, Luxe and Blue Cactus. “If anything, it goes the other way. People think they’ve outgrown Ottawa.”
Stein says the last high-profile chef to move to Ottawa from Toronto was probably Matthew Carmichael, nearly a decade ago. With his experience working under Susur Lee and travelling in Asia, Carmichael brought a fresh flavour to Ottawa that’s still apparent at his El Camino on Elgin Street and on the menus of many of his apprentices.
Like Carmichael before him, Stein, 31, is moving home by moving back to Ottawa. He attended Lycée Claudel and Nepean High School before heading to New York’s prestigious Culinary Institute of America for four years of training.
“I think there are a lot of great things going on here,” says Stein. “There are some great Ottawa chefs — Supply and Demand just came in No. 4 as a best new restaurant in Canada in enRoute magazine. But there’s always room for a fresh set of eyes, the influence of new styles. The things that are happening in Toronto happened in New York, and before New York in London.”
Stein says his new menu, launched at Social on Oct. 28, is a bit of blend of the influences of ONE, where dishes are presented very simply, and The Grove, known for its intricate plating. He hopes to amp up the Toronto experience even more by bringing in some of the top Toronto chefs he’s worked with, such as Ben Heaton of The Grove, to cook at special guest-chef dinners at Social.
Esguerra, 27, was born in the Philippines, but he and the owners of Stella say he brings an authentic Italian influence to the osteria (which means a place for serving simple Italian food).
“I grew up in a very Italian neighbourhood in Markham,” says Esguerra. “I was left with our Italian neighbours while my parents worked. I’ve kind of adopted the whole culture.”
Noah Firestone, co-owner and manager of Stella, says it’s rare to find a chef in Ottawa who doesn’t revert to French training in the kitchen.
“I’m done with hunting for chefs in Ottawa,” he says. “You get great cooks who develop beautiful Italian menus, but French cooking is still stuck in their heads. Mark brings true Italian training, a fresh way of plating and a kind of youthful vibe, too.”
Stein and Esguerra also bring new ingredients to the table.
Ida Firestone says she always thought that Stella had the best pizza crusts.
“Then we did a blind taste test and we all liked Mark’s crusts better.”
Esguerra has used his connections from Fraticelli’s to get his favourite Toronto supplier to custommake pizza crusts and fresh pasta — something Stella has not had before — using Esguerra’s recipes.
“I think we have a more authentic bolognese sauce than we’ve ever had,” says Ida Firestone. “Mark simmers the meat with milk for eight hours, which is something he learned from Massimo Capra, and it’s served on fresh pappardelle.”
Stein is getting wild mushrooms from a Peterborough forager he met while working in B.C., as well as such rarities as huckleberries, elderberries and sea buckthorn.
He also went out of his way to source locally some ingredients, such as parsley root, and meat cuts, such as lamb saddle, that he had worked with in Toronto.
“I drove out to Navan, to Lavergne meats. It’s a great place. That’s one of the things I love about Ottawa — there are all these farms just 30, 40 minutes away.”
Stein says that because there are so many chefs working in Toronto’s booming food scene “suppliers have to work harder to get them unique products.”
The menu at Stella is larger than it’s ever been, says Firestone, while Stein has completely rewritten the one at Social, adding such dishes as carrots presented in canoes of bone marrow with a parsley salad in between; scallops with jerk pork belly and chicharrón (puffed, dehydrated pork skin); and a dessert called Rocky Road, which includes “cereal milk ice cream” (à la Momofuku Milk Bar) and handmade Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Neither Stein nor Esguerra want to present themselves as better or more sophisticated than Ottawa’s chefs. But they do allow that their experience brings some exciting influences.
“Ten years ago, Ottawa was mainly pub food,” says Stein, who worked in Ottawa restaurants even when he was in high school. “Now the food scene is blossoming and there’s a good sense of community here. I could be part of an influence. There’s good things to come to Ottawa.”