'My Food Finally Feels Like Mine'
As chef Razmon Poisson is plating The Dish for edible Ottawa, he seems purposeful, laser-focused, intent on creating the dish he envisioned — something that represents him on a plate. Then he breaks his concentration, looks up, smiles and admits “I have no idea what I’m doing here, but that’s the best way, right?”
Rising to the challenge of doing something that sums up his culinary career, he came up with an elaborately garnished piece of duck breast, served over a smoked parsnip and vanilla purée and accompanied by farro, toasted and fried to produce a granola-like effect. Also tossed into the granola are black currants, sea salt, oil and lemon juice. He then carefully surrounded the duck with pieces of parsnip skin he’d pulled off the root vegetable and then fried, and he scattered some pieces of fresh maitake mushrooms around the duck, while dotting the plate with borage flowers, microgreens and bone marrow “snow.” The latter he makes by roasting bone marrow and combining the leftover fat with maltodextrin to make a powder.
“I think duck breast was the first protein I was ever allowed to touch,” Poisson says. “Duck is something I've always loved. It’s just a really cool protein that takes Asian flavours well. Every year, around this time, I gravitate back to it. That represents my journey of starting to learn how to cook.”
The parsnip also speaks to his career so far in that he used the entire vegetable in the dish.
“Using every little element of a vegetable, or any kind of product, is very important to me,” he says. “And finding cooler ways to kind of differentiate them is a lot of fun. It’s something I enjoy daydreaming about.”
The kitchen as classroom
At the age of 16, Poisson started working as a dishwasher at The Works Burger Factory in Westboro, then worked his way up to the head office location on Bank Street. He would watch the chefs — and soak up whatever learning he could — while washing dishes. Soon he was allowed to do some prep work in the kitchen.
He quickly became obsessed with the idea of cooking, which extended to watching the Food Network in his spare time.
“Every Monday, I’d have a few friends over and I’d prep a whole meal I saw on some TV show or something I read in a book,” he says. “I was constantly reading cookbooks, I was going out to eat, but studying what I was eating. I was kind of consumed by it.”
He soon moved to Oz Kafé, where he started learning from chef Jamie Stunt.
“He kind of cut my teeth and showed me how fun food can actually be,” Poisson says of one of his two mentors. “He's very energetic and playful and his passion is insane.”
After a few years, he found himself thinking a lot about fine dining and wanted to “throw myself into the fire” so he went to work at Navarra, chef René Rodriguez’s upscale restaurant, which served Spanish- and Mexican-influenced dishes. Rodriguez won Top Chef Canada when he owned Navarra so the restaurant had some acclaim for its well-crafted and wildly inventive dishes.
“I went to Navarra and got my ass kicked for seven years,” Poisson says with a laugh. “René’s creativity and inspiration come from all different places so the menu changed often. He’d just throw me a piece of fish and said ‘do something with that. It’s going on the menu for the next week. If I like it, I’ll buy you another piece of fish.’”
Poisson says Rodriguez knew his young cook he could do it, but regularly pushed him beyond his comfort zone.
“It was kind of cool and kind of terrifying at the same time,” he admits. “But it started to get me to adapt to situations and then it became a lot of fun. I think anything that will come out as an amazing accomplishment in your life should be pretty terrifying at first, don’t you?”
Rodriguez asked Poisson to join him when he competed on Iron Chef Canada in Battle Cauliflower against Iron Chef Amanda Cohen. The Rodriguez team lost by just two points.
“She somehow pulled off a cauliflower cake and it was one of the judge’s birthdays,” Poisson says. “I mean, c’mon.”
Influences
Poisson is an imposing figure. Covered in tattoos, he’s six-foot- four-inches tall — so tall he has to crouch a bit to cook under the range hood at Jabberwocky and Union Local 613 where he is now the executive chef. He says Rodriguez and Stunt have been his two biggest influences so far.
“When I was teenager working for Jamie, I’d watch the Food Network at home and I told myself by the time I was 30, I was going to go on Iron Chef Canada. Sure enough, I was.”
Poisson says he was always into cooking. His mother is Malaysian and his father is Czech and his comfort foods all come from his great-grandmother’s Chinese heritage.
“If I really want to think about home food, it’s a pot of ginger chicken,” he says.
Sober thoughts
At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Poisson quit drinking cold turkey. Life for all in the restaurant business was uncertain and devastating and, as he puts it, he found his solace at the end of a bottle. He snapped out of it and has been sober for two years now. Returning to the kitchen was one challenging aspect of his recovery.
“I was a little skeptical at first,” he says. “There’s a lot of elements going back to the kitchen, knowing you have to have this new profound self-control and being around all of your old habits and friends.
“The first month was an adjustment,” he says. “I wasn’t sure of the can’ts and can-dos. I asked myself, ‘Should I sit at the bar and have a soda water? It’s probably not a good idea, but can I?’
“Now, it’s not a problem. I’m super comfortable and my health issues have healed completely and I’m rediscovering my passion [for cooking] again in a different light. I’m kind of lucky in that sense — and I’m lucky to be alive.”
He was having blood work to monitor his kidneys and liver regularly until recently when he got a clean bill of health and was told he was “in the clear” and no longer had to see a specialist. It was the same day he took a small piece of ownership in the Union Local 613-Jabberwocky restaurant group. “So that was a good day for me.”
Now after work, he goes home and takes his pitbull King for a walk.
“My focused shifted,” he says. “It’s all about the dog and taking him for walks to make sure he’s happy. He pulled me through a very tough time.
Short stints
Between Navarra and Jabberwocky, Poisson had a few other gigs. He worked for Dish Catering and was working at Essence Catering when Rodriguez approached him to join the opening kitchen team at Orto, a now-closed Italian restaurant in the Glebe.
“When we were on the plane ride back from Iron Chef, he then told me I was now the main chef at Orto,” he says. “It was like a little nod to say, ‘You’re ready, kid.’”
Poisson was there for a year, during which time he competed in the Great Canadian Kitchen Party then he made the difficult decision to leave and take some time to think about what he wanted to do next. He helped out at Das Lokal briefly and then COVID hit. At that time, he co-opened a ghost kitchen where he produced a tasting menu once a week.
That was when his drinking caught up with him and he ended up in hospital and then bed-ridden for 18 months. That gave him time to think about what he really wanted to do.
“I think everyone thought about their careers and had time to catch up on perspective,” he says.
The other thing that COVID wrought was a change in kitchens, he says. Culinary teams are now more understanding and considerate to the people “on our left and our right,” he says.
Jabberwocky’s jam
Jabberwocky — the bright, welcoming space upstairs from Union Local 613 — has a new menu every week, which is a challenge for any chef, especially one who’s also running the show for the Southern-inspired restaurant downstairs and its lower-level speakeasy.
“I try to think about what kind of flavours I want right now,” he says. “There’s always the structure — something crunchy, sweet, salty, hot, spicy. I try to be incredibly playful. My food now is more of an expression of who I am. I feel like it’s really well received and it just finally feels like mine.”
Poisson says his main goal is to share what he feels passionate about that week, and that will change depending on what kind of food he dreams up. Weather, available ingredients and seasons also play into it, of course.
“Most of all, I just want our guests to have a unique dining experience with something they may not expect upon return,” he says.
Jabberwocky Supper Club
315 Somerset St. W., Ottawa
613.231.1010 | jabberwockysupperclub.ca | @jabberwockysupperclub
