Canadian Chefs' Congress

Update by Bill Jones, originally posted at Vancouver Island Local Food

Lots of wheels have been churning around meeting tables and kitchen tables in the past few months. Local chefs have taken on the huge task of inviting 500 of Canada’s top culinary professionals to the Canadian Chefs’ Congress to be held September 11-12 at Providence Farm in the fertile Cowichan Valley.

The Farm has a rich and colored history as a convent, residential school and ultimately to it’s current state as working therapeutic and community farm. The conference theme is the Sustainability of our Oceans. Providence Farm is perched on the Cowichan River Estuary and minutes from the shores of the Salish Sea. The beautiful farm will be site to a gathering of chefs described by creator Michael Standtlander as a “woodstock for chefs”. Like the original gathering, this has the potential to be a momentum shifting event for our Canadian Culinary Scene.

As the chefs talk and communicate about their role in the health of oceans, they will be learning and bonding with like minded chefs and creating a stronger chef community as a result. David Suzuki is slated as the keynote speaker and will undoubtedly add a rational and reasoned note to the event.

This is a chef-only event but we will be looking for products to purchase from the local food community to feed our visitors and showcase the amazing ingredients of our region. We will also need a number of volunteers, paricularly those that have a stake in the local food communities. It will be an amazing opportunity to learn, interact and celebrate in our local products and with Canadian food heroes.

We’ll keep you posted as we get organized with contact info for suppliers and volunteer opportunities. Drop us a comment if you are interested and we’ll see what we can do.

For the general public, we’ll bring a little of this culinary fire power together for a fund raising event on May 16th. Coupled with the Spot Prawn Festival in May, a 6 course wine and food pairing event will showcase the food of top chefs like Robert Clark of Vancouver’s C restaurant. Great food, sustainable seafood, local wine all in the name of building a new wood-burning oven for Providence Farm. This will be a great compliment to their educational and food production activities. Tickets are $125/person with all proceeds going into the farm project.

We need your help to make this oven fundraiser a roaring success.