Karen Barnaby is the Executive Chef of the Fish House in Stanley Park, and admits to being largely self-taught. But it was really a series of mentors who gave her confidence, inspired her and helped her to progress along the path to success.
She began by making bread and desserts: "I had myself pegged for a pastry chef and my first restaurant job had me baking carrot cakes, cheesecakes and quiches. The owner, Taro and his partner Tiger, were Japanese, and it was through them that I was introduced to the wonders of Japanese foods: precision knife skills, sashimi, eggplant dengaku, oden, chilled tofu. Of all cuisines, this is the one that I still have the most awe and respect for. Taro's girlfriend, Judy, was an amazing cook. It was her confidence with cooking that made me more comfortable with cooking, too."
Her first inspiration — beyond the encouragement of her family — was Graham Kerr, television's Galloping Gourmet. "That's where I first learned how to use a knife properly. I remember clearly a dish he cooked one day of squab with a sour cream and cherry sauce. To this, he added the bird's liver! I was simultaneously aghast and transfixed. My head spun with questions: Eating pigeons? Do you just go and get one from a roof? What would it taste like? Liver and cherries? From that moment on, I was hooked."
Moving from hometown Ottawa, Karen arrived in Toronto in the winter of 1981 "and pounded the pavement of Queen Street. At that time, the owners of the Queen Mother Cafe were looking for a second chef to complement their new venture called the Rivoli."
After three years of gratefully absorbing all the knowledge that chef Vanipha Southalack had to impart on Thai and Laotian cooking at the Rivoli, Karen set her sights on the newly opened David Wood Food Shop in Toronto's ritzy Rosedale. "Through a fortuitous twist of fate in 1985," she says, "I found myself working there as a cook."
After only six months, David Wood promoted Karen to chef. "It was a dream come true," she says. "During the five years there, I opened two more David Wood Food Shops and co-wrote the David Wood Food Book and the David Wood Dessert Book. During that time, I discovered that I had an aptitude for teaching and put it into practice at Dufflet's Great Cooks Cooking School, a venue for Toronto's top chefs. In Vancouver, I continue to teach at Tools and Techniques in West Vancouver, the Cook Shop in City Square and Caren's Cooking School."
Since then, Karen became an executive chef, overseeing three restaurants: the Harvest Moon Cafe in Victoria, North 49 Restaurant and Market, and Restaurant Starfish and Oyster Bar. Currently, she is executive chef of the Fish House in Stanley Park, with a regular food column in the Vancouver Sun.
Karen takes pride in the fact that she didn't attend a traditional culinary program, but was instead influenced by a series of brilliant mentors — even her grandmothers. Her point is that you have to be open to all influences.
"My two grandmothers shaped my outlook on food. They were both on the fringe as far as cooking and eating in the '60s was concerned. They taught me how to eat avocados, artichokes, zucchini, eggplants and organ meats, how to pick wild garlic and strawberries and make marmalade out of mountain ash berries. They had no cultural or economic boundaries to hold them back from enjoying any kind of food, whether it was from the fields or the local IGA. Eating with them was always a discovery, and it is this experience that I crave."
"Going to school is great," she says, "but you don't learn how to work in a kitchen until you work in a kitchen. I learned on the job at every place I worked at." Her advice for moving up in the kitchen hierarchy is straightforward: "Chefs love people who are on the ball. If you're on the ball, you'll get the attention." With the chef on your side, you will have found yourself a mentor. Karen's advice is to get hired in any position you can, and then show genuine interest in learning the ropes.
