The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution

Suzanne Barr - The Gladstone Hotel

The Heat

A Kitchen (R)evolution

A documentary film by Maya Gallus

It takes a bold personality to ascend the ranks of the male dominated restaurant industry.Meet seven female chefs at the vanguard of change.

The Heat takes viewers behind-the-scenes to meet pioneers who broke through the glass ceiling, including Michelin-starred chefs Anne-Sophie Pic  (a.k.a. the “Queen of French Cuisine”) of Maison Pic in Valence, France; beloved UK star Angela Hartnett (and Gordon Ramsay’s former protégé) of Murano; and award-winning New York chef Anita Lo (who closes her iconic New York restaurant Annisa after 17 years).

We’ll also meet the hungry talents of a new generation, including Amanda Cohen of the trendy vegetarian restaurant, Dirt Candy in New York’s Lower East Side; Victoria Blamey of the famed Greenwich Village Chumley’s in New York; Suzanne Barr of Toronto’s trendy Saturday Dinette, who is diversifying her kitchens one restaurant at a time; and renegade chef Charlotte Langley, who has done away with traditional brick and mortar to host elaborate dinners off the grid.

Ivy Knight- Food Writer (86'd)

I have been lucky to have seen Toronto's Ivy Knight, Charlotte Langley and Susanne Barr in action at various pop ups around town and I can tell you that doing these pop ups are no joke.  It's a lot of work in a short amount of time and the difference is that they have to haul their stuff to events unlike the set kitchen environment.

Charlotte Langley

Ivy Knight who is now a food writer and host of the Drake's 86'd events is a vocal champion for women's rights in the kitchen and I can tell you that the government of Ontario is trying to make harassment in the workplace a priority to change the culture and make it more equitable and respectful.  I have a friend that worked in a few kitchens and she couldn't handle the misogyny and most of the female chefs generally try and deal with it if they want to work in certain kitchens.  I found watching the film similar to the way it is in the Film Industry.  Hot Docs has really stepped up and equalled the playing field with 50 percent of this years films being directed by women filmmakers but it wasn't always that way.  Try and name 10 top female directors in Hollywood today.  From my experience women are not taken as seriously and they are not propped up the same way as their male counterparts.  I have seen some amazing female chefs and I have also worked with female directors who have all given up on the industry because of financial reasons, myself included.

I was familiar with Anita Lo from watching her on one of the Top Chef shows and she is very focused and extremely professional but I bet I wouldn't know who she is if she didn't appear on a Food Network Show.  

Anita Lo

The film shows 3 Michelin Chefs who are trying to change the way things are done in the Professional Kitchens but the male chefs seem to get all the attention from the media.  

We must support them and praise Chefs based on their skills and not their gender or age.

If you are an aspiring female chef I recommend that you see this film to see what the experience has been for these 7 chefs in various types of kitchens.  Male chefs should see this too so they can understand how the boys club affects the whole industry.

The last screening at Hot Docs is Sunday, May 6th at 3:30pm the the Isabel Bader Theatre but the tickets have already gone RUSH so you may have to take your chance to try and get in or wait until it gets distribution into the theatres.

www.hotdocs.ca

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Chef Flynn skips boyhood for Chefhood

CHEF FLYNN

The Hot Docs film festival is celebrating it's 25 years as a top documentary film festival.  That's is a lot longer than Flynn McGarry, the subject of the same named documentary has been alive.  Chef Flynn took over his mom's California kitchen after she lost interest in cooking while going through a depression after her divorce.  Her son grew tired of her limited cooking ability and took matters into his own hands by teaching himself how to be a professional cook.  He read cookbooks, watched cooking shows and studied whatever he can on the Internet and with the single focus of food and cooking taking over his life with the help of his extremely supportive mother. 

He started cooking at 10 but don't call him a chef prodigy or culinary Doogie Howser because he has dedicated all of his time to learn his craft and takes it very seriously and before long and with the help of his mother they filled their home with diners and started with friends and it grew to friends of friends and so on until it became a popular pop up destination called EUREKA.  Flynn concentrated on the food while his mother took care of the business side and the front of the house side.  Barely into his teens he was replicating and recreating French Laundry recipes. With his perfectionist mind he took it all very seriously as if it was the only thing that mattered in his life.

