Top Chef Season 9

Alex Edmonson

Galasa Aden

TOP CHEF SEASON 9 Meet the contestants with Albertan roots

BY MALLORY FRAYN

For Galasa Aden and Alex

Edmonson, competing on Top Chef Canada was a goal set in the early stages of their careers, but neither anticipated getting their chance to do so in the middle of a global pandemic.

“It added another layer of complexity,” Aden admits, although both he and Edmonson were pleasantly surprised at how the production team handled logistics related to COVID health and safety. “At first I was really worried about the pandemic impacting how the season would go,” Edmonson says, “But I actually felt really safe and didn’t have to worry about anything. They had it on lockdown.” No pun intended. 28-year old Aden, who began his career at Calgary’s River Café, worked his way up through the ranks, and eventually took the helm as Chef de Cuisine at their sister restaurant, Deane House. However, after a flood closed the restaurant for the better part of 6 months, affording Aden to reflect on his career trajectory, he decided to make the move to mountain life.

He now works as the Executive Chef at Cliffhanger Restaurant at the Grey Wolf Golf Course in Panorama, BC, a popular destination for Alberta travelers looking for weekend getaways. “To showcase really amazing, Canadian food at a resort is not something that often happens,” he describes. It’s usually just generic burgers and such, so I took it upon myself to stand apart.”

While Top Chef had been on his radar since he began cooking, he was surprised when the show reached out to him, asking him to apply. “That really fueled my fire,” Aden says, although he initially didn’t expect to make it on. Aden’s prediction turned out to be incorrect and he received the call during a camping trip, lucky to be in cell reception!

Edmonson’s Top Chef aspirations also began during the early days of his career, working for Charcut’s Connie DeSousa, Top Chef Season One alumnus. “Right when I got the job was when her season aired,” he notes, adding that he had the opportunity to watch her trajectory and subsequent success brought on by the show firsthand. All of that said, he emphasizes that you still need the chops to make it. “It’s inevitable that people will want to go on TV for attention, but Top Chef is all about the cooking. If you can’t cook, you won’t make it,” Edmonson states.

Having worked in Michelin-star kitchens like Copenhagen’s culinary mecca, Noma, Edmonson believes that his experiences working in highpressure environments helped him to prepare for the intensity of the show. “I’m used to being in the juice,” he says.

But despite his experience, there was a point where Edmonson wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to keep cooking in the long term. Having gained recognition in Calgary as Executive Chef at Market Restaurant, the stress of working 100-hour weeks and the lack of time to pursue his own well being, led him to step away and reflect on his priorities. He now works as the owner and chef of his own personal chef company, AE Chef Services, which has helped him to create a greater sense of balance.

For both Aden and Edmonson, Top Chef is recounted as the most difficult career experience they’ve had to date. “I did not anticipate it pulling on every emotional strand the human body is capable of experiencing,” Aden admits. For Edmonson, conceptualizing and creating new dishes on the fly was a large aspect of what pushed him outside his comfort zone. “In a restaurant, you sometimes have months to try something out, and on the show, you’re coming up with it on the spot,” he describes. But for both chefs, the positives that accompanied the experience far outweighed the negatives.

As Aden puts it, “As stressful as it was, at end of day I’m just a kid trying to cook good food for the country.”

Mallory is a Calgary clinical psychologist and food writer now living and eating in Montreal. Her goal is to help people develop healthier relationships with food. Follow her on Twitter @drfrayn.