Top Chef Canada
Top Chef Canada combines the slick production and cutthroat culinary challenges of its U.S. counterpart with a distinctly Canuck feel — chiefly in the form of some talented Canadian competitors — so it’s no wonder the show is back for a second season. Each week, Postmedia’s Rebecca Tucker will speak with the skilled chef who didn’t make the cut to Top Chef’s next round. Today, 23-year-old Jimmy Stewart, of Beaftoot Bistro in Whistler.
Q. Tell me a bit about the elimination challenge from your point of view.
A: I don’t know what it looked like after they edited it, but I was a little bit fed up with the judges at that point. I mean, I thought to make it far in the competition, you had to do more than a basic tomato and mozzarella salad. Anyone can do that. But I kept getting told by the judges to simplify, to keep things simple, and that’s not my style.
They really nailed you for your mushroom soup, though, more so than the salad. And you stuck by it.
I still stick by it, and one of the first things I did when I got back is put a variation of that soup on my menu. People love it!
How often does it happen, at the judges’ table, that you want to talk back a bit?
All the time, but you learn watching Top Chef that the guys who get cut are the ones going home. It’s funny — with that pea ice cream (in the previous episode), the judges kept calling it “wasabi pea ice cream.” And I wanted to be like, hey, guys, what are you talking about? There are no wasabi peas. I used
wasabi peas, sure, but I took off the wasabi, so you just ended up with the crunchy, dry pea.
You sound like maybe at the point you got cut, maybe it was a relief.
No way! I wanted to go so much further. And I learned a lot in my time there — you learn so much, so quickly when you’re out of your element like that.
Where have you been watching the episodes?
At the restaurant — we have Top Chef Canada nights. And it’s fun — I cook variations of the dishes I did in each episode.