Chef Shonah Chalmers is shaping the next generation of chefs

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Photo of Shonah Chambers

By Amy Bostock

When chef Shonah Chalmers enters her classroom at Humber College, she brings with her a passion for local sourcing and sustainable practices, a firm grasp of the science of food and a desire to help others grow and learn in the kitchen. 

Outside the classroom, she also champions women in the culinary industry, shining the spotlight on the challenges they face, including the gender imbalance in leadership positions and the lack of representation of women in the industry, while emphasizing the importance of mentorship, networking, and supporting each other to create a more inclusive industry.

Chalmers is a graduate of Humber College’s Culinary Management program, joining the school’s faculty in 2011. But teaching, she said, had never been on her radar, until one of her professors convinced her to come in and teach “just one class. It was only supposed to be a one-day thing, she recalls. 

She’s never looked back. “I’ve learned, flourished and grown more being a teacher than I’d ever have been able to as a chef because you’re too busy doing the work.”

Before joining Humber College, Chalmers put in her time in kitchens, working with many great chefs at fine-dining restaurants, hotels, catering and even working at a ski resort in Japan before landing at Eagle’s Nest Golf Club in Maple, Ont.

“I would never have left the kitchen,” says Chalmers. “I was working at Eagle’s Nest and they treated me fabulously. I had complete autonomy on food, on suppliers, on staffing. You name it, it was mine; I had complete say in everything, which is every chef’s dream.”

But, she recalls, she missed being involved in the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. “As you gain responsibility, you lose your ability to be in the kitchen, because you have to manage, schedule and budget. I loved standing next to a cook, seeing the light go on and helping them excel and lift them up in the kitchen”

Now, as a culinary professor and program co-ordinator at Humber College, she’s able to take her past experiences and translate them into her own unique way of teaching that’s tailored to different learning styles. She’s also bringing her own cooking philosophy to the classroom, with a strong focus on the basics.

“There are a lot of people cooking that don’t understand the basic premises of the science behind food and how it works,” she says. “So, my philosophy is to work with the basics, really know your culinary skills, and then diversify in your flavours and how things are done.”

Local sourcing and sustainable practices also feature prominently in her lessons. “It’s a subject near and dear to my heart. Every kitchen is trying to minimize waste; it’s a cost issue. By minimizing your waste, and reducing your carbon footprint, you’re going to inevitably work with local communities. By supporting local communities, you can lift up the small businesses. I teach our students how to create a partnership with them. You don’t just say they’re your supplier; they’re your local growers, the person you rely on. The more you can engage with them, the better your food is going to be, because you let it speak for itself.”

She says imparting the story of local partners is achieved by dealing with direct partners, and teaching students and cooks how to use the products. 

“Once you do that, I bring [the partners] in as speakers, have them come in and cook with us or take students to a farm or to the arboretum out in our own garden and have them harvest ingredients so they know what it takes. It has to be impressed upon young cooks and chefs that have grown up in an urban situation, what it takes to get, for example, an onion. People will throw away trims of onion or excess as they call it, but when they see what it takes to go from a seed to getting it to your table, you will never waste an onion again.”

Speaking Out

During the pandemic, many of the the problems in the industry came to light, with many saying kitchens are broken and the entire regime mentality has to end. Chalmers says there was a time in the restaurant industry, even when she started 30 years ago, “when it was very hard. Man or woman, you sweat it out. And I think today, you still need to put the work in, but you need to be able to have open communication. Since the pandemic, cooks and chefs alike have realized, ‘hey, I matter. I’m important. I need balance, I can go somewhere else. But I choose to be here and I will give you my all here. But while I’m here, I’m not doing extra hours, and I’m not doing it for free.’”

Employers now have to sell themselves if they want to hire somebody, adding the change was inevitable but the pandemic sped it up.

Another change the seasoned chef champions relates to gender equality in, not just the kitchen, but the restaurant industry as a whole. 

“I had to work harder, faster, longer, better and have more attention to detail than anyone beside me,” she says, crediting the ‘army mentality’ carried over from her time in the Canadian Armed Forces Infantry for her approach to work. “I would know my job, and the person’s job next to me, so I could help them. As a woman in the kitchen, you’re often either seen as having a mothering nature, or you’re that hard-ass bitch and it’s hard to find the happy medium. Well, I did. I said, ‘I’ll help you, as long as you’re doing your part. But you have to want to help me as well.’ 

She says that in time, she was able to find that ebb and flow in the kitchen between men and women, “because I was quite often the only female, other than the pastry chef, in the kitchen. But coming from the Army, that was normal for me. The language was awful and everything was inappropriate, and it should have been an HR complaint, but I just pushed on.”

Chalmers says she’d like to say that today, kitchens are a better place — but she can’t. “If you look at how many Michelin-star women there are, how many females there aren’t on panels — there’s a token female or someone who is [LGBTQIA+] out of a panel of 15 or 20 people — it’s still not finding that balance.”

Interacting with her students, she says, has given Chalmers the opportunity to find out why there are so few women in the industry. “And my answer is, because [employers] want everything and it burns you out. You can’t do it all, I don’t care what everyone says. And until the gap is narrowed when it comes to what the expectations are for men and women in society, I don’t know that you can expect that to change. And that’s a bigger picture problem, right?” 

But, she adds, within the restaurant industry, women are starting to stand their ground. “They’re taking their place, holding key positions and being respected more than they ever have in the past. I remember being asked about eight or 10 years ago, by a very prominent French chef in Toronto, ‘why don’t I just go home and make babies?’ And I said, ‘yeah, challenge accepted, you’ll never get me out of this industry. That was literally what I said out loud — and here I am.”

But she emphasizes that she’s not out to paint the restaurant industry with a bad brush, “because, honestly, the experiences, the like-minded, wonderful, kind-hearted people I’ve become friends with and networked with — it’s amazing and I wouldn’t change anything. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

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