Local Food in Focus

THE FOOD ISSUE

SASKATOON OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2019

Local food industry faces Yohannes Petros (Hanes Hummus), Arlie Laroche (Farm One Forty, Odla), Vivek Patawari (Yay! Thai, Karma Conscious Café), Heather Williams (Prairie Sun Brewery) and Daniel Der (Ko Chicken+Ramen, Waves Poke+Press).

FROM FARMERS TO FOOD PROCESSORS, BREWERS TO BARISTAS, THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FOOD WE EAT REPRESENT AN ENTIRELY NEW BREED

ON EVERYTHING FOOD

Global trends reflected right here

By Noelle Chorney

Artisanal doughnuts at Darkside Donuts on Avenue H South.

Penny McKinlay

Chef and restaurateur Dale MacKay of the Grassroots Restaurant Group.

Courtesy photo

Fresh golden beets at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market in Riversdale.

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focus on food

Diners tuck into Asian cuisine at Odd Couple restaurant on 20th Street West.

Tourism Saskatoon

A Local Take on Global Food Trends

Saskatoon may feel insulated from global food trends as they unfold in more metropolitan cities in the US, Europe and Asia, but rest assured: the local food scene reflects all that is happening elsewhere.

There are many faces of Saskatoon’s local food scene. Odla—a new farm-to-table restaurant in Broadway district—features several.

Farm One Forty owner and Odla restaurant co-owner Arlie Laroche.

Eric Anderson

Opened by Farm One Forty in partnership with chef Scott Dicks and sommelier/general manager Lacey Sellinger as a way to share their grass-fed beef, lamb and pork, the eatery also operates a store that sells cuts of meat and other farm products for meals at home. “We also like to take it a step further and host on-farm events so people can have a closer experience with where their food comes from,” says Farm One Forty owner Arlie Laroche. Other restaurants may not be owned by the farmers themselves, but they do have well-established partnerships with local producers.

Karan Thakur of Calories says, “We have a great relationship with Dennis Skoworodko at Our Farm YXE, and we also work closely with the farmers at Mole Mountain Farms, Cramana Acre Farms and Cool Springs Ranch.”

There is growing interest in local wildcrafting with Medicine Walks being offered by Wanuskewin Heritage Park, workshops offered by local foragers as well as during the NatureCity Festival. As Indigenous peoples have known since time immemorial, these wild lands offer a great bounty without having to be cultivated.

Plant-based Protein

Everyone lately has been talking about the ‘Beyond Meat’ burger, but Saskatoon’s connection to plant-based protein goes deeper than that. We are one of the primary locations for the Proteins in Canada Research Supercluster, a federally funded research project set to explore crop development, processing and product development of plant-based proteins over the next few years.

In the meantime, the demand for vegetarian and vegan options is growing, and places such as güd eats inc. (also a food truck) and Yay!Thai have committed to 100 percent vegan menus. Two restaurants out of the hundreds in Saskatoon may not quite qualify as a “trend”, but the demand is there and diners can only expect to see more. Plant-based diets are here to stay.

gud eats inc. owner Chris Cole serves up vegan fast food at a summertime festival in Saskatoon.

Courtesy photo

Evolution of the ‘Restaurant’ Concept

Where restaurant chains used to rule, chef-driven restaurant groups have entered the field here. They are opening concept restaurants that allow them to express their creativity, play with multiple culinary traditions, and build an empire at the same time.

While the names Bobby Flay or Wolfgang Puck are well-known in this realm and there are other Canadian versions in Toronto and Montréal, Saskatoon has its own chef empires right here at home. The Grassroots Restaurant Group, the face of which is Top Chef winner Dale MacKay, has three restaurants in Saskatoon and one in Regina. Taste Restaurant Group, co-owned by Chef Chris Hill, boasts Una Pizza+Wine, Bar Gusto, Picaro, and Cohen’s Beer Emporium, covering high-end pizza, pasta, tacos and pub fare along with appropriately themed wine, beer and cocktails in each location.

There is also a trend to move away from bricks-and-mortar altogether. The rise of food trucks is one example, but not the only one. Canoe Oysters has neither a storefront nor a food truck; instead, owner Wesley Gendron pops up anywhere there’s demand.

“My pop-ups are akin to a large family supper and I find that liberating,” says Gendron. “It gives me the freedom to create diverse menus, collaborate with chefs, use seasonal ingredients and play host to an entire dining experience. The stresses of leases, large staffs and soul-crushing debt are non-existent. I can focus on my passion for feeding people, and my guests can feel and taste the difference.”

Food as Medicine Indigenous cultures all over the world have understood for eons that food is more than sustenance; it is also medicine. While the prevalence of processed food in our diet has changed that, there is a shift toward eating clean, simple, whole foods that can prevent—and some say cure—many of the diseases that plague our modern lives.

