CHARCUT Roast House, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Top Chefs Connie DeSousa, John Jackson Present Urban Rustic Cuisine
Sep 1, 2009
Committed to serving homemade, fresh, sustainable, local food, the owners of CHARCUT Roast House have spent the summer of 2009, their pre-opening season, visiting local farms and finding sources for their kitchen. CHARCUT will join some of the best restaurants in Calgary, including the River Cafe and Rouge, in offering food made from regional ingredients.
Chef DeSousa, recently of Chez Panisse in San Francisco, and Chef Jackson, who recently worked at London's The River Café and Le Jardin des Cygnesin in Paris as part of his travels through Europe, are graduates of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) Culinary program.
Chez Panisse, St. Regis Hotel, Other Top Restaurants on Chefs' Resumes
Described by one local Calgary food writer on The Pink Peppercorn blog as "the biographical dream team", the principals of CHARCUT have impressive experience in the kitchens and the dining rooms of fine restaurants around the world. In 2005, this team opened the Mobil 5-Star St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, which has two restaurants, Ame (Michelin star) and Vitrine, maintaining the Mobil 5-Star rating each year.
In the lists below, the numbers in brackets show the ranking of each restaurant on the 2009 S. Pellegrino "World's Best Restaurants" list, followed by the 2008 rank. These are not comprehensive resumes, just some of the highlights.
Connie DeSousa (Chef / Owner)
- Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, San Francisco (59, 37)
- Michael Tusk's Quince Restaurant, San Francisco
- Jean Georges Vongerichten's Michelin 3-Star restaurant, Jean Georges, New York City (19, 17)
- St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco (Mobil 5-Star)
- Sven Feldman's Taku Restaurant, Koln, Germany
- 2004 Alberta Culinary Team at World Culinary Olympics, Erfurt, Germany
- 2003 Finalist, Jeunes Commis Rôtisseurs (Young Cooks) Competition, Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, Cape Town, South Africa (at the age of 22)
John Jackson (Chef / Owner)
- Le Jardin des Cygnesin, Paris
- The River Café, London (71)
- St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco (Mobil 5-Star)
- Consultant to Chef Jean Georges Vongerichten's Restaurant Lagoon, Bora Bora
- Owl's Nest Dining Room, Calgary
Jean Francois Beeroo, (Service Director / Owner)
- St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco (Mobil 5-Star)
- Nancy Oakes' Boulevard Restaurant, San Francisco
- Daniel Boulud's Café Boulud, New York City (In 2009, two of Boulud's restaurants held positions 41 and 88)
Carrie Jackson, (Owner) is both a lawyer and a service professional, who earned her WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) Wine Certification at Copia in Napa Valley.
Homemade Food in a Downtown Calgary Restaurant
It's obvious from the start that Chefs Jackson and DeSousa love food, and know what to do with it. Connie DeSousa says it's always been that way for her. "In high school, when the other kids were going out on the weekend, I was staying in and hosting dinner parties for my friends."
CHARCUT invited friends and media to a pre-Calgary Stampede, "Hard Hats, Beer and Berkshire" barbeque in July 2009, in the shell of the restaurant space while it was under construction. The star of the show was the Wood-Fire Rotisserie Berkshire Pork with Mini Brioche, House Pickles and Mustard. Jackson, who has worked with traditional master butchers in Italy, deboned a pig, cured, and stuffed it with homemade foie gras and pork pate, and roasted it whole. It looked like the centrepiece from a mediaeval feast, and of course, it tasted wonderful.
Jackson says, "We like to know the first names of the people whose products we will be serving." The Berkshire pig came from Broek Pork Acres near Lethbridge, Alberta, where the animals are raised in pastures without antibiotics, growth stimulants and animal by-products.
Wild Rose Beer, a craft microbrewery near the Calgary Farmer's Market (Currie Barracks location), provided beer to go with the CHARCUT roast pork.
While the meat was certainly spectacular on its own, the chefs' imaginations and dedication to homemade fresh food showed at every turn. Even the goat cheese in the appetizers was homemade. (At a recent Calgary Chefs' Pot Luck, DeSousa demonstrated how to make goat cheese, on video.) DeSousa made piri-piri, one of the house pickles, from a family recipe, using fermented red peppers in the traditional Portuguese style.
The three fanciful choices of dessert, served in mini-Mason jars, were Chocolate Pots de Crème, with Dandelion Honey from Calgary's Golden Lane Foods, Vanilla Crème Brulée, and Caramel Popcorn Cheesecake. The caramel popcorn must have been in honour of the Stampede midway.
CHARCUT will open in December 2009 in the new Hotel Le Germain Calgary, on 9th Avenue SW and Centre Street, in downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Click on the blue titles for the photos below to enlarge them.
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