'Make it Nice'
Sara Shpyth has a tattoo on her arm that says, “make it nice.” It’s her motto in life and in her career. Inspired by Eleven Madison Park chef Daniel Humm, who has used similar words in some of his restaurant names, the 26-year-old rising culinary star says all she really wants in life is to “make something nice for someone; to make someone smile.”
She calls it her “all-time favourite thing in my job.” It’s a charming goal from a chef who divides her time between Fraser Café, where she is chef de cuisine, and Astoria, a new gluten-free, vegan restaurant she’s helping open in Hull. And it’s comforting for her customers with dietary restrictions.
“I love having an open kitchen here,” she says during a physically distanced interview on the patio at Fraser Café. That’s because she regularly interacts with grateful customers who tell her things like: “This is the best meal I’ve ever had.”
She never waivers from the restaurant’s casual fine-dining mandate, but she makes sure she always has a gluten-free option and a vegan option — even for desserts.
“So many of my friends have dietary restrictions and the fact that they can get a dessert that’s not just a strawberry or sorbet [is nice for them,]” she says. “Just because you have a dietary restriction, why can’t you have something beautiful?”
She’s singing from the hymn book of all food lovers whose bodies restrict them from having certain foods. And the fact that she has recently — well into her years as a chef — been told she has numerous dietary restrictions herself has helped to make her understand.
“I always take allergies as though they’re anaphylactic,” she says.
Back in the summer — after she was diagnosed with celiac disease and told to avoid a number of other foods, including lactose — she was visiting her family in Saskatchewan and was ordering in a restaurant for the first time since her diagnosis.
It was a trendy little restaurant in Saskatoon and she had to list her restrictions to a server. She didn’t want to be a bother, so she asked what she could eat from the menu. The server asked what she wanted. She asked if she could have potatoes that weren’t done in the deep-fryer, which was not a celiac fryer. (For the record, Fraser Café has a celiac fryer.)
“If I were asked, I would just fry them some potatoes [in a pan], but the server said they couldn’t do that and also said the potatoes were covered in cheese,” Shpyth says. “She also brought me a latte with regular milk when I asked for soy.”
She sent the latte back, but still had a reaction 15 minutes after eating.
“I don’t know if she even told the kitchen,” she says with a grimace. “I don’t normally write reviews, but I did. I was just sad about it. My job is customer service. Without customers, I don’t have a job. So why wouldn’t I put everything I have into making something beautiful for you, so you are happy and excited?”
Making people excited is what makes her come back to work every day. It’s also what’s led her to take on a new challenge: Being the founding chef at a restaurant that’s yet to open. Many chefs took on second jobs in the pandemic as they weren’t getting the 80 to 90 hours they usually get at their busy home bases. Shpyth is no different. As a second job, she’s setting the menu at Astoria. It’ll be casual fine dining at dinner with more casual brunch and lunch.
“I want people to come and know they won’t be affected by possible allergens because there won’t be any,” she says. Again, she goes back to making people happy with what’s on their plates.
Again, she goes back to making people happy with what’s on their plates.
Inspirations and influences
Asked to present edible Ottawa with a dish that represents her on a plate, Shpyth, a pastry chef first and foremost, came up with what she called a “multi-layered dessert Bavarian mousse.”
It’s eight-layers of eye candy with Saskatchewan sour-cherry gel and pistachio powder and a passion fruit rocher (a one-handed quenelle), topped with Maldon sea salt for garnish.
“It’s eight layers because I like to make things complicated for myself,” she says with a laugh.
The top layer is a pistachio sponge, then there’s a pistachio-chocolate crunchy layer — a ganache with toasted pistachios. There’s a dark chocolate mousse — “because I love dark chocolate,” she says — a white chocolate mousse, a passion-fruit cream, caramelized white chocolate mousse, a sour cherry gel with hibiscus and a chocolate sponge layer, which is also gluten-free.
The whole dessert is an homage to French cuisine as she studied at the Cordon Bleu in Ottawa and worked with French chef Todd Clark at Boffins in her native Saskatchewan. Clark worked in a three-Michelin-star French restaurant and taught her almost everything she knows, she says.
“I went to culinary school five days a week and worked for him five evenings a week,” she says. “I wanted to do something French [for this dish] because of him.”
