Peter Dewar has come a long way since making pizza in New Brunswick as a fresh-faced teenager. “I was 16 working in a pizza place and I enjoyed cooking and art and painting,” recalls the 39-year-old member of Canada’s Olympic team. “I decided to paint on the plate and was encouraged to go to the Culinary Institute of Canada on Prince Edward Island,” he says, explaining his culinary roots. Describing Canadian cuisine as “a melting pot”, the cook’s career has taken him to Dalvay-by-the-Sea in P.E.I., the Pines Resort and Spa in Digby, N.S. and Val d’Isère, a small French resto in Whistler, B.C.
Today, the chef shares his creative spark and passion for food with students at the Nova Scotia Community College. “He’s the most passionate cook I’ve ever met,” says Erika Reeves, chef/assistant manager, of N.S.-based Aramark, and a former student. “He loves what he does; he loves teaching, loves food and Peter’s very patient and organized. That’s what I’ve learned is key in any competition.”
With his well-travelled knife-bag — he’s driven across Canada 14 times — and a quest for beautiful food, Dewar was drawn to Europe early on. “I was lucky to be asked to work in Switzerland, so I did my formal apprenticeship in Bern. A great experience for sure,” says Dewar. It was there he met world-famous Swiss chef Frédy Girardet, an order of the International Olympic Committee and recipient of a gold medal from the city of Lausanne. “I ate at his restaurant and was absolutely amazed [how] the food tasted,” recounts Dewar. “He seemed like a very humble chef. He introduced himself; he’s soft-spoken and I thought, I’d like to be like that too.” The tableside greeting had a lasting effect on the Canadian chef. Never one to berate his staff — a trait in celebrity chefs he abhors — Dewar calls himself “a fairly mellow chef.”
As Dewar sharpens his knives and perfects his palate for arguably the largest and most prestigious culinary competition in the world, he says his team holds great promise. “We have some of the best coaches helping us get there; without them we’d be nowhere.” The chef, whose food philosophy is “cook with love”, craves competition, perhaps a spinoff from his World-Cup, cycling days. “When I was younger I raced mountain bikes and was into competitive cycling,” explains the soft-spoken toque, who counts Thomas Keller and Wylie Dufresne as major influences. “Instead of competing on my bicycle, I started competing in cooking and really enjoyed it.”
Dewar, whose ride with the Olympic team began three years ago after a successful audition, is excited about the competition despite the long hours he’ll have to log in the Messe Erfurt conference centre kitchen. “Being in the hot kitchen, we have to be perfect, we have to be clean, we have to be fast. So I’m looking forward to that aspect of competition.”
So what will the former pizzaiolo, who describes his own cooking-style as, “clean and fluid,” bring in the heat of the moment in Germany? Creativity. “I’m lucky to be creative, I think that’s very important,” he says. His brazen, creative streak is clear in his enthusiasm for white chocolate. “I love using white chocolate. I use [it] in sweets, I use it in savoury … I put it in purées. Celery root and white chocolate go really well together.” And if his creative stripes don’t impress, his fondness for taking risks should. “Sometimes I’ll create an all-white dessert; I like to surprise people … all white on a white plate. That’s kind of ‘out there’, but when you taste it, it’s amazing,” Dewar declares. Whether or not he makes a colourless dessert remains to be seen, but when all is said and done, Dewar says it’s his team’s group effort that has to impress the judges. “In the end, it has to be seasoned properly, it has to look beautiful and it has to taste beautiful. That’s where we’re going to get our marks.”
photo courtesy of Nancy Ackerman/Klixpix
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