The Ration | Beverley restaurant in the Beverley Hotel on Queen Street West in Toronto, with its hidden location, low-key decoration and marketing style, contrasts with Chef Jef Edwards's full of personality and unconstrained style of new Canadian cuisine, creating a surprising contrast . Focus on local ingredients, inject highly experimental concepts and practices into highly original dishes, Ration | Beverley is like a flavor laboratory where Chef Jef Edwards and his team can freely create without restriction, subverting people's inherent impression of a certain material from time to time.
I went to Ration | Beverley with my friends for dinner last February. At that time, the restaurant was officially open for less than half a year, but its innovative ingredients, cooking techniques, and environmental protection practices that make food as zero waste as possible have become relatively proficient. . Small potatoes that absorb the aroma of beef fat are paired with smoked salmon roe, avocado puree, and cheese curds. The combination of fresh and rich seasoning balance makes the simple potatoes rich in taste. Homemade pickled onions, garlic cores, and Jerusalem artichokes are placed in the extremely thin and crisp base, and simply seasoned with paprika, the vegetables bloom with a refreshing and delicious taste. The main dish of one duck and two meals is also memorable. The duck breast is cooked to a tender and juicy medium rare with just the right layer of fat and the skin is seared to a very crispy finish. The homemade sauce is said to be a fusion of nearly a hundred kinds of ingredients. It is rich in taste but does not cover the aroma of the duck itself. The delicious juice and natural fat of the meat dance on the tip of the tongue. The duck leg meat is made into croquettes and quickly smoked with hay after serving. The outer layer is golden and crispy, and the inner meat filling is piping hot and juicy, full of flavor.
From the creativity of the dishes, it is not difficult to guess Chef Jef Edwards' personality of "unconventional way". He has never received any formal cooking training, everything is out of his curiosity to experiment with various ingredients and cooking techniques Accumulated by practice. Born and raised in Winnipeg, he started working in various restaurants during high school. While working part-time in restaurants, he often also has a second job in the music industry or creative fields, he shared: "I like to do different things at the same time. I always feel that I need the stimulation of this change of environment." 2015 , in his early twenties, he seemed unable to see a breakthrough in life, tired of the almost static life in Winnipeg, so he came to Toronto. He works for a music company near the St. Lawrence Market. "It's not a very interesting job, but I can often explore the St. Lawrence Market," Chef Jef Edwards said of his renewed passion for food. "Unlike Winnipeg, Toronto benefits from the convenience of transportation and has a wide variety of ingredients from all over the world – Japan, South America, Africa… many of which I have never seen before. The market has inspired me a lot and encouraged me to return to Come into the kitchen and use some rare ingredients in a more creative way.”
The Test Kitchen Tuesdays experimental kitchen came into being. Chef Jef Edwards and his partners at the time hosted dinners at home every Tuesday, using uncommon ingredients to freely create, cook food, and invite friends or people who just met to come and taste. "The most meaningful thing about Test Kitchen Tuesdays is to help me discover the beauty of failure," Chef Jef Edwards said. "The purpose is not to develop future restaurant dishes, but to explore and challenge the impossible." Those two years Here, chef Jef Edwards is constantly searching and experimenting with unheard of materials, as if falling into a complex, strange, and unknown rabbit hole, which is the best school for him to hone his culinary skills. Through Test Kitchen Tuesdays, chef Jef Edwards met one of Ration | Beverley's current partners, Wes Barber. “Wes was the co-founder of Reverie At The Park when he was looking for a chef for the restaurant and I joined his team, which officially marked the beginning of my career as a chef.”
Out of his interest in scientific experiments, Chef Jef Edwards has always had a soft spot for food processing methods such as fermentation, brewing, and pickling. However, when he was working at the Reverie At The Park restaurant, he seemed to lack the knowledge that allowed him to develop in this area. skilled resources. Conceiving and realizing his own projects is a logical next step for Chef Jef Edwards. "In September 2019, I teamed up with Mother Cocktail Bar to have the first Ration pop-up dining experience. It was very successful, but unfortunately it continued once or twice. After the epidemic hit, everything was paused , " Chef Jef Edwards recalls Ration's founding process: "In order not to let the food made by Ration and the ingredients from the local suppliers we work with go to waste, we also established Pantry Box, a business-to-consumer platform. In this way , not only those who are inconvenient to go out during the epidemic can obtain the highest quality fresh ingredients, but local suppliers also have an additional channel to connect with consumers.” The challenges brought by the epidemic have not cooled Chef Jef Edwards’ desire to realize his dream enthusiasm. Ration | Beverley will open rooftop dining in the summer of 2021 until the official launch of the indoor dining menu on November 6. This is the ultimate vision of chef Jef Edwards for Ration | Beverley, so this day is also regarded as the restaurant's birthday.
"Even though the epidemic and the ever-changing anti-epidemic policies have troubled the entire catering industry, we decided to start offering the Tasting menu in February 2022. This is almost a desperate approach. We don't know what the future holds, but at least we have to try I won’t regret it.” From the beginning of Test Kitchen Tuesdays to the Tasting menu provided by Ration | Beverley later, Chef Jef Edwards has changed his focus from unlimited creativity to emphasizing Canadian flavors, seasonality and local ingredients. "The significance of Test Kitchen Tuesdays is to learn everything about any ingredient. Ration | Beverley is more mature and understands its positioning, which is to tell the story of this vast land of Canada through food. Using local ingredients can help us better connect with the local The community is connected. We can ensure the quality of our ingredients while supporting farms and suppliers who strive to operate sustainably and organically. I think being local is a natural way for Ration | Beverley to go.”
It is another principle of Ration | Beverley to create a Tasting menu that is interesting but not overpowering. Chef Jef Edwards hopes to use food processing methods that people may not be familiar with, for example, to create a taste that makes people feel familiar. He said: "We hope that in this way, people will discover a new definition of a certain ingredient, and enjoy food. Gain new information and inspiration at the same time. I look forward to exclamations from diners, such as "So asparagus can be cooked like this."
Ration, translated into Chinese as ration, the simple name also reveals its simple desire – to provide creative cuisine suitable for sharing in a comfortable space, to stimulate the senses with unique fermentation and other food preservation and cooking methods, and to express that it only belongs to the land of Canada s story. What kind of surprises will chef Jef Edwards' flavor laboratory create in the future?
