Food Network Canada’s Newest Judge Chef Shawn Adler

Chef Shawn Adler is the chef and owner of The Flying Chestnut Kitchen in Eugenia, Ontario, as well as the chef and owner of Pow Wow Cafe in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Being from a mixed family of Indigenous blood on his mother’s side and of Polish-Jewish descent on his father’s, Chef Adler’s inherent influences of cuisine are bold, interesting and unique, much like the colourful fare he has become known for.

In addition to being a busy restaurant owner and father of two, Chef Adler is the newest face on the Food Network Canada’s Wall of Chefs Season 2. He joins host Noah Cappe and 12 other Canadian culinary giants to judge four amateur home cooks each episode, with the winner taking home $10,000. Although new to Food Network Canada, this is not Adler’s first time on television. You may recognize him from the documentary series Forage (CBC Gem), where he takes viewers on a journey to identify unique edibles that grow in our natural surroundings.

Growing up in Orangeville, Ontario, as one of five children in his family, Adler learned to forage from his mother who is Anishnaabe-kwe from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation. Adler spent a lot of time on the pow wow trail as a youth, and draws inspiration from these experiences and his Indigenous knowledge to create delicious food that showcases ingredients from the Great Lakes region. Here is more about Chef Adler and his culinary journey thus far.

SAY: What sparked your love of food and cooking?

Adler: I have always been a good healthy eater. As a child, I liked a lot of different foods, especially cheeseburgers, and I still have the notion today that a cheeseburger is the best thing to eat! The love of cooking came in high school when, in Grade 11, I took a cooking course. I only took it because I thought it would be great to know how to make munchies and because I thought women might like a man who knew how to cook. Turns out, I really enjoyed it. The whole experience was eye-opening. I did okay in my other academic classes, but I wasn’t very interested in them. When I took cooking, it felt natural, like this was where I was supposed to be.

I want the foods of my nation to shine, and I want to present them in a contemporary Indigenous way.

SAY: What was your journey to becoming a chef?

Adler: After doing a co-op placement at Hockley Valley Resort, where I learned a lot of classic cuisines very quickly and all facets of running a professional kitchen, I worked at various fine dining restaurants around Orangeville until I found great chefs to work with. I got my formal training at Stratford Chefs School, and then I went to Trent University and took Native Studies (the name of the program at the time) and, basically geared my entire learning at university towards Indigenous foods.

If it was politics, I wrote about the systemic slaughter of buffalo and the government’s eradication of Indigenous Peoples’ foods. If it was an art class, I looked at Indigenous food in art—every course I grafted into the world of food.

SAY: What kind of fare do you serve at your restaurants, and how are they different?

Adler: The Flying Chestnut is a bistro where we include flavours from all over the world on a single plate. If I had to define it, I would say it’s more of a casual fine dining experience with an artistic/ eclectic ambiance. It’s my reaction to the old historic building it’s in and what I wanted to achieve with it. Pow Wow

Cafe is most definitely rooted in pow wow cuisine, and that stems from my childhood when we would be at pow wows every weekend throughout the summer with my family—fry bread, scone dogs and corn soup are the greatest hits from that time in my opinion, and fry bread is the basis for a lot of the cuisine at pow wows. I build upon the foods that I grew up eating, and I use foods that you find in Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation,

like pickerel, rabbit, venison, white fish, birch, salmon, pike, Indigenous wild rice and maple syrup, and I make them shine on the menu at Pow Wow Cafe.

SAY: Tell us about your involvement as a judge on Season Two of Wall of Chefs. Adler: It’s been a great experience. I judge food daily, dining out or making my own food, so I am a critic for sure. It was nice to be asked to be a judge and to be on a show with other amazing chefs, people I’ve watched and looked up to on television. Watching the home cooks hold knives and other things can be stressful at times since those skills are first nature to the professionals on the Wall. I did enjoy watching the reactions of the other chefs on the Wall and seeing the reveals of what was in one of their fridges.

SAY: How do you feel about representing Indigenous culture on television?

Adler: To have Indigenous representation on the show, on the Food Network, is amazing. I always looked up to APTN Chef David Wolfman—it was awesome to see someone cooking our food. He is the grandfather of Indigenous cooking in my opinion, and I was lucky enough to work for him on his show for two years. For younger people, it is important to see other Indigenous chefs on television. Sitting on a wall of the country’s most renowned chefs is amazing, and I appreciate having the opportunity to be a part of that.

SAY: What do you love most about what you do?

Adler: Through the pandemic, I have learned that less is more. I have had numerous restaurants operating at once while catering events, music festivals, weddings and other things. Now I realize that I enjoy being the one standing behind the stove. I love everything about cooking—the creativity, the physicality and the time management. I love the challenge of having 10 orders come in at once and seeing them all come together and go out perfectly. Seeing my food placed in front of a guest and seeing their face before they even pick up their cutlery is very gratifying. It’s what makes my brain and my heart happy.

Wall of Chefs airs Mondays at 10pm ET/ PT on Food Network Canada. You can also stream through STACKTV with Amazon Prime Video Channels or with the Global TV app, live and on-demand.

Danielle Vienneau, Editor-in-Chief with SAY Magazine, believes in the power of sharing stories to inspire greatness in others. To submit your story, email editor@saymag.com.