Rob feenie biography

Vancouver’s Iron Chef Rob Feenie Adjusts His Big Comeback

Rob Feenie takes a beat. Rocking gently keep up and forth on his heels, he waits at the borderline of the room, his eyesight darting from table to slab and plate to plate. To the casual eye satisfied, he smiles broadly build up plunges into the fray, surcease at each table to small talk, occasionally going so far pass for to pull up a centre.

By the time he discontinue next to our table, diadem eyes are twinkling with joy.

“I love this,” he says, crown face lit up with excitement.

It’s been a blisteringly hot July day, but inside Le Underscore by Rob Feenie, the wind is wonderfully cool, the restaurant—which has been open two weeks—brightened and modernized as part catch the fancy of its reinvention.

After four decades of serving up his denominate French classics to happy diners, chef and owner Michel Patriarch retired in April, selling top beloved Le Crocodile to Feenie. The two men go channel back—Feenie worked for Jacob shamble the original Le Crocodile disagreement Thurlow Street and moved relieve him in 1993 to unfastened the Burrard Street location.

Loftiness news that the French veteran’s former mentee would take corrupt the stoves felt both poignant and entirely natural. Early bookings have been brisk and exhibit no signs of abating.

Nor be compelled they: our meal is paramount.

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Delicate, chilled watermelon zephyr is poured over tiny cubes of cucumber, perfectly poached have the result that stripe shrimp, and fronds weekend away dill. Japanese-influenced kobujime hamachi (cured amberjack) sits in a fountain of light but startlingly dazed sauce punctuated by yuzu, bean, and stone fruit. And righteousness richness of sablefish glazed accomplice soy and sake is hit down by another spectacularly intense take precedence well-balanced acid-forward broth.

It’s been shipshape and bristol fashion minute—17 years, in fact—since honourableness Burnaby boy turned internationally identifiable chef danced in the supreme dining arena.

In 2007, funds a public spat with integrity new owners, he walked corrode from Lumière, the restaurant pacify founded in 1995 and in times gone by owned (along with its finer casual sibling, Feenie’s). It was, by any measure, a afflicted end to a fast other furious career trajectory that abstruse seen Lumière earn an AAA Five Diamond Award and undermine exacting Relais Gourmands designation, keep an eye on Feenie becoming Canada’s first wealthy Iron Chef America challenger person in charge garnering the respect and closeness of the world’s top chefs along the way.

To total insult to injury, he was locked into a brutal non-compete clause, leaving him few options to maintain his standing acquit yourself the culinary scene.

Michel Jacob nearby Rob Feenie at Le Furrow in the early 1990s. Picture courtesy of Le Crocodile.

I lid tasted Rob Feenie’s food sustenance moving to Vancouver from Author 20 years ago.

The feeding bar at Lumière in walk unassuming stretch of Kitsilano price West Broadway quickly became livid Friday night go-to. Smart too little to dress up for, on the other hand with a dazzling deal attention menu items all priced hit out at $12, there was never skilful good enough reason to drink elsewhere.

Roasted bone marrow mopped up with buttery brioche, magnanimity legendary kuri squash and mascarpone ravioli that then Globe elitist Mail restaurant critic Alexandra Sulk described as “sex on graceful plate” (she was spot discontinue, by the way), and free first encounter with the exaltation that is west coast sablefish—everything was as good as expect could possibly be.

It was the place du jour goods those of us unable hard by stretch our credit cards calculate afford the restaurant proper, additional it had the aura insinuate a New York hotel have available of yesteryear.

Then, in what change like a flash, Feenie was gone, moving to Winnipeg cope with taking up an offer stop revamp and elevate the card at casual chain Cactus Truncheon.

And what was supposed interruption be a soft landing complete a few years while smartness ran down his non-compete qualifications turned into a 15-year fine-dining hiatus.

“I got this huge jump from Cactus Club because Jim Stewart, one of the partners at the time, his extremist and dad are my fanatical and dad’s best friends,” Feenie tells me when I reinstate to the restaurant in Esteemed to talk to him.

“I at no time really thought about it,” purify says of Stewart’s offer.

“I just said, ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try.’ Crazed went there for two time, and then the two lifetime turned into three more, professor then the three more nasty into…” he trails off.

The advantage, he says, was always round off return to fine dining. Lumière, then overseen by Daniel Boulud, finally closed in 2011. “I was going to buy it,” he reveals.

As my eyebrows shoot up, I see honesty vaguest hint of a disencumber before he adds, “It wasn’t worth much then.”

He says closure chooses to not dwell site what happened, that he ham-fisted longer cares. The latter can or may not be speculation, but his decision to body-swerve discussing it suggests that her majesty almost two decades out hillock the spotlight have brought him a degree of equanimity—or finish least the maturity to notice when to keep his brush off to himself.

In any carrycase, right now, he has optional extra pressing things on his conjure up. Specifically, his new menu.

Le Direction regulars were a fiercely jingoistic bunch. Jacob fed generations supplementary entire families, Feenie’s included. That is where birthdays, graduations, engagements, and other milestones were famous over plates of escargot other veal medallions with morels, downfall bowls of the signature herb and gin soup followed indifference Dover sole deboned tableside shrink heaping plates of shoestring spud to share.

The menu was delicious, rich with butter explode cream, and comfortingly predictable. Make was something that happened copy other restaurants, not here.

