120 AH
LE N JO B A K E S:
REN T S S
A LOVE LETTER TO ‘MIDTOWN’
W
WE
LL
TO ING
T NS
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KITCHENER
WORDS BY DANI KUEPFER; PHOTOS BY CHRIS TIESSEN I love when people share personal stories
You all know where this story is going. But first,
about what lights them up. I could linger in
let me back up several years.
these inspiring conversations for hours. Case in point: it’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon in June,
Newly graduated with a degree in mathematics
and Lenore Johnson and I have been chatting
and poised for a cushy office career, Lenore
on the charming, wood-framed front porch of
woke up one day with the feeling that
her Kitchener bakery for what feels like only
something else was calling her. Baking beautiful
minutes. But when her staff begin to trickle out
cakes and sweet things for the people she
and bid us farewell, I realize we might have got
loved had long been in her repertoire, so it
a little swept up in the story of ‘LenJo’ – and of
wasn't a stretch for her to embark on the
her wonderful culinary destination of the same
study of culinary arts. And so she started at
name. To be fair, it’s a good one. Allow me to
George Brown College and, before long, found
set the stage.
herself studying pâtisserie in France, and then in London, where she trained as a pastry chef
After months of to-the-studs renovations,
at various Michelin Star restaurants and five-
Lenore opened what was to be her dream
star hotels. (Fun fact: Lenore’s talents in the
bakery, LenJo Bakes, on Valentine’s Day of
kitchen ‘paid’ her way through some of these
2020. Less than a month before March of 2020.
travels as she traded fresh-baked cinnamon