She loves chocolate, her sous-chef at Boffins, who was from Chile, loves hibiscus and Clark loves passion fruit, so she recalled all three of them in this particular dessert. The passion fruit is also a nod to her boss, Ross Fraser, who loves the seedy sour nectar. The pistachio is her favourite nut — “I love the high levels of fat and the flavour and green is my favourite colour.” The white chocolate layer speaks to her culinary school days when she helped out with Gold Medal Plates. Finally, the sour cherries grow in Saskatchewan and she fondly remembers them growing at her grandmother’s house.
“I also really wanted the entire dish to be gluten-free because of my celiac diagnosis,” she says. “It’s been tough to be a chef and be diagnosed. I wanted to make sure I made something I could actually each and enjoy.”
She says it’s important to have a well-rounded dish that hits all the flavour notes and textures — sour, sweet, salty, rich, crunchy and smooth.
Studies: Past and future
Clark went to the Cordon Bleu in France and inspired her to enrol at the Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. And last year, she completed her journeymen’s certification. Before that, she spent two years completing a culinary arts diploma from Saskatchewan Polytechnique.
Ironically, when she first applied to school in Saskatchewan, she didn’t get in. She was heartbroken and realized just how much she wanted to be a chef. Fortunately, two weeks before school started, she got a call saying she’d been accepted from the waiting list.
For Shpyth, pastry is a family affair — her mother stayed at home with her children and did pastry work on the side.
“She taught me the importance of a well-cooked meal every night and she also made dessert for us every single night, which was always amazing,” she says. “I was always in the kitchen with my mom. I was very fortunate that my parents always let me be creative and do what I wanted in the kitchen. If I didn’t have their support, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”
She remembers winging it a lot in the kitchen — never consulting her mom’s recipe books — and usually coming up with something good.
At Boffins, she learned on the job. They did six-course meals once a month with about 90 diners.
“Through that, Todd [Clark] taught me how to do menus and pair wine,” she says.
After her Cordon Bleu studies, she got a job at Fraser Café and worked as a cook for less than a year before becoming sous-chef and then, a few months later, when the chef left, she was asked to be chef de cuisine — at the age of 24.
“I’m still a baby,” she says.
She wanted to work at Fraser because it’s seasonal fine dining, a scratch kitchen and it’s been there for 10 years.
“So it obviously had a group of people who loved it,” she says. “I had a feeling I’d do well here — 95 per cent of the stuff we do from scratch, which taught me a lot. We get whole animals, so I’ve also gotten to refine my butchery skills here, which I love doing. My grandpa was a butcher when my dad was young. He was so excited when I told him I broke down a whole lamb. He said ‘You’re the coolest grandchild I have.’”
Marrying passions
Shpyth’s necessary interest in nutrition, as a result of her digestive problems, is a newer interest and one she hopes to marry with her love of teaching.
Next year, her boyfriend of 10 years wants to go to McGill to study bio-engineering, so she plans to join him in Montreal and complete a degree in food science or nutrition.
“I always knew I wanted to teach,” she says. “When I was young, I used to set my teddy bears up and teach them. And when the pandemic started, I told myself, ‘You want to teach, let’s accelerate that. What are you waiting for?’
She figures she could get a job at a culinary school with her journeymen, but she thinks nutrition is an essential part of food and wants to learn more about it.
“I could load everything with butter and everything would be delicious, but I don’t want you to eat my food and then feel like crap after,” she says. “And with my health problems, I really understand that and the importance of nutrition and a balanced meal.”
As an indication of her love of teaching, she’s taught a number of Fraser cooks about pastry.
“It’s been awesome to see them grow,” she says. “One of the guys here had never made ice cream. He was so receptive to my teaching, which made me happy because that’s what I want to do.”
Inspiration overload
Asked what inspires her to come up with recipes, she says her high school art background has given her an appreciation of colours and textures. She points to the blood sorrel garnish — a petite green leaf prettied up with red veins — on her plate.
“This is very me,” she says. “Everything I do has blood sorrel on it. Coworkers call this the Blood Sorrel Café because I’m obsessed with it.
Just as colours inspire her, so too do ingredients. She finds the page in her notebook from the day edible called to request an interview. She immediately came up with a dish and drew a picture of it, too.
“I start with one cool ingredient or idea,” she says. “I need a colour, a texture… then my brain goes 100 miles a minute. I write my dishes very quickly. As soon as I get inspired, it’s word vomit. Cooking for me has always been an instinct. I feel like if you put too much thought into things, it just doesn’t work out.”
Fraser Café
7 Springfield Rd, Ottawa, Ont.
frasercafe.ca | 613.749.1444 | @frasercafe
