After closing Bite House, his tiny farm-to-table restaurant in Cape Breton, N.S., during the pandemic, Bryan Picard now offers events and catering across the province instead.Supplied
Pop-up dinners can take many forms – they can be a restaurant takeover or set in nature. There are no strict rules. Whatever form they take, these story-fuelled dinners have a knack for creating memories and turning strangers into friends.
A new wave of chefs across Canada is shifting to a less permanent restaurant model as an alternative way of bringing people together through food. More intimate and less hurried than grabbing a quick bite at a restaurant, these one-off events are less about turnaround times, with their focus on taking things slow. For that reason, pop-up dinners can often put patrons in close contact with chefs, giving them insight into how dishes have come together.
One pop-up dinner at a time, these four chefs are helping people connect with the land using local ingredients, initiating conversations about their culture and traditions through the menus they develop. They not only help the Canadian culinary DNA evolve, but they also build a sense of community.
After hustling at the restaurant for six days a week, Picard now tries to cap his year-round events to once a week to create a more sustainable work-life balance.Supplied
Bite House, Nova Scotia
Bryan Picard’s quaint 16-seater farmhouse restaurant in the village of Baddeck, Cape Breton, was nearly impossible to get into for years up until the pandemic. But as soon as COVID-19 hit, Bite House, his ultralocal hotspot, was shuttered. As tough as it was for Picard to close the beloved brick-and-mortar destination restaurant, pivoting the business to pop-ups and catering events came with its own opportunities.
“It was great – but it was pretty crazy,” he said, reflecting on how Bite House used to operate before the pandemic. “In hindsight, I should have gone more with the flow.”
After hustling at the restaurant for six days a week, Picard now tries to cap his year-round events to once a week to create a more sustainable work-life balance. “Every week is different, which is nice,” he said. “I don’t have the nightmares any more, waking up like, ‘Oh my god, is this done?’ To me, it’s all new.”
With this new iteration of Bite House, Picard has greater creative flexibility for menu development. His monthly seven- or eight-course collaboration with Periwinkle Café in Ingonish means he’s able to serve a seasonally inspired tasting menu. He no longer worries about stretching ingredients that are only in season for a week or two to last the whole month of in-house dining.
Picard has also been able to collaborate with even more small-scale local farmers in and around Cape Breton since he started working on an event-by-event basis. These purveyors might not grow enough to feed hundreds of people regularly, but they have ample produce on the fresh sheet (a weekly list showing seasonal produce available to chefs) for a single meal. “Whenever I order, everything’s top-notch,” he said.
The size of his pop-up collaborations vary. While his Northern BBQ series outdoors ($50-$60 a person) in Margaree feeds around 100 people, the five-course, drink-paired dinner with Island Folk Cider House in Sydney ($95 a person) serves 60.
“They’re definitely bigger dinners than we used to do,” said Picard with a laugh. For one of his summer barbecues, he will serve beef rib with salted herbs and a nectarine honey barbecue sauce made with last season’s preserved fruit, alongside tuna tartare with green garlic, dulce crackers and pickled shallots. “We’re on an island, so I love working with fish, but it’s just fun to be able to do both.”
But it is at his multicourse dinners at Periwinkle Café and Stillwell Brewing Co. in Halifax where guests can expect Bite House favourites from menus past, including a snow-crab dish with pickled ginger and white onion Soubise sauce, smoked pasture-raised pork belly with fresh tarragon and a Muscat (a fragrant wine grape commonly grown in Nova Scotia) sorbet to end with salty meringue, rosehip honey and lemon balm.
And those who are missing the Bite House experience can book a private dinner in the comfort of their home. “A lot of the regulars will have us in their house a few times a year; they’ll invite 10 other friends, and we’ll do it like we used to,” Picard explained.
Rachel Adjei, who founded the Abibiman Project, hosts a monthly series playfully named 'Hands, please!' with chef Kamoy Nicola at Rily Kitchen in Toronto, which aims to break down the colonial stigma around eating with your hands.Jenna Marie Wakini
The Abibiman Project, Ontario
Rachel Adjei’s journey to founding the Abibiman Project began in November, 2020. After participating in Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality that summer, she started raising funds for Afri-Can FoodBasket, a non-profit that was putting together culturally appropriate food baskets for African, Caribbean and Black communities in the Greater Toronto Area. “My idea was to make my favourite peanut soup and sell it by the litre and see how much I sell,” said the Canadian-Ghanaian chef.
