Mise en Place - the Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

On this week's Podcast we have Community advocate and Farmer Tomer Rockman. Tomer's story is inspiring for anyone looking to find their own place in this world. I was struck by Tomer's curiosity and tenacity for knowledge and his story of just learning and trying to understand what interests him and what can make a dramatic impact on people and our community. I hope you enjoy our chat. 

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On this week's episode we have the community advocate, social impact provocateur, and speaker, Mark Brand. He is also an accomplished barman, restaurateur and Dj, and has made an indelible mark on the culinary and hospitality scene across North America. I was lucky enough to get to sit down and chat about his work, his history and the future. His infectious personality has helped him facilitate real positive change for people in Vancouver and now his home town of Halifax. From school lunch programs, feeding literally thousands of children everyday, to his long established Greasy Spoon dinners that have brought together some of the best chefs in Canada to cook for a good cause. I hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did. 

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On this weeks podcast we have Executive Chef of Boulevard Restaurant, Roger Ma. A Vancouver native who made cooking his life. From culinary school, to the stoves at Daniel Restaurant in NYC and now running one of the best restaurants in Canada, Roger's vision for getting the best from people is a true evolution from the old school kitchen. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

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Do you remember what you were doing in January 2020?  Seems like a lifetime ago, and it was a full 3 months before this ongoing global event came down on us.

However, it was also the month we presented Season 1,  Episode 1 of this very podcast,  and  the first of many created to set-up our end goal -  COOKSCAMP 2020....which sadly became the outdoor jamboree that jammed out due to CoVid.
 
However, you can’t keep a good idea on the back burner too long.  So, the Chefs’  Table Society of British Columbia organized COOKSCAMP 2021 as a new-normal version on ZOOM.
More than 300 cooks and other foodservice professionals from across Canada and beyond logged in to see a stellar line-up of guests discuss a wide range of topics relevant to culinary careers and futures.

This is Part One (of 3) featuring highlights of  COOKSCAMP,  starting with Vancouver chef Johnny Bridge talking about the support services at Mind the Bar, and owner/operator Calen McNeil discussing the new business models he and his colleagues are exploring in Victoria. 

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According to award-winning chef and podcast host Robert Belcham,  charting a new way forward for the restaurant industry is simple, because it all comes down to money.

However.  money is one thing, economic systems are another.  And when  it comes to the food system that manages the world's bounty, from fecund fields to well-stocked walk-ins,  it gets a lot more complicated. 

In this episode, chef Belcham gets expert insight into that system from farmer Jacob Slosberg (Washington State),  leading macroeconomist Nicoletta Batini, editor of The Economics of Sustainable Food (Elba, Italy) and veteran chef/purchaser Jeff Hetherington (Victoria, BC).

All the numbers in this episode are guaranteed to be crunchy,  eye-opening and practical.

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We’re giving the full field guide treatment to something that’s been a core element of professional restaurant operations for over 135 years. 

We’re looking at Escoffier’s Big Idea, the brigade system - the military-style hierarchy that serves to organize kitchen work into distinct stations. and sets up a leadership system responsible for making it all work efficiently. 

For a lot of reasons, the ongoing need for this foundational piece of modern restaurant culture is being questioned, mostly as to its value and relevance to the state of our industry in 2021. 

But can we overhaul it, or should it simply be replaced? Are there any viable alternatives?

Just a few of the questions host Robert Belcham will put to author Michael Ruhlman, chef/educator Julian Bond, industry activist Hassel Aviles and chef/operator Dave Gunawan. 

 Grab your toque, take your station and tune in.

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Making tasty food. Making friends. Never hard to do in the restaurant business.  But making a living?  Never as easy.  However,  there's a relatively simple solution available to every chef/operator most anywhere.

This edition of the Mise-en-Place Field Guide examines the living wage... what it can mean to everyone who works in this industry and how it can help establish the kind of fair and sustainable compensation everyone needs to thrive in their professional career.

Host Robert Belcham gets a tour of living wage principles from Anastasia French of the Living Wage for Families Campaign of BC.  He'll also be guided through the key steps two operators,  Paul Hadfield of Spinnakers (Victoria, BC) and Court Desautels (Neighbourhood Group, Guelph, ON) have used to successfully incorporate the living wage.

All this valuable peer-to-peer advice is also available for download in the free e-book edition of this Field Guide. 

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A fresh batch of podcasts demands a fresh goal.  Our sophomore season aims to do more than produce stimulating dialogue about progressive change - we aim to produce results.

Each episode will produce a field guide to the evolution of a key element in the career and workplace of the professional cook... also available as a downloadable e-book. 

The ideal topic to kick off this new approach is the one we talked about the most last season - the service-included or no tipping business model.

Host Robert Belcham welcomes back some familiar voices, Carl Heinrich of Richmond Station (Toronto) and Todd Perrin of Mallard Cottage (St.John's) to take stock of their progress for the field guide.  Also joining the show is Margot Baloro, GM and F&B director at Forage Restaurant (Vancouver) to explore a hypothetical scenario or two. 

COOKSCAMP - The Mise-en-Place Podcast is produced in Vancouver by the Chefs' Table Society of British Columbia, with support of media sponsor SCOUT Magazine.

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For the final episode of Season One of Mise-en-Place,  chef/host Robert Belcham looks back on the extraordinary Year That Was with the help of some returning guests. 

They include: from  Episode 1,  professor Bruce McAdams of the University of Guelph (ONT); Andrea Carlson, the award-winning chef-owner of Vancouver's Burdock & Co.: Todd Perrin, chef-owner of Mallard Cottage in St,Johns (NFLD) and chef Carl Heinrich of Richmond Station in Toronto. 

Mise-en-Place returns for Season Two in early 2021. 

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Just because the entire restaurant industry has been thrown for a giant loop by the pandemic, it doesn't mean that it can't come out smarter and stronger on the other side.

For Episode 8 of Mise-en-Place, chef/host Robert Belcham returns to a topic that can make a lot of that happen -  a no-tipping or 'hospitality-included' business model.

Already on the road to the Big Reset is chef Carl Heinrich, co-owner of Richmond Station, one of the bright lights of Toronto's Financial District. His iteration of hospitality-included restaurant operations has been receiving lots of attention...and not all of it welcomed. Carl and Robert walk through the challenges still on the table.

Someone who has publicly supported Carl's efforts is Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, an academic researcher in food systems at Dalhousie University, op-ed columnist for The Globe and Mail a/k/a The Food Professor.  He offers Robert his perspective on how this model also supports the socioeconomic recovery of the foodservice sector.

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