The first event took place on a freezing cold night of January where they will, at the Fair Trade Jewelry Atelier on Parliament. Our kitchen, based in the next unit over, made my condo feel like a palace. It was the ice cream shop kitchen that consisted of two electric burners and one small convection oven and a sink. We (Simon and I) would start each course, and then I would come running out, smash my knee on something in the alley, pop into the room and start a lecture about food. Out of breath, I would rip through some powerpoint slides really really fast, run screaming back into the kitchen, remembering not to smash my knee on anything. We’d finish the food, throw it in a hotel pan (which we had no good way of heating up to keep the food warm) and fly back to the dining area where our plating station was ready with nice cold plates for our once hot food. lather, rinse and repeat until done. Needless to say I would have liked things to be different.

My wife and I stopped by the atelier a week before the last event to check out the space and chat with Ryan about the upcoming dinner. I was concerned that we didn’t sell this out, that the last dinner maybe didn’t go well. Ryan talked me down though, my wife said “I TOLD YOU”, and then we moved on to brainstorming. Ryan made a few good suggestions about using the space more effectively. I had not considered making such radical shifts in plan, assuming Ryan would not be into it. And after seeing the photos of the CanLit event, it’s clear he is willing to let that space get super crazy.

For the second event, we changed it all around. We moved the kitchen out of the neighbors ice cream shop and built an ad hoc kitchen in the front windows of the shop. We put up posters of the event to let people know what we were doing. We got portable burners and an a small oven which really did the trick when we had to get the food out. All of a sudden, we had hot plates. And hot food not 10 feet from the guests. And a completely interactive experience where guests could come up, take pictures, and ask questions and see what we were doing. It also allowed me to talk about the food and the origins of each dish and the region in general. And we did the dinners with a smaller staff which helped keep the prices in line. It was like night and day.

The food turned out really good. And I was a happy chef again.

As we do more and more of these dinners, they will get tighter and tighter. Alexa is in her groove with getting the word out and is doing a kick ass job with literature and supporting info. Ryan and I have some pretty neat – dare I say revolutionary – ideas about future dinners. Stay tuned and watch this space.

The Next Secret Pickle Dinner will be a multi-course vegetarian dinner with wine pairings. This will NOT be the kind of food you have seen before in Toronto. It will be contemporary, revolutionary and just plain awesome.