CHEF EMERGES from horrors of his past
Bruno Feldeisen fights against stigma of mental illness to reveal his true self
Bruno Feldeisen, with his wide, elastic grin and strong jaw, is a picture of confidence. Scanning his resume, you’d think, “Here’s a man who followed a boyhood dream: He is the pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver.”
Just out of his teens, he started working for A- list Michelin- starred chefs: Alain Ducasse, Joachim Splichal and Daniel Boulud.
Feldeisen was also pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel New York, where he nabbed two nominations for the James Beard Best Pastry Chef award, and he taught at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts in Vancouver before taking the job at the Four Seasons.
These days, TV producers are discovering his charm. Feldeisen, 49, has appeared in Sweet Genius ( a pastry competition) and he’ll be on two Food Network Canada shows, which he’s under contract to keep mum about. Earlier this month, he was the only Canadian finalist in an international Pastry Chef of the Year competition in New York.
But no. This was no boyhood dream. His boyhood was a nightmare and dreams were modest: food. A mother who didn’t try to kill him. A dad. When he dared to wish bigger, he thought it would be cool to be an airline pilot.
“That sense of freedom, of being able to go anywhere in the world,” he says. The dream of escape. Feldeisen ended up on the streets in a town in central France at the age of 12.
His mother was a drug addict and he’d known his father for all of 10 searing minutes as an eight- year- old. His mother not only physically abused him ( once hitting his head on a bathtub so violently, it still hurts to hear, he says), she once made him swallow 20 Valium pills, thinking it would kill him.
“She was a miserable person, angry and unstable and there was nobody to help her,” says Feldeisen.
At the end of a long phone interview, Feldeisen felt comfortable enough to add a detail he’d mustered up the trust to reveal. His mother was also a prostitute. “It’s blunt but my sexual education was based on hearing my mother and seeing men come in late at night.”
At 22, he left France for America to escape his past but it caught up with him 10 years later in the late 1990s when he was a celebrated pastry chef at Four Seasons in New York. Severe panic attacks began to cripple his existence. They were so demolishing, he thought he was dying. One attack caught him on a flight. He locked himself in the bathroom and bit down on his fingers to stop from screaming. He had to quit his job. “I left my job when I was at the top of my career.
“I was named as one of the top 10 pastry chefs in America,” he says. “I never had to pay a bill at places like Daniel ( one of the top New York restaurants).
“I was one of the big guys. I was a womanizer. I had so many girlfriends and broke so many hearts. I was a player and the money was easy. I’m not proud of it. Then I went into six years of darkness.”
Recently, seeking therapy, he was diagnosed with post- traumatic stress from his experiences as a young boy. As a 12- year- old on the streets, he was caught stealing food and placed in an institution with other children whom he felt had come through worse traumas. “I felt lucky. Everyone had gone through such horrors, girls raped by their fathers. It was the bottom of society. My case, I felt, was light. I was very close to being sexually abused by men who pretended to be my mother’s friend. When you’re a survivor, you’re extremely careful, you analyze and don’t trust. At that point I was not frightened. I was a bottom feeder in society.”
Some survival instinct in Feldeisen fought against a downward spiral like the fate of his “hero” at the juvenile institute, the one who committed suicide. “The French school system was very elitist. With my background, I didn’t have a chance.”
So at 16, he applied for a job in a chocolate shop and gained an apprenticeship. He was yelled at, he scrubbed floors and was on garbage duty, scrubbing the cans inside and out.
“I loved it,” he says. “I was part of a family. I started to look at ( my boss) and wanted him to be my father. That kitchen helped me become a man. The kitchen is a little society. It’s life. The table is designed to bring people together. There is something primal, emotional and raw about it. Kitchens became an escape for me and when I was younger, the chefs I worked for were like father figures.”
On his apprenticeship exam, he had one of the highest scores.
“At 18 or 19, I realized I was given a fantastic opportunity. I smelled it. I saw a beautiful journey happening,” he says. “I understood early on that the kitchen was my salvation and the way to get out of my misery.”
He left that chocolate shop at 19 but remains close to that boss. “Every time I fly back ( to France), I stay with him for a week. He always told me, ‘ You’re like my first son.’ We have a deep bond.”
Alain Ducasse then offered him a job as chocolatier in his opulent Monte Carlo restaurant and Feldeisen helped to open another in southern France. He was making serious money, paid cash for a sports car, dined out at expensive restaurants and spent everything he made.