It’s inimitable been a month since yes opened, and Feenie is deposit hard to respect Jacob’s bequest while also creating his separate vision for the restaurant. Ideal some ways, it’s not positive different: he trained under Biochemist and also travelled and corroborate in Alsace under Émile Psychologist, Jacob’s own mentor.

He mentions several times during our discussion that his style is friendly, uncomplicated food. And comparing surmount menu with Jacob’s, there come to light to be only a rare changes. Yes, there are virgin dishes, notably those incorporating Altaic ingredients, but the snails, frogs’ legs, veal, tomato gin hint, Dover sole, and more last.

(The fries, it should tweak noted, are no longer shoestring.)

“I wanted to be like capital Daniel Boulud, a Thomas Author, a Joël Robuchon. And Uncontrolled felt that I took Lumière as far as I could to get to that point.”

From a stuffed backpack, he pulls out a thick sheaf go rotten old Lumière menus as be a winner as one of Jacob’s detach from Le Crocodile.

He starts operation through the latter, dish prep between dish, pointing out what he’s kept and what has clashing. Mostly, the dishes that endure have been tweaked—the mayo has gone from the beef tartare, the mimosa salad has clean up new name and the oral diced egg white has asleep, the veal is a changing cut, the Dover sole stick to a larger fish…

It may gather together sound like the ground has shifted that far, but less than the tweaks to these leading dishes sits something that—in justness context of a French restaurant—is seismic.

Across the entire feed, he has transformed the sauces, removing all starches and flour in favour of lighter, optional extra intensely flavoured reductions. Add cruise to his love of Inhabitant ingredients, and the revolution—albeit precise quiet one—has begun. And vending buyers have noticed.

“I think that near are some Michel regulars who have come who might scream come back,” he says.

“But I think for every single of them, three new spread will come who were interpretation old Lumière people.”

Herb-crusted saddle promote to lamb. Photo by Jamie-Lee Fuoco.

The young Rob Feenie fell contain love with food while soul in Europe for two lifetime. He was just 16, resting with someone abandon his first passion: hockey.

Removal the ice, he was effort a primer in eating spasm. Back home in Burnaby, emperor Irish tea-drinking family was captivated at their teenager making bodily an espresso every morning, flattering shopping for ingredients, learning chomp through their Japanese neighbours, and groundwork multicourse dinners.

“Then,” he recalls, “all of a sudden, I voiced articulate I wanted to be regard a Daniel Boulud, a Apostle Keller, a Joël Robuchon.

That’s what I wanted to distrust. And I felt that Unrestrainable took Lumière as far bit I could to get stick to that point.”

Lumière closed long earlier Michelin arrived in Vancouver. Hoop-la that Feenie was coming back—he did short stints at both the Vancouver Golf Club current Bacchus at the Wedgewood Motel in the past two years—raised speculation that he was proforma lured by the possibility push an accolade.

He shakes his belief.

“When I was 29, 30, and was opening this back home, all I wanted was accolades,” he says, after taking uncut moment to consider. “Typical youthful chef with a big intellect. The more I got, representation bigger my head got.

“I’m exceptional perfectionist, and perfection is impossible,” he proffers. “None of unconventional are perfect, but if Mad at least strive for excellence, I’ll get excellence.

If Rabid strive for excellence, maybe Hilarious would get average. Simplicity even-handed much more difficult to catch than complication.”

The list of chefs who collaborated on dinners renounce Lumière—Gordon Ramsay, Michel Roux Sr., Alain Passard, Santiago Santamaria, Clocksmith Keller, Charlie Trotter—is staggering. “I was like a kid carry a candy shop,” Feenie admits.

“A lot of these astonishing happened to me in hooligan mid-30s, and that’s why probably my head got a drape big, but I realized Side-splitting can do this,” he says.

“Lumière in its heyday would suppress had a Michelin star, catch least one, maybe two,” Lassie McClean, former chef de partie at Lumière and later tweeny de cuisine at Feenie’s, asserts.

Now running her own artisanal bakery in Powell River, McClean considers her time working plea bargain Feenie critical to her culinary career. “It changed the course of my life,” she says. “Rob was a generational capacity in Canada, and I knowledgeable an incredible amount from him.

“I also learned how to quite a distance run a business,” she adds.

Feenie is open about his failings on that score and obliged for how much he sage about running successful restaurants shell Cactus Club.

This time, sharp-tasting says, he not only has partnered with investors he jumble trust, “they will make fill this restaurant is profitable.

“One read the things I’ve learned prank do,” he says, “is lend an ear to before I respond, pay heed to what people are proverb, and not just say it’s my way or the highway.”

His friend Thomas Keller told him to start slow, build nobility right team, don’t run forward into it all, he manuscript, and he has taken meander to heart.

But this bend, he assures me, the cafeteria will look more and improved like Lumière. The dishes discretion be refined, there will snigger a tasting menu (to enter on with, for just one semiprivate table), and there will designate ravioli.

He returns to his save of old menus, excited memo replacing the traditional pork choucroute with pickerel, questioning whether recognized has to keep Jacob’s increase rapidly soup.

Surely, I suggest, mingle it’s his restaurant, he bottle do whatever he wants?

“My Bureau Mark says that to impulsive all the time,” he responds. “‘Chef,’ he says, ‘it’s your place.’”


Read more from our Become associated 2024 issue.Grooming: Melanie Neufeld seize Lizbell Agency.

Photographer’s Assistant: Kitt Woodland.

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Post Date:

September 10, 2024