Chronicle 2017

PROFILES

A culinary calling

EVELYN WU 1998

Profile by Catharine Heddle 1989

Smoke billows and the scent of a summer campfire fills the room as the waiter lifts a glass cloche, revealing a plate of mussels smoked in pine needles with pine ash butter. The taste is pure north-of- Superior heaven. We are in Boralia, on Toronto’s Ossington Avenue. Founded in 2014 by Class of 1998 graduate Evelyn Wu, the restaurant celebrates the historic origins of Canadian cuisine, drawing inspiration from traditional Aboriginal dishes and the recipes of early settlers and immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries. After Havergal, Evelyn went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in marketing and management just as the tech bubble burst. Her day job was unsatisfying, but a weekend cooking class in New York sparked her interest in food. She soon found work doing marketing and special events for a chef in Washington D.C., who allowed her to volunteer in the kitchen during her time off. There, she discovered a talent for cooking that would take her to San Francisco (culinary school followed by a stint at the Michelin-starred Coi restaurant), Toronto (working with David Lee at Nota Bene), Berkshire, England (in the experimental kitchen of the famed restaurant The Fat Duck, which has three Michelin stars), Kelowna, B.C. and eventually back to Toronto. By the time she met her husband, Acadian chef Wayne Morris, she yearned to open a restaurant. But, despite having considerable talent in the kitchen,

she viewed herself as the “ideas person.” Wayne’s cooking was transcendent. Together, the two devised the concept: a restaurant that would draw upon their cultural backgrounds and honour Canada’s heritage by “resurrecting and reimagining recipes of the people who built this country.” Starting the restaurant wasn’t easy. The pair lived with Evelyn’s parents while they searched for the right space, and they developed recipes out of the family kitchen using historical resources and antique cookbooks. They faced skepticism about their unusual menu items (whelk, elk, venison heart). A trademark challenge forced them to change their name. But the critics raved, and the seats filled, and the hard work paid off. With Wayne running the kitchen, Evelyn leads the business side of the restaurant, managing financials, marketing, staffing and reservations. She works in the restaurant every Friday and Saturday, but does much of the rest remotely while caring for baby Teddy, whose due date was on Boralia’s first anniversary. “I worked until I couldn’t fit behind the bar,” recalls Evelyn with a laugh, “and took maybe a week off before I started taking the reservations again.” Evelyn didn’t start cooking until university (eggplant parmesan was her first dish), but she credits family dinners with kick-starting her love of food. Havergal, she says, gave her the confidence to create something from nothing. “I knew I could do it,” she says. “That’s what Havergal taught us.”

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