Where Food Meets Art
Food and art have long intersected. From food being used as the materials for early cave art, to the sumptuous still life paintings of the Renaissance and today’s food photography — seen in high-end galleries and on the 'gram — food has been a tool, a model and a muse. There are obvious parallels between art and cuisine: Chefs, like artists, are highly creative and work in an industry that places importance on visual effects. Food is also, of course, necessary fuel. Much has been written about the quirky eating habits of celebrated artists and their favourite haunts. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf famously wrote “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” The right sustenance and spaces can spark creativity and spur the imagination. The capital region is rife with artful food. From the Valley to the city centre, there are plenty of places where folks can nourish their minds and their bellies.
North Market
The space at North Market on Almonte’s busy Mill Street is still receiving its finishing touches, but it is already visually striking. Floor-to-ceiling windows let natural light flood into the café and a 14-foot live-edge table — with markings carved by the Emerald ash borer beetle responsible for downing the tree in the first place — stands on welded chain legs that were salvaged from the river. “It’s an incredibly local piece,” explains Amanda Sears, who owns North Market café and catering with her husband, Rick Herrera.
The couple actually met for the first time many years ago on the street just outside the building that now houses their business. Art brought them both to Almonte — Sears to work in stone carving and at a bronze foundry and Herrera to open a design studio. Working in the arts in a town the size of Almonte, it didn’t take long for them to meet. Sears jokes that she started hosting concerts and shows just so Herrera and his design partner could make the posters. They both worked in the food industry to supplement their artist incomes — Herrera as a dishwasher at Café Postino, a popular Italian café, before joining Sears who worked at Heirloom, another well-known spot just down the street. Eventually, he began bartending at Union 613 in Ottawa while she worked on growing her own catering business, North Market. For the last three summers, the pair has served up breakfasts along with changing market-fresh dishes (such as their pad thai, a crowd favourite) and sold homemade preserves and baked goods at the Almonte Farmers’ Market. This past summer, a prime location, previously the Palms coffee shop, on Almonte’s main drag became available and the pair couldn’t pass it up.
While the Palms coffee shop always had lots of rotating art on the walls, the new owners knew they wanted to do things a little differently. “With both of us having an art background, we’re of the belief that cafés aren’t necessarily the best place for art. I would prefer to see artists’ hanging their work in galleries,” Sears says, noting that busy baristas can’t be expected to help sell art and to know the background or philosophy of an artist and their work. It was important to Sears and Herrera, who collect art themselves (“very small pieces” Sears jokingly clarifies), to invest in permanent pieces for the large bare walls in the café. They commissioned a large painting from local artist Lily Swain, a mixed media piece of a majestic owl that seems to be keeping an eye on the room.
On the opposite wall is a mural painted by Stefan Thompson over four days in August. Herrera and Sears own two of Thompson’s paintings and knew as soon as they acquired their own space that they wanted his art there, too. Their values also align, Sears explained. Their vision for North Market was to keep everything as natural and local as possible and Thompson makes all of his own art materials and focuses on sustainability in art as well as his everyday life. He describes his work as “continuing experiments with extreme limitation,” he doesn’t buy anything from the art store at this point. “Local, sustainable, nontoxic, recycled. The challenge I’ve accepted is to try and make a living while keeping my ecological footprint very small.”
Thompson’s mural seems to weave together animal and humanlike figures and is made with natural hand-collected pigments he processed at his home in Wakefield. “Basically it’s dirt, iron-rich clays and burnt stuff (carbon)," he says. Thompson also used recycled textiles and organic wheat to paste them to the wall with eggs from his neighbours acting as the binder.
“The hardest decision,” Sears confesses, “was deciding whether or not to put it on the wall or put it on something we could take with us someday.” In the end, Thompson’s mural went directly onto the wall; “it felt like it was something we were doing for our guests, by making it part of the space, which I really like,” Sears says. Because of its natural ingredients, the mural won’t last forever. Herrera says he knows it will eventually deteriorate but, “it’s got a few hundred years.”
Herrera and Sears are so busy with North Market that they don’t have time for their previous artistic endeavours. And while they're reluctant to label their offerings at North Market as art, Sears says this work is her outlet now; she considers composition, contrasts, texture and adds that she’s especially drawn to the heirloom varieties of vegetables because of their colours and patterns. “When people ask me if I’m still making art, I say yes — every single day in my kitchen,” she says with a laugh.
Thompson’s mural ended up being a larger than he anticipated. Inspired by how hard he saw Herrera and Sears working and the similarity of their principles, he almost filled the whole wall with his painting. As for the connection between art and food, Thompson believes any creation is a reflection of its maker, in one way or another.
“I find painting to be a meditation, a reflection of where I am at the place and time of the creation,” he says, “and for those who can see, it probably contains everything you could know about me. Perhaps one can glean as much information from another's cooking.”
North Market Café + Catering
78 Mill St., Almonte, Ont.
northmarketalmonte.com | 613.256.2676 | @northmarket.almonte
The Art House Café
There’s a touch of serendipity in the story behind The Art House Café. Joe Beaton, one of the café’s owners, had walked by the Victorian building in disrepair at 555 Somerset St., W. about a decade ago and had an idea for a place that would serve coffee and act as an arts hub. He made a small business plan for it and put it in the “for-many-years-later pile.”
Fast forward many years and Beaton was in a position to pursue the business he had once contemplated. Admitting that he didn’t know “anything about art,” Beaton was introduced to Geneviève Bétournay who would become his partner in this venture.
“It was a pretty lucky meeting,” according to Bétournay. She's represented artists and run pop-up art shops, and he had the business plan and experience in the restaurant industry. They met early in the summer of 2016 and found that their skill sets were the perfect fit.
