A Taste of Things To Come
Two Toronto chefs are taking fast-food junkies back to basics
BY Ron Nurwisah
Photography by Lisa Kannakko
Toronto’s Tranzac Club, like most bars, isn’t known for its food. But tonight, chef Sam Higgs and a couple of assistants work feverishly in the cramped kitchen trying to feed the 50 people who have come for Grub-a-Dub, Higgs’s monthly food event. On stage, musicians improvise pieces inspired by the food: a black bean, tomato, chipotle and tofu purée soup, followed by a salad that includes daikon, Shanghai cabbage, Thai basil and half a dozen other ingredients, all crowned by the main course—a kamut and couscous pyramid paired with a roasted garlic and lemon sauce.
A couple of weeks ago, Maria Solakofski was preparing her own monthly food event, the Guerrilla Gourmet. For the past couple of months, Solakofski, along with former partner Jesse Archibald, have held dinner parties at various locations around the city, including Solakofski’s own dining room. Like Grub-a- Dub, the food is mostly vegan. At a recent event, one of the dishes Solakofski made wedded polenta with a pesto made of red pepper, arugula and pumpkin seed, the ingredients for which were all sourced locally.
Both events are a way for the chefs to explore and educate people about what mass agriculture does to the food we eat. But despite how strongly they feel about these ideas, neither is heavy-handed. “I want them to be open to the possibility that there’s another way to eat, that there’s another way to experience food,” Solakofski says. Instead of pamphlets, tracts and lectures, both chefs have decided to try to teach with soups and salads. It’s an approach that seems infinitely more palatable.
Solakofski and Higgs have explored these issues for a number of years. Grub-a-Dub grew out of a combination of ideas, including a late-night “speakeatery” that Higgs began. It served vegetarian food to service-industry types fed up with greasy Chinese takeout and fast-food vendors, along with another event where Higgs invited musicians to play country and bluegrass music to go along with a stew he’d made. For Solakofski, Guerrilla Gourmet was just an extension of much of the cooking, catering and teaching work that she had been doing for years.
Although the events have their differences in style and scale—Grub-a-Dub attracts around 50 people, while Guerrilla Gourmet brings in just over a dozen diners—at the heart of both events is the chefs’ desire to educate ordinary people about contemporary food production. They bemoan how an obsession with speed and convenience affects how our food is grown, distributed, prepared and served. “People need to know that food is meant to be slow. It doesn’t make any sense to get your food in five minutes,” says Solakofski.
Both chefs also play with conventions of restaurant-going. “There’s been a loss socially in recent years because of the decrease of communal eating. Just as eating is a biological necessity, the shared experience of eating can be considered an emotional or mental necessity,” says Higgs. At Guerrilla Gourmet, strangers chat, pass the salt and pour water for one another. Solakofski is a constant, warm presence, walking neophytes through the food she’s prepared. “I’m open to the guests. They see how I’m working and how I’m moving around. They’re encouraged to come and talk to me. I’m not hiding out in the kitchen,” she says.
And to Solakofski, building these human links extends beyond her diners. By insisting on using local produce, she creates a link between the farmer who planted the crop and the diner who ultimately eats it. “Most of the food has been grown in Ontario. The stuff went from the farmer’s hands to a local store to my hands. That localness is essential.”
It’s her small protest against the inefficiencies of mass agriculture. “There’s so much waste. You understand how much is used to get a tomato to me or to get a bunch of arugula to me, even organic arugula all the way from California. Why wouldn’t I want to get something hydroponically grown in Ontario?”
Both chefs say they’ve hit a nerve with their events. “I don’t think what I’m trying to do right now, and what the Guerrilla Gourmet is doing, would have been possible 10 years ago,” says Higgs. “I think it’s indicative of a burgeoning awareness in the general population about what we’re putting into our bodies and where that foodstuff is coming from.”