But, feeling trapped by his past in France, at 22, he moved to the United States. “I’d always felt the burden on my back in France. I would always be known as the kid with no parents, the one who was on the streets. That was my label. It was a society based on status and money and I wanted to get away. Once I got to New York, it was gone. I could breathe freely and be myself. In North America I always felt welcome.”
He went to work as pastry chef ( a huge learning curve from chocolatier) at Patina, a star- studded restaurant in Los Angeles and owner- chef Joachim Splichal is still a good friend. He bought a book on American pastry and learned on the job.
“I had good reviews and people loved my desserts because here was a French guy making pies and cobblers. I was featured in Chocolatier Magazine,” he says.
At 28, Feldeisen was lured to The Four Seasons’ flagship hotel in New York. It was there, in 1997, when he was 32, that panic attacks started clawing at his boyhood wounds. He was pulled into “six years of darkness,” he says. “I drifted. I didn’t trust what I could do.”
He drifted from a stint at Senses at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto ( where he met Ned Bell, now the executive chef at Four Seasons Vancouver), to opening a small restaurant in San Francisco. “It went belly up,” Feldeisen says. The Senses owner asked him to open the Vancouver branch ( now closed) but he felt too incapacitated and recommended Thomas Haas, who was working for Daniel Boulud in New York at the time. ( And thus, Haas began his glorious chocolate business here.)
Feldeisen continued to suffer emotionally.
“Sometimes I couldn’t leave home because of my embarrassment. I spent days at home, depressed,” says Feldeisen. “It was a difficult time.”
He moved to Vancouver in 2007 when his friend Daniel Boulud asked him to run the dessert program at Lumiere ( from where he was fired for the first time in his career, by restaurant chef Dale MacKay). He went on to teach at Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts before taking the job at Four Seasons Vancouver.
Along the way, Feldeisen became a dad, and is now a part- time single dad to seven- year- old Sergio. Fatherhood finally prompted him to seek therapy three years ago.
“You want to be a better person for your son,” he says. “He deserves a great dad. I want him to have the life I never had. I never skied, swam, never did anything. I need to be there for him and free of my past.”
He went through a year of cognitive behavioural therapy and dealt with his panic attacks. “I rewrote my brain. I cried. When my mother died ( of a drug overdose when he was 14), I didn’t cry. Writing all this out, I cried so much. I had never, ever spoken the word ‘ dad’ and I didn’t know the feeling of saying that. It was hard to admit I was abused and that there was no one around to help.”
He had avoided medication to treat his panic attacks because it reminded him of his mother and the Valium incident.
“I’d rather struggle than be someone else through drugs,” he says.
He considers himself “200- per- cent better,” although he’ll check in with the therapist on occasion. And now he wants to come out of hiding and be an example for others.
“I hope that whoever might be in my situation won’t use it as an excuse not to be happy. That’s what I want to convey even though it might be a tremendous struggle day to day,” he says. “For a long time, I never spoke of it. I invented my youth to people. ( He told people he was raised by his grandparents.) I realized I was lying to myself. When I drive through the Downtown Eastside, it breaks my heart. I could be them. There is no difference between them and me.
“It is kind of a coming- out time in my life. I saw Clara Hughes, the Canadian speedskater, talk freely and without shame about her personal struggles with mental illness ( depression) and it was inspiring, for sure. You are always afraid people will judge you or know your weakness. It’s like being totally naked in front of a huge crowd but I can definitely handle it today.”
He knows his story isn’t the expected fit for the “beautiful Four Seasons Hotel,” he says. “But I want people to know me for who I am. Often, people are ashamed and I understand. I speak because it might help one person.”
In fact, Four Seasons executive chef Ned Bell, who has known Feldeisen since 1999, had no knowledge of Feldeisen’s terrible past. “He’s of the same calibre as Thomas Haas locally,” says Bell. “Henry Wu ( whom Bell and Feldeisen worked for at Senses in Toronto) thought so highly of him, he gave him the world when Senses was going through an expansion. His desserts are quite technical and it’s where he shines. Bruno is an unsung hero in this city with so many phenomenal pastry chefs. I’ve told him I’d help fund him if he ever opened a storefront.”
Sometimes, out of the rubble of a destroyed childhood, Feldeisen shows, there can be a good and loving life.
One of Feldeisen’s biggest sorrows, not having a dad, let alone one who cared about him, has made him the best of dads. “I love being a father 24/ 7. My little guy is developing his personality and becoming a little man with his own ideas and personality. My son makes me a better person day after day. Even if I never had a father in my life to learn things from, the human spirit is strong enough to give me the tools to teach my son the values he needs to succeed.”