NISKU, Alta. – Chef Wade Sirois knows how to cook, so he doesn’t like it when producers selling food to his kitchen try to tell him how.
“If you tell me how to cook a short roast, you’ve offended me,” Sirois told producers learning how to get their local food into Alberta restaurants.
“I’ve had some negative experiences. When people walk into the kitchen and tell the chef how to do their job, nothing will get them out faster,” Sirois said during a joint meeting of the Alberta Farm Fresh Producers Association and the Alberta Farmers’ Markets Association.
Read Also
StatCan stands by its model-based crop forecast
Statistics Canada’s model-based production estimates are under scrutiny, but agency says it is confident in the results.
Despite his harsh words, Sirois believes in using local produce in his Calgary catering business and take-away food store.
He spends four to five hours a week seeking and buying local ingredients at higher costs than ordering ingredients on-line from a distribution warehouse.
Sirois believes the direct connection between chef and farmer is a farmers’ biggest asset. When he buys beef, buffalo, honey or saskatoons direct from a producer, he fuses food and farming.
“This is what we’re missing, a connection to the land,” said Sirois, owner of Infuse Catering and Forage – Farm to Fork Foods to Go.
“I don’t have 30 suppliers. I have 30 relationships with producers.”
He recommended that farmers start small by finding a single chef willing to work with them.
A chef previously burned by producers promising products and not delivering may take time to win over again.
Find out what the chef needs, Sirois told the group. Ask the chef if he makes his own stock and drop off a box of bones. Drop off a sample of food and call later.
“Be very passive,” he said.
One of the best ways to create a connection between food and chefs is through farm tours, he said.
“I believe they are your biggest assets. Nothing has worked better for me than standing in your field. There is so much meaning in this.”
During farm tours, he’s run his finger through warm honey fresh out of the hive, heard a calf take its first breath and drove back to the city with saskatoon berry stains on his hands.
“We want to tell that story,” he said.
Sirois never served bison until a year ago. To him it was just another red meat until he spent a weekend on a bison farm tagging calves and walking past the herd during a full moon.
“There is nothing that replaces that experience on the farm,” he said.
It’s those stories that Sirois’s staff tells customers when they order. Sirois doesn’t want to hear elk or bison producers parroting nutrition studies on the benefits of their meat.
He wants to know what the producers believe in, what’s special about
their farm and why their product is different.
“Servers need to be able to tell your story. You’re not selling your product, you’re developing relationships,” he said.
