About

To End or Embrace the Rumors, or How RCB Happened

Lucid

At fourteen, I made the decision. I would learn to cook, become a chef, and own my own restaurant. Every ensuing moment would lead me to that end. I started in high school, and where others used the cooking class as an extra, I found structure and discipline there. Cooking with our Chef at school, Norm, eventually led me to working in a local pub for my friend’s sister. After a year in that service, it was clear that I wanted more than that environment could foster, and at seventeen my brother and I joined the Malaspina University College cook training program. I graduated in the top of my class in 1996 with the thought that I might open a B&B with my girlfriend in Washington State. I wanted to call it Lucid... or Carmichael House, and I knew that I wanted to serve classic food, in many cases straight from Escoffier, in an antique room.

Heavy Mettle

When I finished school, I found it almost impossible to find work. I cooked Chinese food, roasted chickens, and tried to find happiness within the casual dining scene that Nanaimo had to offer. I did a stint at (then) C.P.’s Chateau Whistler and spent some time at Fairwind ’s Golf Club in Nanoose trying to find my place, and after being denied a job at the Keg (which I cut my hair for), a miserable afternoon found me work at the Lighthouse Bistro, on the waterfront in Nanaimo, which was well regarded locally. Their Sous Chef , Romeo, would later become my best friend, and we have cooked together off and on for the last decade. Our passion for King Diamond, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and our mutual loyalty to the ‘old school’ of haute cuisine had us conceiving what would eventually become the basis for RCB, a brasserie style restaurant decorated with stained glass and antiquity called “Heavy Mettle ”. The idea was solid, the vision was clear, but the means escaped me until December 2005.

PipeDream

I’ve really only had five jobs here. I came to Surrey looking for work, and found it at Morgan Creek Golf and Country Club, the sister to Fairwind’s. A year at Morgan ’s led to two at White Rock’s BoatHouse. Always hungry for more, I left the BoatHouse to cook on trains in the US, and when I returned, I knew it was time to push myself. Know that I wasn’t groomed for the hierarchy of large hotel life, but I did enjoy the structure of a well run kitchen, and that is exactly what I found under Frank Dodd at Bacchus. That year in the Garde Manger surrounded by some of the best cooks I’ve worked with was indescribably edifying.

Forced to realize the evolution of haute cuisine through the eyes of British trained, French food mercenaries, I thought... “where and what next?” I tried to work closer to home, but my CV made its way to the restaurant that Frank thought I should next attend, C, and after a pleasant meeting with Robert Clark, and a sink or swim orientation, I would stay with C for two seasons exploring Rob’s fusion based and (Rob’s) avant-garde approach to B.C. foodstuffs.

When fall 2004 came, with old friends in need calling ‘favors’, I returned to the Wedgwood for a period, before joining my great friends Ian and Nick at the fledgling but promising “Pearl on the Rock ”, not a minutes drive from my WR condo (finally!). We forged a great bistro out of nothing there, serving large portions and having fun with the food, and when Ian left for Abigail’s Party (and marriage, and kids, and... haha) I took the reigns at the restaurant, and rode her into 4 stars from the Sun and a 3 diamond plate for lunch (a clubhouse?).

I spent the autumn 2005 in the UK, France, Spain and Italy, on a gastronomic tour paid entirely with credit. We spent time at St. John and Gordon Ramsay RHR in the UK, Paul Bocuse and a tour of the names in Paris, El Bulli and the Roca Brothers in Girona, and through northern Italy eating white truffles and celebrating simplicity (Joia and Peck!!). We returned broke to a paperwork, organization and team building time. Though the seasons and flavors were still important, all the other realities of Chefdom enlightened me much more. Community, passion, execution, instruction and inclusion. And I realized that if I didn’t try my own hand at proprietorship soon, I’d be slugging seventy hours a week for someone else, while my wife had and raised our (coming soon) baby alone. I had to try. To at least try...

La Phantome

My Grandmother passed years ago and as a child I had been told that the little run down rancher that my grandparents lived in (at the time) would be deeded to me upon her death. Coming into a January with my wife far away (Toronto) and feeling my restaurant shoulders slumped, I made the decision to finish my travels and education by joining her out east (abandoning my post) with the intent of opening something sometime after that. I gained control of the property in my legacy, and sold it for a very humble sum, and after paying back taxes, fees, conversion and the like, and being told that we were crazy a hundred times, we approached a local bank with an abstract dream on paper and convinced them of my dedication to the craft of our business.

Now, it seemed, I had to actually come up with a restaurant. I wanted to call the restaurant “Ghost” in French, but I was afraid that owning a “French” restaurant would be a bad move for a guy that wanted to eliminate all boundaries (‘don’t you guys have crème brule?’). A joke that I made quickly became the best idea for a name to give our little idea.

RCB

We incorporated PipeDream Restaurant Holdings that July and I immediately put up a website announcing my intentions. I needed a skeleton, easy to modify but just dreamy and confusing enough to keep anyone from calling the fake numbers or actually trying to book seats in a place that didn’t exist. I stole my funny bio from Pearl and posted it thinking that if anybody did actually find the webpage, they’d get a good chuckle out of the read. They found it alright. Did you ever make a joke at a party that no-one thought was funny?

Anybody ever hold that against you for a year, or print it in all the papers? Collecting Versace and silver, and contemplating a little school house in Ladner found us the restaurant a piano bar, desolate and dark. She was listed on Craig’s List and she was affordable. With my trusty sommelier Ron and old Romeo at my side, we renovated ourselves and opened the doors in a month, much quicker than we had anticipated. And without an ad anywhere, with the blogs and threads watching and no-one willing to ally with the sketchy new kid, or any leg at all to stand on really, I opened my restaurant eponymously on November 13, 2006. A place for me to practice the trade, science and art of what we do, and perhaps give other’s a fire to try to make something for themselves out of nothing. This little room is mine, ours, and no-one elses. A ghost’s lucid, heavy metal pipedream. I had to try.

For more on my unfolding debacle, check my BLOG, and thank you kindly for your interest.