Leyda’s Café was founded by Dr. DeeDee Maltman, a physician with a background in Integrative Medicine who promotes an anti-inflammatory diet. Leyda’s was a groundbreaker in Saskatoon when it opened six years ago offering a 100 percent gluten- and nut-free menu as a response to the number of people suffering from gluten and nut allergies. Dr. Maltman says, “To quote (Immunologist) Dr. Justin Sonnenburg, ‘We’re able to nurse back a healthy microbiota over time with the right

Chef Christie Peters has earned respect diet and lifestyle choices.’” and considerable press for her approach A key part of restoring one’s microbiota to sourcing of local ingredients. (NUVO) involves fermented foods, which have moved beyond the realm of Ukrainian babas (sauerkraut) or hippies (kombucha) into the mainstream, with kombucha and kimchi now for sale at most grocery stores. It is also making its way into fine dining. René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen, considered one of the best restaurants in the world, boasts a fermentation lab in its kitchen.

Chef Christie Peters, co-owner of The Hollows and Primal in Saskatoon, will be apprenticing at Noma in the coming months, bringing that knowledge back to our little corner on the prairie. She’s cautious to say too much about it before she has the experience, but hopefully we can follow up on that when she gets home. Take it from local foodies: the fact that she’s doing this apprenticeship is kind of a big deal.

Here’s to the trends that bring us closer to our (Saskatoon.ca) roots while simultaneously propelling us into the future. Whether it’s old-fashioned comfort food or an emerging technology, we can all count on it being delicious.

Follow Noelle’s ever-deepening passion for local food at the Slow Food Saskatoon blog (slowfoodsaskatoon.com

Other Prominent YXE foodies/ food blogs:

Dan Clapson (The Globe & Mail; @dansgoodside) Amy Jo Ehman (@prairiefeast) Renee Kohlman (The Saskatoon Star Phoenix; @sweetsugarbean) The Local Kitchen (thelocalkitchenyxe.com/blog) Penny McKinley (wanderlustandwords.blogspot.com) Laura Monchuk (saskmom.com) Agnieszka Wolosik (@CulinarySlut) Saskatchewan Restaurants, The Good, The Band And The Ugly (closed Facebook group) Tourism Saskatoon (saskatooning. com)

Fearless and Still Foraging at 45

In her own words, Chef Jenni Lessard on starting out in the food industry, the value of kindness, and her new role at Wanuskewin Heritage Park

Chef Jenni Lessard of Wanuskewin Heritage Park.

Courtesy photo

“I started in the food business at age 14 when two friends and I had a burger stand at the La Ronge Airport called Flight Delight. In Grade 12 I moved to Jasper and cooked for a family as a nanny and worked at my uncle’s fruit stand. Got married super young and moved back to Saskatchewan. Had a stall at the Prince Albert Farmers’ Market selling soups, bread, bannock and coffee. I called it the Straw Hat Café. Started New Ground Café in 2005 in Birch Hills, SK, using local ingredients to create a daily changing chalkboard menu and sold fair trade coffee and specialty drinks. Sold the building in 2012 and moved to Saskatoon to start Chef Jenni Cuisine, a catering company using locally sourced ingredients.

“The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is to always try to be kind. The maintenance woman you smile at on your way into a catering job might be the same person helping you load mountains of gear into your vehicle six hours later. I’ve only very recently learned to be kind to myself and ask for the things I need, and give myself proper rest and nutrition.

“When I moved here, I set the intention of wanting to somehow be involved with Wanuskewin Heritage Park. In early 2018, I was contacted by the Park’s Marketing Director, Andrew McDonald, to help create the Han Wi Moon dinner series: a meal on the land featuring foraged ingredients and bison, which will soon be returning to Wanuskewin. I joined the team here full-time at the end of August and it feels like coming home. “I’ve been vegetarian for much of my life, other than when I’m a guest in someone’s home, travelling where vegetarian options are scarce or tasting the food I prepare for others. Being in the food industry has taught me to respect animals even more and take great care when sourcing and preparing animal protein. I can’t tolerate food waste, so I make sure to find a home for leftovers and also encourage guests to practice portion control at buffets (yes, I go there!).

“In 10 years, I see myself right where I am now, at Wanuskewin, walking the land, picking berries and plants, and feeding people with food and stories.”

Various hot peppers destined for artist Henry van Seters' next foray into homemade hot sauces.

Henry van Seters

Henry van Seters is known for his paintings of Saskatoon at night as well as his monumental, 22-metre-high mural “Founders”, which adorns the north side of The Drinkle Building downtown. He is also an avid gardener and spoke with flow magazine about how art and food intersect in his life.

flow: Why do you, a professional artist, use your social media to showcase your cooking and gardening more so than your art? What does good photography convey that your art cannot or does not?

