Volume 48, Number 3
Written By: Cynthia David
[dropcap size=big]P[/dropcap]atrons of Boralia (formerly named Borealia) in downtown Toronto get a history lesson with every bite. Chef/owners Evelyn Wu and Wayne Morris opened their 45-seat restaurant last fall to showcase updated versions of dishes enjoyed by the First Nations and early settlers.
The brief appetizer list includes chop suey croquettes ($6), a nod to Wu’s heritage and to the Chinese migrants who arrived on the West Coast in the 1850s to search for gold. Another popular item is pigeon pie ($20), circa 1611, a mound of dark squab meat (farm-raised baby pigeon) encased in a flaky crust and flanked by seared squab breast.
Boralia’s owners are typical Canadians. Morris is Acadian from Nova Scotia with a sliver of Metis blood, while Wu, who works the front of house, grew up in Toronto and Hong Kong. After culinary school in San Francisco and a stint at Michelin-starred Coi, she returned to Toronto to work at Nota Bene, then headed to England for a year at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck, where she helped develop desserts using fine-dining interpretations of historical British cuisine. Back in Toronto, she wondered how to do the same with Canadian food. She switched to front of the house and moved to Kelowna, B.C. as a server at Waterfront Wines, where Morris was chef de cuisine.
They began talking about opening a restaurant that embraced both their backgrounds. Marie Nightingale’s 1970 classic, Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens, which combined Acadian recipes and dishes from German settlers, offered inspiration. “Canada is a country of immigrants who brought recipes from their home countries,” says Wu. “By mixing that with First Nations cuisine we could get a comprehensive view of Canadian cuisine.”
The duo, who married in 2013, spent months researching Canadian cuisine. They lightened up several recipes from the 1899 Dominion Home Cook Book to make them more palatable for today’s tastes. Morris also explored traditional preparation methods in dishes such as the pan-roasted trout with Iroquois popcorn grits ($17), made by steeping popcorn in cooking liquid until it thickens like polenta. “I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel,” says Morris. “We’re embracing the idea of looking to the past to create something new.”
Some ingredients were a risk, Wu admits. Though she’d grown up eating whelk, and Morris discovered it was once fished off Newfoundland, she wasn’t sure people would eat a giant sea snail. She needn’t have worried. “We prepare it in a rich umami butter sauce,” she says, “and it was the most popular dish at our first pop-up dinner.” The éclade of pine butter-poached mussels, circa 1605, presented under a glass cloche filled with pine smoke ($15), has garnered pages of press.
Boralia’s customers range from downtown hipsters to families from the suburbs. Morris says, “People get that this is Canadian food, and they’ll come back with friends visiting from abroad who want to know what our cuisine is.” Wu sums it up: “We’re putting the spotlight on the food of everyone who came from our mosaic of different cultures.”
