It’s not typical for a chef who has cut his culinary teeth in the kitchen of a casual restaurant to end up leading the brigade of a fine-dining restaurant. But, for J.P. Pedhirney, executive chef of Muse Restaurant & Lounge in Calgary, that very experience allowed him to gain a competitive advantage over other chefs and achieve success at the same time.
Raised in Calgary, Pedhirney originally planned to study engineering but, in 2001, as fate would have it, he landed in the kitchens of Joey Restaurant Group. After completing a rigorous two-year leadership program, the chef became part of a team led by executive chef Chris Mills, which was busy opening units in Seattle, Vancouver and Winnipeg. “I kind of went backwards, by learning the business before I learned ultra fine-dining,” explains the 29-year-old toque.
After graduating from an apprenticeship program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in 2010, and landing a job at River Café in Calgary, the chef was anxious to see what the inside of a Michelin-starred restaurant looked like. “When I was working at River Café, I was saving my money to go down to the States, and then my house burned down. So [I figured] it was now or never,” he says. He immediately booked a flight to Chicago, where he staged with executive chef Paul Kahan and David Posey at the Michelin-starred Blackbird restaurant. “Their style is highly creative, artistic, fun — and they are digging outside the box. [Posey] made me realize how I want to approach my food and do more artistic plating,” he says.
In 2011, Pedhirney transferred his newfound skills to Rouge Restaurant in Calgary where he quickly worked his way up from sous chef to chef de cuisine. But, when the ownership at Muse Restaurant changed hands in November 2012, Pedhirney was named executive chef. He quickly dove into the leadership role, installing a new team of chefs hailing from the fine-dining kitchens of Copenhagen and Norway, while also introducing a tasting menu.
Now, the 80-seat intimate restaurant offers a five- and eight-course tasting menu ($85pp/$110pp) that deconstructs the elements of local, seasonal cuisine to ignite surprising new flavours. “We like to grab one ingredient, look at it, and ask, ‘how can we use every last part of it and manipulate it?’” says Pedhirney, describing the process, while referencing a corn-based dish featuring roasted kernels, bisque made from corn stock and fried silks. “The way you utilize each ingredient can sometimes bring out the sweetness, or make something more acidic, so you end up getting a well-rounded dish,” he adds.
Pedhirney hopes his cuisine will help elevate the Calgary dining experience to match that of other cities such as Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. In his spare time, he’s also reaching local foodies through a monthly column called “Ask the Chef,” which appears in Calgary’s Culinaire magazine, offering cooking guidelines, recipes and more. “I want to be a leader in Calgary,” he states emphatically. “There’s a huge opportunity for a wonderful food scene here as the city is growing — it’s not just steak and potatoes. I’d like to have another restaurant that’s a little more casual to show that side of myself as well. I’m young, so I’m ambitious to do a lot.”
photo courtesy of Colin Way