The project soon evolved to offering African-inspired pastries, her own line of fragrant spice blends and teas inspired by regional African flavours, and eventually, her first major pop-up event. Adjei, whose formal culinary training is in Southern French and pan-Asian cuisines, relished celebrating diverse African foodways for the first time in her professional career. While working at Butchers of Distinction in Toronto’s east end, where she held the pop-up, she said she single-handedly served an ambitious eight-course meal to 50 customers on the busiest day at the butcher shop. “It was absolute insanity, but it was so fun, and everyone loved the menu,” she recalled.
As praise for the project rolled in, so did the invitations to host themed dinners intended to spark conversation about food culture and traditions at multiple venues across the city.
“At a restaurant, it feels so detached sometimes, where people rush you out the door, and they’re like, ‘Don’t ask questions, just eat it,’” she explained. “That is not the environment we’re creating. I want you to feel safe, comfortable, and nourished from your mind, body, and soul.” Between October, 2022, and November, 2023, she ran a weekly pop-up, the Benada Dinner Series, out of a single location, the Grapefruit Moon, to strengthen relationships with her patrons. “I would change some dishes weekly based on customer feedback just so they could explore as much as possible – and me too, as a chef.”
Today, you can find Adjei and chef Kamoy Nicola at Rily Kitchen in Toronto, where she hosts a monthly series playfully named “Hands, please!” The series – which aims to break down the colonial stigma around eating with your hands – switches between a multicourse brunch offering ($60-$80 a person) and dinner ($80-$110). With the latest iteration of her project, Adjei is committed to exploring even more regional flavours from Morocco to Ghana to Kenya that connect to her experience of honing her craft as a chef in the diaspora.
“I constantly explain to customers there’s only so much authenticity that can exist in making African food in Canada. We can’t get all the ingredients we need at peak freshness. Therefore, I’m going to mix in local ingredients and utilize them,” she said. For example, when Adjei could only find locally grown European sorrel, she mixed in collard greens to mimic the rough texture of West African sorrel.
In recent years, it’s become easier to source culturally important ingredients, thanks to the rise of Black producers such as Sarn Farm, Zawadi Farm, Ubuntu Community Farm and Black Creek Community Farm, growing culturally significant ingredients such as okra, callaloo (a leafy green in the amaranth family) and garden egg (a type of eggplant).
Before she started the Abibiman Project, Adjei hadn’t envisioned herself in this space, but it’s allowed her to connect with guests, build community and remind guests that food connects us all.
Professional forager Nick Chindamo curates not-for-profit dinners in Charlottetown featuring 10 chefs, 10 courses and zero waste.Al Douglas/Supplied
An Island Collective, Prince Edward Island
Every December and April, An Island Collective hosts two not-for-profit dinners in Charlottetown featuring 10 chefs, 10 courses and zero waste. The experience, curated by Nick Chindamo, a professional forager for the Inn at Bay Fortune, and front-of-house whiz Mariepier Fecteau (currently head sommelier at the inn), explores the Maritime landscape through foraged and local ingredients. Each cook on the ever-evolving chef lineup is responsible for a single course, from development to prep for 32 guests at Ada Culinary Studio in Charlottetown. “We’re building a menu based on personalities and stories rather than just flavour,” said Chindamo. “Working in the kitchen with people you never worked with before allows you to connect on a deep level. It’s inspired a lot of new relationships on PEI.”
The most memorable dish Chindamo says he made was a tartare using thinly sliced raw flounder seasoned with fermented liquids from his larder and last year’s pickled sea buckthorn. “It took nearly 15 fish to serve these guests, and I had to go and catch them all myself,” he explained, noting he was mindful to observe fishing limits and regulations. He began dry-aging the fish to keep them fresh until showtime. “It just improved its texture, which is normally quite soft.” When he stumbled across some overwintered daikon radish, the feral cover crop soon became a textural component seasoned with a splash of seawater. “It took so much work for four bites, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”
You can find that level of intention across his events. Although no two dinners are the same, the menu will always feature “compost tea” with “waste oil” to utilize kitchen scraps (a playful riff on the natural “tea” farmers would spray on their crops for a pop of extra nutrients). For Chindamo, this course best reflects An Island Collective because “it tastes like courses past and courses to come.” This amalgamation is served in a ceramic bowl, lovingly handmade by Studio C Ceramics. An Island Collective is now trying to ramp up zero-waste efforts throughout its service, from artisanal plates, to eventually, glassware, tables and chairs made from fallen wood from the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in 2022.
