No stranger to cooking competitions, Cree chef Shane Chartrand says Top Chef Canada is the real deal
CBC
The new season of Top Chef Canada is launching later this month and for one Cree chef being asked to compete was "a dream come true."
Shane Chartrand from Enoch Cree Nation near Edmonton is no stranger to cooking competition shows, having been on Chopped Canada and Iron Chef Canada, but says Top Chef Canada is "the real deal."
"If you think you can do a show like this, be prepared," said Chartrand.
"Being a great cook is obviously why we're chosen … you've got to have the grit, [and] confidence."
Chartrand, the fifth Indigenous chef to compete on the show, said he wants to showcase as much of his Cree culture as he can.
"The past 12 years I've been working very hard at trying to extend what Indigenous culinary arts is in the celebratory way, in the spiritual way and … on the plate," said Chartrand.
"I thought it was really important to be able to bring all those touchstones of information to national TV because there's a lot of people who don't understand who we are."
Chartrand is the executive chef at Nehiyaw Cuisine, and in 2019 he published his first cookbook, tawâw: Progressive Indigenous Cuisine.
One person that knows just how grueling Top Chef Canada can be is Tawnya Brant, a Mohawk chef from Six Nations of the Grand River near Hamilton.
She said when she competed on season 10, she initially thought her time on the show would be the relaxing break she needed after having just opened her restaurant Yawékon Foods months before.
"Top Chef is the hardest television show to do, because you don't know what you're doing," said Brant.
"A lot of the other cooking competition shows, they already know what they're doing, it's just a matter of executing in a certain amount of time."
She said she was ecstatic when she found out Chartrand was competing this season.
"Honestly there's two chefs in Canada, maybe three, that I was like 'They need to go on this show; why haven't they yet?' And Shane is one of them," said Brant.
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