Northern chefs credited for local ingredients in Globe and Mail's list of Canada's next kitchen stars

Eduardo Delascio Burafah, the executive chef of Iqaluit's Discovery Hotel and Tammattaavik Boarding Home, is incorporating country foods into his cooking and keeping money in the traditional economy.

This includes working with local hunters and fishers to offer dishes like caribou and Arctic char.   

Burafah was highlighted in the Globe and Mail as one the country's next star chefs. It identified one chef in each province and territory.

Burafah, who grew up in Brazil, learned to cook early from his Italian and Lebanese family. 

Although cooking was always a passion, he first worked as a lawyer before moving to Canada to follow his dream of working in the kitchen. He went to culinary school and worked in restaurants in Montreal, before taking a job as a sous chef in Iqaluit in 2017. 

It was here that he learned the importance of traditional foods, including in 2018, when a local hunter showed him how to clean a caribou. 

"I will never forget that experience," he said. 

Burafah said traditional country foods were something both tourists and locals, especially elders, appreciated. 

Some of the partnerships Burafah engaged in includes Project Nunavut, an organization that aims to support projects that improve the traditional economy. 

He said this got him involved with Lake to Plate, where he buys local fish like Arctic char. 

Burafah also partnered with Nunavut Country Food, a butcher shop that sells local products like muktaaq, caribou and seal. 

He said a benefit to these programs is the low environmental impact that comes from supporting small scale harvesting. 

For the N.W.T., the Globe and Mail credited local Yellowknife resident and chef of the Sundog Trading Post, Calvin Rossouw. 

Rossouw, 27, said he was excited by the news.