Since its inception in December, 2011, An Island Collective has donated funds (after operating costs) to the Aboriginal Women’s Association of PEI and Island Nature Trust, to name a few. Today, the project continues to evolve. An Island Collective is in the process of launching a sustainability fund, which financially supports an underprivileged student who wants to attend culinary school. It is also matching the grand prize in the Garland Canada International Junior Chef Challenge at the PEI Shellfish Festival with a co-prize for the dish that best embodies a zero-waste mindset. “You shouldn’t waste all this food in a competition to see who cooks the best. We’re moving to reward those who go out of their way to be intentional with their cooking,” he said.
Plains Cree archeologist and heritage educator Honey Constant-Inglish from Sturgeon Lake First Nation. Honey does the smudging ceremony at the beginning and takes everyone on a guided walk of the Valley before sharing more stories during the dinner.Sik Pics Productions/Supplied
Han Wi Moon Dinners, Saskatchewan
As you head north of Saskatoon’s lively metropolitan core, you’ll find Wanuskewin Heritage Park, a natural sanctuary where Indigenous peoples have held a sacred relationship with the land for more than 6,000 years. The UNESCO World Heritage nominee, which overlooks the serene Opimihāw Valley and the South Saskatchewan River, has also been home to Wanuskewin’s Han Wi Moon dinner series since 2018. “The food is just one ingredient of the experience,” said chef Jenni Lessard, a citizen of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, recipe developer and culinary consultant for Wanuskewin Heritage Park.
The intimate 22-guest experience ($305 a person inclusive of tax) begins with a smudging ceremony, followed by a 45-minute walking tour guided by Plains Cree archeologist and heritage educator Honey Constant-Inglis of Sturgeon Lake First Nation. The land echoes with the stories of its first peoples and their culture. They also showcase the bounty of the North Plains as guests feast on a welcome bite of baked bannock on a stick drizzled with chokecherry coulis and maple butter, washed down with water infused with Saskatoon berries. “I am allowed to harvest ingredients from the valley for those five dinners with tobacco protocols,” explained Lessard.
Chef Jenni Lessard, a citizen of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, recipe developer and culinary consultant for Wanuskewin Heritage Park.Alexander Willems/Supplied
This year’s menu begins with an Askiy (which translates to Earth in Cree) garden salad – with puffed wild rice, Lakota squash purée, charred corn and bison dry meat – that takes things back to the land. The main event is a juicy bison tenderloin – for excellent reason. Just 150 years ago, the bison population almost disappeared. After partnering with Parks Canada in 2019, Wanuskewin welcomed a bison herd back to their native home. Lessard was the executive chef at Wanuskewin when they returned. “It was so powerful, and it just changed the whole energy of the land.” Since then, it has grown to 44 Plains bison. Each decision, from the seasoning of the meat with yarrow and sage to serving it with wild nettle and a bison stock that utilizes vegetable scraps, is intentional. “The nettle grows under the bison jump, so I like to serve it with the bison to tell that story – the guests will go right under the bison jump before going to the dinner site.”
As the Prairie sun sets on dinner, cultural presentations, including an interpretative dance performance by Curtis Peeteetuce of Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation and storytelling by Dr. Ernest Walker – who Lessard says is the instrumental park founder and “ultimate ally” – take the floor to showcase the valley’s spirit further. “There’s always one moment in each dinner when a mother deer and her fawn are right on the path in front of the group as they walk down to dinner. [Another] time, I was describing the menu, and an eagle flew behind my head,” said Lessard. “We make an effort to have these outside so you can potentially have one of those moments when you’re part of the land.” Dates for 2025 will be posted soon.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Inspired Dining section.