Supermarket delis going gourmet
Top chefs change aprons, write store menus as grocery stores become full-meal suppliers
When Josh Drache was a 25-yearold apprentice chef at the French embassy in Ottawa, he remembers cooking for the ambassador a soup made with roasted eggplant, cherry tomatoes and coconut milk.
That soup has inspired April’s “soup of the month” at Farm Boy, which will debut next week.
Want to taste the cuisine of Drache, who went on to cook at 24 Sussex Dr., Stornoway and Les Fougères? Head to Farm Boy.
How about the chef who helped open Erling’s Variety, or a talent behind the late, lamented ZenKitchen? They’re at the new Whole Foods Market at Lansdowne.
These Ottawa chefs are part of a trend that’s putting top cooks in grocers’ aprons and blurring the distinction between grocery store and restaurant.
Known in the industry as “home meal replacement,” it’s a global trend worth an estimated $2.4-million in Canada that’s seeing grocery stores gain revenues and expand their prepared-foods options even as restaurants shrink and struggle.
“People want to cook at home and eat healthily, but they’re just so pressed for time,” says Lisa Slater, the head of the Ottawa Whole Foods store, who has watched the trend expand at stores across North America.
While grocery stores flirted with prepared foods as early as the 1970s, in the last few years ready-to-eat dishes have heated up — literally.
“Now the trend is away from the cold counter to ‘I want to buy it hot and I want to eat it now’,” says Carolyn Trudel, director of marketing for the Ottawa-based Farm Boy chain, which next month will open its 17th store, with, as in all of its newest stores, a generous eat-in area. The Train Yards Farm Boy store — located next to a large health club — sells lunch to about 600 customers every day.
“I’d say in the last four to five years, sales of prepared foods have probably quadrupled,” says Drache, who oversees a team of about 50 Farm Boy chefs. He estimates that about 15 per cent of store sales are now in prepared foods. “Before 1 or 2 p.m., it’s more like 18 per cent, and the customers are predominantly male.”
Loblaw’s too has added eat-in areas at most of its urban stores and tests chef-prepared recipes for “home meal replacement” dishes at its 90-seat café in its flagship store at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.
Ottawa’s Whole Foods has seating for about 100 in a sunny area just past the cash, as well as a smaller, ground-level café. It’s busy at lunch and dinner, but busiest for the weekend $9.99 all-you-can eat brunches.
“Maybe if people haven’t been here, they might not know that chefs are in the kitchen,” says Brent Pattee, who formerly owned Fitzgerald’s, a critically praised restaurant in Almonte. “But I think when they come and eat here, they get the idea that there must be some talent.”
Jason Brault, also at Whole Foods and formerly of Erling’s Variety, says the quality of the prepared foods “is the exact same and the attention to detail is the same” at the grocery store as at top restaurants.
“The main difference is that it’s healthier. At restaurants, you’re always adding the extra cream, the butter, the salt, to make it taste better.
“You can eat that way once a week, but not every day. I believe there’s a huge change happening right now. I think people will always go out to restaurants, but they want to eat healthier.”
Dat Tran, formerly at the vegan ZenKitchen, says “a lot of the principles are the same,” in his new job, with an emphasis on whole foods that are good for you, and organic if possible. “We’re making the same food we made for ambassadors and prime ministers,” says Drache, who oversees a team of about 50 chefs at Farm Boy.
Last month, Farm Boy pushed the frontier further with an experimental “Fresh X-Press” counter at the Train Yards store. Chef Neil Dhawan, recently poached from Earnscliffe, creates hot made-toorder meals at lunch and dinner each week day. Tuesday lunches feature fresh-made tacos, for example, Thursdays shawarmas and Fridays feature pho.
“We’re raising the game,” says Drache. “I don’t know of anyone else in Canada making food to order in a grocery store. It’s a restaurant-quality experience.”
His store will have some new competition soon.
“We’re going to launch a taqueria on April 1,” says chef Brent Pattee at Whole Foods. “We’ll be making tacos and nachos every day from 11 a.m. to close.”