After spending the summer looking for the right space in Centretown, Beaton assumed it was too good to be true to see a tiny sign indicating that there was commercial space for lease at 555 Somerset. The new landlord was looking for a business that would be community focused; and the pair knew their plan could deliver on that front.
Almost two years after opening, the place now bustles by day with folks grabbing coffee and working on sketchpads or laptops and fills at night for a multitude of events. From music, to pottery and poetry, the calendar at The Art House is varied and full. It’s home to regular meetings for groups such as Artawa.
Founded by Brad Nox and Kina Forney, Artawa aims to build a non-exclusive community of artists in the National Capital Region. Nox notes that a common problem for artists is being so busy trying to create, that it’s easy to miss out on valuable real life connections. “Face time is important and a necessary component in building trust in each other and a community,” he says. The group is aiming for quarterly shows and has one opening at The Art House in November called “Artawa: Our Ottawa,” showcasing works that celebrate the city.
He describes Artawa’s relationship with Art House as symbiotic: As the group met over many Sundays it “became less of an Art House and more of our Art Home,” he says. An important factor in their enjoyment of the space? The food. It “goes a long, long way when you’re there for a few hours together and creating.”
Athena De Rainville is the general manager of the café is responsible for building the expanding menu. Based mostly on customer feedback, she's learned there's a desire for more vegan and gluten-free items, decadent desserts, heartier breakfasts and a cocktail list for the evenings. The kitchen is small at Art House — everything on the menu must be made using a single induction burner and toaster oven. That means offerings are simple, but delicious, with a focus on seasonal produce, such as the Fancy Grilled Cheese (a choice of double-cream brie or old cheddar with apples and onions).
Like North Market, The Art House has a remarkable mural — a piece that covers almost the entire eastern wall of the brick building by Julian Garner, a well-known artist and tattoo artist in the city. Inside, the walls of Art House are typically covered in up to 200 pieces of art. Everything is for sale and Beaton points out that there is something for everyone with the diversity of art displayed and the wide price range. Whether you’re a student looking to decorate your room or someone who is able to invest a little more, you may find your new favourite piece.
While galleries can feel intimidating to some, Bétournay's happy that The Art House can feel more common and comfortable for the general public. “People don’t realize what they’re stepping in to and they come for a coffee, but then they fall in love with a piece [of art] or the energy. It’s that kind of duality that I think is really nice.”
The Art House Café
555 Somerset St., W., Ottawa, Ont.
thearthousecafe.ca | 613.501.9242 | @arthousecafe613
Jackson
The new Ottawa Art Gallery’s restaurant, Jackson, is all about clean lines, muted tones and brushed metallics. There are comfy couches to lounge in and crystals decorate the crisp white bar top. Because the restaurant flows into the gallery, Caroline Gosselin says it’s all about celebrating the arts.
The restaurateur who has co-created restaurants E18hteen, Sidedoor and The Clarendon Tavern in the ByWard Market teamed up with Chef John Leung for this newest venture. Both veterans in the Ottawa dining scene, the two first worked together more than 15 years ago at E18hteen and have been friends and co-workers ever since. When the gallery put out a request for proposal for its restaurant space, Gosselin and Leung knew they had to go for it. Having spent what she describes as her “past life” working in galleries and painting in Europe, Gosselin is realizing a dream of hers with Jackson. “It’s always been my wish to a do a restaurant within a gallery space.”
Named for the renowned Group of Seven artist, A.Y. Jackson, and by virtue of its location, it’s easy to see the art influences in the space. But beyond the physical, Leung wanted the connection between food and art to carry to his menu. Taking inspiration from colour palettes and textures found in the gallery or even a tidbit about an artist’s favourite ingredient as a starting point, Leung plans to offer unique dishes to go with featured exhibits.
Along with the artistic influences, the menu has a direction of its own. With a focus on plant-based cuisine, ayurvedic practices, and locally sourced ingredients, Leung and Gosselin want diners to enjoy a healthy menu in a luxurious setting. Drawing on her training as a yoga teacher (she was teaching free classes on the OAG rooftop this past summer), Gosselin is sincerely tapping into the zeitgeist of wellness, too. “By nourishing ourselves, we feel better, we’re going to be kinder to others, to our environment… it just starts this spiral,” she says. The feminine touches in the decor by interior design firm West of Main are also reflected in the delicate nature of the menu. “It’s a theme that runs throughout,” explains Gosselin, “light, airy, healthy.”
On the drinks side, bar manager Jonah McPherson has created signature cocktails inspired by and named for art pieces in the gallery. There are libations such as the Spring Song, a refresher with celery juice and basil essential oil, and the Oracle, a Negroni-like drink with a splash of bubbly and elderflower liqueur. Adventurous drinkers can order a “blank canvas” and let the bartender design a custom cocktail.
With a space that feels simultaneously casual and elegant, Jackson has already become a busy spot for a coffee after browsing the gallery or a destination for a special occasion. Like the artwork in the gallery, Leung’s artistic approach in the kitchen creates a lot of conversation at the table. And though she still finds time to paint occasionally, Gosselin finds fulfillment in creating these spaces, where she can play with the synergy between food and the aesthetic elements of the space.
Leung chuckles, “I like to believe we’re creative people… we become more creative with a bottle of wine, of course,” he adds. Glass of wine or not, it’s easy to see how creative impulses could strike at Jackson, surrounded by artistic influences in everything from paintings to platings.
Jackson Café (at Ottawa Art Gallery)
10 Daly Ave., Ottawa, Ont.
jacksonottawa.com | 613.680.5225 | @jacksonottawa