Maybe it was how he was able to deal with his parents divorce with the single focus and obsession but with his whole life devoted to only food from the age of 10 he skipped years ahead of what most accomplish in the food world even when they are twice his age.  The New York Times did a profile on him and it was both a blessing, a curse and a big life lesson.  He learned how to shake off people's biased and short sited opinions of his success and just keep focused on his goal of opening a restaurant in New York.  The film is part home movie with his former filmmaker mother filming his progress since he was a kid and then with the addition of a professional film crew documenting his rise in the the restaurant industry through a series of pop up events.  Even if you don't really care about fancy restaurant food you will enjoy the dynamic of the mother and son in this film and which this is what the film is ultimately about, the journey of both of them to achieve Chef Flynn's dream of becoming a New York restaurateur.

The film is funny, beautiful, awkward and very entertaining to watch and you will fall in love with this mother and son duo.

TIP:  eat a fantastic dinner before going to see it or make reservations at a great restaurant afterward because you will be drooling over the beautiful food throughout the movie.

You can follow Chef Flynn's creations on Instagram @diningwithFlynn and follow the film at @chefflynnfilm

for more info on Hot Docs visit their website:  www.hotdocs.ca

HOT DOCS SCREENINGS:

Sun, Apr 29 10:45 AM TBLB* there is a brunch component but it is Sold Out
Sat, May 5 1:15 PM BADER

Earth Day reduce, regrow and rethink

 It's EARTH DAY today and it's a great time to think about how we use our resources every day.   Some environmental experts have said that by 2050 there will be shortages of certain foods in the World.

Lately my focus has been Food Waste because I have noticed I have wasted more food than I could afford to for the cost and what the effects on the environment are.  I struggle with this every time I take a bag full of expired food to the garbage or a bag full of plastic containers to the recycle bin.

Donald Trump likes to say that there isn't any truth to Climate Change and it's not cause by people.  But it's hard to see what's happening in the world and not wonder what's happening.  It's now the 22nd of April and we are finally getting normal spring temperatures after an extremely long winter but we almost had an ice storm as crippling as the one in 2013 in Toronto.  Many people lost power from downed trees but it didn't last as long as the last time but just as crippling for the people affected by it.  Around the world the droughts, floods, hurricanes, tsunami's, earthquakes and more are getting more extreme each year and the polar ice caps, the coral reefs and the shore lines are decreasing.  It's really hard to see the big picture when you are just trying to live your life everyday but what kind of world are we leaving for our children?  A life of GMO food and constant environmental disasters that become normal life?

What can we do?   Try and make decisions that will have lasting effects.  If corporations produced less plastic products that never break down and pollute our landfills and oceans maybe they can think about innovative ways to change their products and productions and people have to choose products that have less of an environmental impact if they can.  I know this is challenging because sometimes we don't have a choice on how the products we use are sold in stores.

We can also teach our children about food.  Yesterday I showed my friend's 3 year old daughter how to regrow vegetable scraps in water by letting her help fill the containers of water.  Hopefully she will watch it sprout over the next few weeks and get excited about it.  Even if we don't grow our own food it's important to be mindful of where it comes from and who is producing it.  If you can go to a great Farmer's Market where the farmers are on hand selling their food then that's a great step in supporting the people that make your food.   If you have a balcony or garden and can grown some food then that's a great thing because you will purchase less packaging and will waste less food.

At the beginning of April I placed a carrot top in a small bowl of water and now 3 weeks later you can see how much it has sprouted.  It can be planted in earth when the weather is a bit warmer.  I tried to see if I could get avocado seeds to sprout but that hasn't been successful.  I am going to try and see what happens to a sprig of cilantro.  The easiest one to regrow is Green Onion.  There isn't much to do except make sure it has clean water at about the height of the white end of the onion and placed in sunlight it will just regrow and sprout up from the centre.

Tomorrow I have organized an Earth Day event to do the same thing and have my coworkers learn how to regrow certain vegetable bits that would normally get discarded  I will turn the wasted bits into the food waste soup I have been making through the past year and we will also attempt to plant some seed packets into one of the small greenhouse boxes that I picked up from Canadian Tire.  This is new to me so I don't know how well it will do but I wanted to try and plant a seed or start something in our current office before all of us move to a new office in May and hope to have a communal little food area that we tend to that can feed the soups and lessen the waste produced by our office.  The building we are going back to is a Leed certified building so we should consider what we contribute to it.

I am constantly trying to improve my bad habits about what I buy, toss and repurpose and hope that more people be mindful of the impact to our future generations from our daily actions.