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Peter George,
The CN Tower,
Toronto, Ont.
By Gary Lipovetsky, President of MenuPalace.com
 Peter George has worked in every type of restaurant kitchen in his years as a chef. He's cooked for kids at summer camp, worked the line, helmed the ovens at some of Canada's biggest hotels and even owned his own restaurant. While giving him a great perspective on Toronto's restaurant industry, all that experience is nothing compared to the view he has at his current gig.
MP: You've seen the industry from every angle in your career as a chef, but I guess you've never seen it from 1,000 metres in the sky.
PG: That was quite a different thing. When the opportunity arose for me to come to the CN tower (15 years ago), I was excited. And, I was a little nervous, because I didn't know what to expect. I had heard mixed reviews about what was going on here at the time, but I'm not one to shy away from a challenge.
MP: I can think of many different things that must be challenging when you're cooking so high up, like getting deliveries or if your equipment goes down?
PG: Everything here is designed to meet our needs. We have a base kitchen, which is our production area, at the bottom of the tower. That's where stocks and sauces are made and our food is delivered. Product comes in and vegetables can be washed and cut, but they're not cooked. The butcher cuts and portions the meat, the pastry guys make the sauces and base cakes, but everything is cooked and done to order upstairs. Like any fine-dining restaurant, you have the front line and you have the back part of the production kitchen. The difference is that ours are 11,000 feet apart.
With equipment, I use all magnetic induction ranges, and I use two-burner hobs. I used to have custom-built suites, but I found that if something went wrong, you'd lose half your stove. In my system, I have two-burner hobs all in line, and if one goes down, I can just unplug it and put a new one in.
MP: I've been reading about David Garcelon's gardens and apiary on the roof of The Fairmont Royal York. I expect you don't have any gardens on top of your kitchen.
PG: I don't have anything going on at the top of the tower, but I do have two herb gardens at the base. They're 85 feet long and eight feet wide, and we grow production herbs through the season. I'm already in full-swing with chives, sage and mint, and tarragon is up as well. Also, a supplier of mine, Ian Anderson, is growing 680 individual herb products for us.
MP: I take it you're really tuned into seasonal, regional cuisine.
PG: Yes. I buy my ducks from King Cole ducks right in Toronto. Ian is also growing heirloom tomatoes for me and some spicy salad mixes. Mario Pingue does prosciutto and salami for me, and has for years. His charcuterie is some of the finest going. For cheese, I like Fifth Town in Picton, Ont. I use cheese from Niagara, a comfort cream that's like a camembert and it's as good as anything I've had in France. And I use Blue Ermite from Quebec and even some Tiger Blue from Vancouver.
MP: You get a lot of tourists in. Do you feel you have a sense of what Toronto or Canadian cuisine is?
PG: It's being able to use the great, local product that we have, not only in southern Ontario, but across Canada. I have a guy who calls me directly from his boat off the coast of Vancouver, to tell me he's just pulled halibut out of the water for me. It doesn't get any better than that for a chef. So it's about great product, across the country. But because I live in such a diverse city, I've been exposed to so many different styles of cuisine as well. I pull from those styles and use them on my menu.
MP: Is that emblematic of Toronto-style cuisine?
PG: I think it is. My philosophy is a very old style of cooking. We do everything from scratch, we use our hands and we work with the food. That said, if I want an Indian influence in my eggplant vegetarian dish I have on the menu, I can get some Indian flavours for it. I'm doing a new dish this summer and I'm grinding my own harmony corn from Mexico to make white grits, but using cheddar from a local Ontario cheddar producer.
MP: How many covers do you do a day?
PG: I can do upwards of 800 dinners, and that's seven days a week in the summer. We are like a very fast-moving train, and you have to keep it supplied. But I do my own purchasing. I call the suppliers every day and manage my inventories, and the reason I do it is so I don't run out of product. The guests in the restaurant get the best food there is, as fresh as it can possibly be.
MP: What do you love most about working in such a landmark building?
PG: I like the diversity of the operation. I have the 360 Restaurant, which is a fine-dining operation. I have horizons, which is about 250 seats and French bistro style. Then we have the marketplace, which is quick trattoria Italiano food, all made fresh. I touch on all the different elements of cooking.
But being in Toronto, we're surrounded by some of the most incredible suppliers of food on the planet, as well as farmers and artisans who are making really cool stuff. We have Niagara for wines, and I just got an icewine syrup the other day that I still can't get out of my mind. Toronto is also a very diverse city in the culinary sense, too. The foods we have access to here is unlike anywhere else.
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