Chef Connie DeSousa didn't start out dreaming of a culinary career. Ballet was her first love and she says the training carried over to being a chef. She says, "Ballet taught me a lot about dedication and professionalism and gave me the endurance to run around in the kitchen as well. "
Passion and Experience
DeSousa's passion for cooking was born in high school. She explains, "The (Foods class) teacher was phenomenal and took it one step further. She taught us how to plan menus for dinner parties at home and I really started to develop a passion for it around that age."
She adds that her family also strongly influenced her culinary passions. She says, "My father is Portuguese and my mother is Irish Canadian and they're both great cooks so I grew up eating great meals all the time and they always prepared everything from scratch."
After high school Chef DeSousa took an intensive one year culinary course at SAIT and went to work at the famous Owl's Nest restaurant in Calgary. DeSousa says, "I learned so much at the Owl's Nest. It was a fine dining restaurant in a hotel and a really reputable hotel. I was able to learn in all different areas of the kitchen like the pastry shop and garde manger. I learned how to cater private events."
When the Owl's Nest closed DeSousa joined Alberta's culinary team and competed at events around the world. She eventually ended up in Germany after competing in the World Culinary Olympics and worked at a restaurant there for a year. A call from John Jackson (who is now her sous chef) brought her to San Fransisco as Chef de Cuisine at the Saint Regis Hotel there.
The planning for Charcut took place over a period of three years while Chef DeSousa was in San Francisco and involved intense research into Albertan farmers and producers.
In terms of her culinary philosophy DeSousa believes strongly in "back to basics" cooking and re-introducing Old World cooking techniques. All of the butchery for Charcut is done in house and all of their charcuterie is made from scratch. DeSousa adds, "These are techinques that are lost arts in the culinary world."
Another influence on Chef DeSousa's approach to food was working with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in San Francisco. She explains, "I learned a lot about farm to table cooking and cooking locally and seasonally there. Its kind of a way of life there, its second nature to everyone, everyone knows where their food comes from."
DeSousa says that one of the challenges that she and her co-chef John Jackson felt they might face was finding enough local sources for products in Alberta. She says, "The first thing we did when we got back to Alberta was to visit 40 farms in 40 days. We researched them all before coming back to Canada and you would be surprised what we found growing in Alberta."
Chef DeSousa says they had stringent criteria for the farmers and producers they were going to use. She explains, "When we were going on these tours it was important that not only they were growing locally but that they were using good farming practices especially with their animals. It is important that they're treating the animals humanely and with respect and feeding them natural products."
She adds, "I am proud to say that all of our meats on our menu are hormone free, antibiotic free and pasture raised here in Alberta."
Quality Suppliers
DeSousa uses Alberta suppliers for most of the product at the restaurant. Spragg Farms in Rosemary, Alberta provides the all of Charcut's pork. The beef used at Charcut comes exclusively from Spring Creek Ranch which is a co-op of five ranches in Alberta. DeSousa says that they have a strict grading process and use all Black Angus beef. Charcut's vegetable supplier is Jungle Farms. It is also a co-op with five different farmers in it. DeSousa explains that, "Each farmer only specializes in a few vegetables. This takes quite a bit of a load off of the farmer so that they don't feel they have to grow everything for a restaurant. The relationship we have with Jungle Farms is that they plant exclusively for our restaurant."
When it comes to inspiration for creating new dishes Chef DeSousa takes a straightforward approach. She says, "Every time we go to the market we just get inspired by what we see there and all of the fresh produce that's coming in right now. We really don't know what we're going to put on our menu until the day we create it. Our lunch menu changes daily and our dinner menu changes daily. I think our guests appreciate that."
DeSousa's approach to creating a dish is simple once she has the ingredients. She says, "When we see an ingredient and get inspired by it we take that ingredient and try to make it shine. We don't really do much to the ingredient because we respect the integrity of it. For example if we have a tomato salad on the menu all we do is maybe season it with a little salt and pepper and a really good finishing olive oil like the Skyhawk olive oil from San Francisco."
Chef DeSousa's favourite ingredients include Alberta beef and pork. She says, "Beef is phenomenal in Alberta. We love working with pork in our restaurant from roasting pork on the rotisserie to turning the shoulders into charcuterie and making sausages. We make three different kinds of bacon at the restaurant: guanciale, pancetta and Canadian style smoked bacon."
Respect is Key
Respecting your staff is one of the key parts of a well-run kitchen from DeSousa's perspective. She says, "You can't walk into a kitchen or hire cooks and immediately think that they're going to respect you. You have to earn it. One of the ways I do that is to treat people with the same respect I'd like to be treated with. I'm not a tyrant in the kitchen, I'm very calm. I was taught that early on by chefs that I worked with. I think its really unrealistic when you watch television shows where the chef is screaming at cooks on the line. In our restaurant we treat our staff like they are our family."
Another part of what drives Chef DeSousa is passion. She explains, "I'm so passionate about what I do that it never feels like work. I love waking up in the morning and going straight to the market and sourcing all of the local products and bringing them to work. The cooks get so excited when they see all of these local vegetables and hormone-free meats. I love coming to work and working on the line with my cooks. I'm on the line with them every day. I think that's another reason why my cooks respect what I do because they see and feel the passion coming from me and my co-chef John and that carries over into them."
One of DeSousa's goals for Charcut is to help move Calgary towards becoming a culinary destination in North America. She says, "We've helped build the path to turn Calgary into a culinary destination city. I would love to be a part of creating new culinary trends in Calgary."
She adds, "We've got two chefs and our two other owners and spouses Carrie and Jean François who are so passionate about what we do. I'd like to see more chef-driven restaurants open up in Calgary with the same kind of passion and dedication as we have to what we do."
Sources
- For more information on CHARCUT please visit: http://www.charcut.com
- This interview with Connie DeSousa was conducted by telephone on June 24,2011.