HVS: It may be that I am more interested in learning than I am in the finished product. While I enjoy a painting that turns out well, and I certainly enjoy a good meal, both of those things can be provided by others. Learning how to execute a decent painting or how to cure bacon, bake bread from your own recipe, or make cheese, brings immense satisfaction. It is not that there is nothing left for me to learn in painting, far from it, but I probably share food and gardening more because there is so much more for me to learn and discover in these fields. It is harder to distort the truth with a camera than it is in painting. When I paint, I change perspective, depth of field and, in night paintings, what one can and cannot see to suit my purpose. What I paint is rarely what we actually see. With a camera the way one can manipulate an image is restricted by what you can do with the camera....I have noticed that within the last few years my photographs are starting to take on more of the sensibilities of my paintings whereas in the old days my painting tended to almost slavishly follow my photography.

flow: What kind of camera or phone do you use to take your Facebook photos?

HVS: I use the camera that I bought to snorkel with. It's an older Olympus TG-4 pocket camera with full manual override. It has a pretty narrow field where it works well, but within that field the results are pretty nice.

flow: As a professional artist, is there anything about your work that in any way influences your food decisions (be it cooking, gardening or dining out)?

HVS: Absolutely, though I view gardening and cooking as an extension of the same part of me that paints. Whether I am baking bread, curing proteins, gardening or cooking, it satisfies both the need to work with my hands and my brain just as painting does. Additionally, I do like to make a finished product look attractive. Eating the fruits of one’s labour should be a feast for all the senses.

Dining on Ukrainian Dumplings in YXE

Whatever you call them (varenyky, perogies, pyrohy), these Ukrainian dumplings are a staple of many a local diet.

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Given the Ukrainian heritage of many Saskatonians, perogies are more than a staple for many local residents; they’re part of the cycle of life as the love for these simple morsels passes from one generation to the next. Got a craving but your baba doesn’t live here? Read on.

Text by Paul Miazga

Nothing speaks so well for Saskatoon’s love affair with this Slavic staple as the Ukrainian Karpaty pavilion at Folkfest, where the food lineup stretches halfway across cavernous Hall D at Prairieland each night.

Hundreds of people will wait for up to 30 minutes or more for their plate of those potatofilled tidbits, also known as varenyky or pyrohy. To many, they bring back childhood memories of Christmas at baba’s house.

Strangely, perhaps, only a handful of businesses in the city make and serve perogies; you’d think the market for them would be fast and furious. Whatever the case, perogies by the dozen can be had for dine in or take home any day of the week. Here’s a small selection of them.

Since 1990, family-run, home-based A-R Perogies (arperogies.ca) has been serving up what some argue are the best perogies in the city. With more than two dozen varieties on the menu (potato cheddar, sauerkraut & onion, cottage cheese, and fruit fillings), plus cabbage rolls, borsch, mushroom dill gravy and semi-sweet crepe-based nalysnyky (“nalynsky” on their website), A-R is as close as you can get to baba’s home cooking without having to wait for the holidays.

Aunt Kathy’s Homestyle Products (auntkathys. ca) sells more than just perogies that appear in Saskatoon and area grocery stores: they also do cabbage rolls, sausages, pies and pizza. Of their more than a dozen varieties of dumplings, two stand out as symbolic of how tastes are changing on the prairies: jalapeno and cream cheese, and the pizza perogy. Aunt Kathy’s also operates one of two food trucks in town serving perogies at summer festivals and events: Perogie Pirates (the other being Baba’s Perogies).

Speaking of which, Baba’s Perogies (babasperogies.com) remains the city’s longest-serving perogy-making establishment, edging out A-R by just a few years. It also happens to be Canada’s only drive-through perogy restaurant (Winnipeggers, eat your heart out). At their north end location they serve plates of perogies, combo meals (with sausage and cabbage rolls), borsch and beyond. Many local grocery stores sell bags of their frozen perogies, which they make by the tens of thousands at their on-site production facility to satisfy local demand.

Wednesdays to many hungry downtown office workers means a trip to the City Hall cafeteria (4th floor, 222 3rd Ave. N). That’s perogy day, and if you’re not early getting a spot in line (which often forms just ahead of noon and hardly lets up for the whole hour), you may just be out of luck if they run out before you get to order.

On the last Friday of each month, Holy Trinity Orthodox Church (919 20th St. W) holds a perogy plate fundraiser in the basement of the church auditorium from 5–8pm, offering up a dozen for $12. With cash in hand, proceed down the line where you’ll have the option to add fried onions, a generous dollop of sour cream or creamy dill sauce. Then find a seat and dig in—just don’t mind the austere wooden seating. Portions of kovbasa (sausage) and holubtsi (cabbage rolls) cost extra.

Despite Touch of Ukraine (on Facebook) having very limited hours of business (they’re open just Wednesday and Thursday for lunch and supper, and on Friday only for lunch), this familyrun business continues to pay the bills serving up Ukrainian food, including perogies with creamy mushroom dill sauce, buffet-style. It’s like being at the reception of a local wedding except you pay $13 for the goods. At any rate, they’re likely to be in business for years to come.