Diving for scallops with Canada's best chef
- Text by D'Arcy Doran
Jeremy Charles is a soft-spoken, humble, genius.
Essentially, the Canadian chef embodies the food that he serves and has colleagues from across North America beating a path to St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador to eat at his restaurants, Raymonds and The Merchant Tavern. “Jeremy is easily Canada’s most important chef at this point,” chef Daniel Burns of Luksus in New York, who has cooked at Noma, the Fat Duck and Momofuku Labs recently told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.
The style of Nordic cuisine pioneered by Noma has struck a particular chord in Newfoundland and Labrador, traditionally one of Canada’s poorer provinces. For generations, economic hardship and a lack of exotic ingredients have forced chefs to transform the bounty around them into creative dishes. Jeremy’s cooking combines inspiration from the past and a respect for ingredients with striking ingenuity.
A few weeks ago, our East London neighbour John Quilter, aka YouTube’s Food Busker, joined the ranks of chefs making a pilgrimage to Newfoundland to see what Jeremy is about and some of the Huck team got to tag along to capture it all on film. Instead of going to the market as you might with some chefs, Jeremy started our day with him by taking us out in his boat.
We hope you enjoy the short film we made — complete with a soundtrack from our friends, the Canadian indie band Future States. And we highly recommend going to taste Jeremy’s cooking for yourself.
If you’d like to see more short films by the Huck team, why not subscribe to our YouTube channel?
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