thekitchenman

Since a very young age I was fascinated with food and cooking it beside my dad. Learning became my passion and my life! Here is an image of me at three years old in my first set of kitchen whites from my dad Chef Conrad in 1952. Today I find after 50 years of cooking in the hospitality industry that I’m still keen on learning and enjoying the new exciting experiences with a gusto. As a youngster I was taught to forage. I would assemble lunches to eat while camping or fishing. My first shore lunch was Garlic and Ramp Frog Legs followed by pan fried lake fish and game birds. In my home pantry back then, and the Galt Ontario Iroquois Hotel kitchen where my dad was the head chef from the 1940’s 1975. was where I started my cooking career. By age six I was peeling bushels of apples, potatoes, salad vegetables and had earned a station position plating and pouring sauces, dishing up food from a steam table for banquet lines. I polished tons of flatware and hundreds of glasses, folded napkins, did hotel shifts as a bell hop, ran the coat check, moved furniture and did errands for the hotel guests when the banquet rooms and suites were operating at full capacity. I spent most of my early childhood being shown the hotel business at the Iroquois hotel beverage rooms and kitchens beside my dad and this where it all started for me. My mother and her sisters were all fine cooks. So many handed down family recipes that I would later master. At the Scarborough Board of Trade. I served as Executive Sous chef along side Executive Chef Eric Oberfuchshuber.

Here I am cooking brunch omelets at The Famous Knotty Pine Restaurant in Preston Ontario. In 1979 I was the Chef that led a team of students to prepare the Worlds Largest Omelet containing 12,440 eggs succeeded for the Guinness Book of Records.

I had lots of fun experiences honing my skills cooking with the many famous celebrity chefs over the years.

Burt Reynolds gave me a great push to carry on and I sure did. From Dennis Hopper, Ann Margret, Alan Alda an many others.

I did lots of Remote Location on site cooking with 45 foot Mobile Kitchen capable of feeding 125 meals three times a day on set. Here with Canadian Iconic Star Al Waxman and my trusty right-hand Ian Cox. White Rock 1999 I opened Degelman’s Purveyour of Fine Food. The first Delicatessen in town that served artisan organics, all natural non medicated protein and consumables. I became know as the pot pie sausage guy! I worked on many versions of novel continental charchutterie recipes with seasoned chefs and butchers that were true to the original. The Grandfathered versions changed as the ingredients were modified to suit the chef. This made me take a hard and serious approach to try to understand the complexities of the food ingredients that I was preparing which needed to be 100% correct with details and information when training staff and branding recipes for manuals. For many of my years as a chef I was involved in bringing new restaurant projects on line for corporate franchisers across Canada. I performed Executive and Corporate Chef duties on many premiere projects that started from the original conception and went on to be a multi-site restaurant like the Knotty Pine Food Group. Branded franchised business-Like Turtle Jacks, Houlihan’s, Movie Ola’s or destination Resorts, Lodges like Canadian Mountain Holiday Panorama Resort in Invermere BC. The K/O Outfitters Deep River and Planet Hollywood. I was involved in creating exciting new main line convenience food products and commercial baking along with concept packaging for restaurant franchises and food manufacturers. As I gained the practical experience, I was offered more chef positions that put me into new cutting-edge projects. Getting more training here at Planet Hollywood in Seattle with the P/H Corporate Chef Dave Bosolan taking on the opening position for the mega million-dollar Vancouver Planet Hollywood. I wrote initial concept recipes and developed the program menus to the theme and tastes the owner/operators were trying to achieve. Many long hours spent with the inception owners, designers, builders and the cooking staff during the many projects I was involved with. Over the decades I realized how much of our cooking heritage was being lost to manufactured foods from the grocery store and to processed fast food and restaurants. Many children grew up not knowing a thing about cooking their own food or where it came from. I later started creating recipes and submitting them for analysis to the Canadian Government health programs by 1990. Most recipe items that I have produced have the nutrition facts available to state ingredient contents for federal requirement. After being self and school trained on how to prepare the different nationalized dishes in a healthy profitable manner to accurately create and display them, for me that’s the fun part about in being a chef.

Here at www.thekitchenman.ca web site we will explore the proper procedures for preparing food using smart ingredients that will help promote a healthy diet. Topics about foraging canning and preserves during the growing seasons. In my daily ramblings I will talk about food grown by the local farmers and about the farms and suppliers that I have recently visited. Meetings with new talented chefs that I will be having one on one discussions with chefs and cooks that I met on my travels. My original recipes are from the source including pit roasting, shore lunches, back woods foraging, baby food too senior cuisine and lots in between. I am still learning the new ways and techniques as my passion for food evolves.

How the handle thekitchenman came about; In 1980 I was Chef at the famous Village Gate for a touring turn of the century musical Called One “MO” Time. The Lead singer Sylvia ‘Kuumba’ Willams sang this song to me each performance as the patrons of the musical were dinning on my Jambalaya which was first sang by Bessie Smith.

She would call me to the stage and sing out the tune thekitchenman which has stuck as my working chef name since.