Home-grown chef serves up his own style at national competition.

Whichever distance you consider greater — a weekend air and bus odyssey from Halifax to Whistler, B.C., and back, or the figurative journey from a cot by a furnace to a suite at the Hilton — that’s how far Ray Bear has travelled.

Before dawn on the morning after the Canadian Culinary Championship ended last weekend in Whistler, where Bear finished fourth, he was on his way back to gio, the nine-month-old restaurant at the Prince George hotel that he created and that has redefined fine dining in Halifax.

Bear, a 34-year-old father of three, was just four when he knew he wanted to be a chef. Inspired by watching his grandfather cook, he got his first paying job in a kitchen at 13 and left Lower Sackville for Toronto two years later.

"My family knew that I was ready to go out on my own," Bear said. "I was pretty fearless and ready to make a move. It took a long time to turn out well, but it did."

Bear left for Toronto at the same time as an older sister, and they lived in a basement apartment with 14 other people.

"I lived in the laundry/furnace room and slept on a cot and got a job at a Red Lobster, basically peeling shrimp, then working on their line," he said.

"I talked to all the chefs who worked there and they were pretty fast to let me know that this was the way you got started."

Bear spent a year in Toronto before returning to Nova Scotia and beginning his climb up the kitchen hierarchy, working with, and being influenced by, local chefs like Unni Simensen and Stephen Hueston, all the while refining the way he prepared food. An eight-year stint at Sweet Basil was both a job and a one-man seminar.

"Definitely I was using someone else’s restaurant as a training ground for myself," Bear said. "I was cutting my teeth there and really starting to develop my own style."

When the chance came to become part of the staff at the Prince George, Bear found himself back at the bottom of the ladder again, but not for long. In less than 18 months, he was running the kitchen and assembling his own team.

For the ambitious Bear, then still just 26 but already with more than a decade in the business, the status quo wasn’t satisfactory for long, and soon he began floating his idea for a top-end restaurant as part of the hotel. Years of persistence paid off last spring, when the eatery called Giorgio’s was closed and the space gutted. Months later, Bear’s spectacular vision, gio, was unveiled and became an immediate hit. Menu items like duck breast dusted with mace and a duck leg confit or beef tenderloin with veal demi and truffle vinaigrette, combined with Bear’s spectacular plating skills, gave fans of fine dining a wonderful new option.

"I’d been begging them for a restaurant for years but, to be honest, I’m glad it didn’t happen before it did because I probably wouldn’t have been ready for it," he said. "But now I have so much knowledge and so many things that I want to try, it’s just a matter of perfecting it and getting it out to the public.

"The reaction has been a little bit better than I thought it would. I expected it to be positive because we’ve always had positive comments about our food, and I knew this was a step up, but gio has gotten more exposure than I thought it would."

All of which gave Bear considerable momentum for Gold Medal Plates, a combination chef’s competition/fundraiser for Olympic athletes held in Halifax last October. His treatment of a Kobe beef short rib earned perfect marks from some judges and qualified Bear for the Canadian championship.

At Whistler, seven chefs from across Canada took part in three competitions: a black box, a wine pairing and a gala.For the black box, in which the chefs didn’t know the ingredients they’d be cooking with until the competition began, each was given 16 scallops, venison flanks, bell peppers, quinces and dulse, plus access to a common pantry. Starting in 10-minute intervals, they had an hour to declare two recipes and prepare eight servings of each, using all the ingredients. It was an intense, chaotic morning, with chefs dodging camera crews and spectators, bumping into each other and running from the range to their work stations.

Bear drew the final starting time, and though the chefs were sequestered until it was their turn to enter the kitchen, he guessed from the round marks on the pans being brought out for cleaning that scallops were one of the ingredients he’d be working with.

"It gave me more time to think about what I had," said Bear, who was very pleased when he opened his box and knew he’d guessed correctly. "That was beautiful, that made me feel at home. I thought I’d get some weird crab or some crustacean, being on the West Coast, and when I saw scallops, I thought, ‘I’m in my element.’ "

Though the judges had tasted 12 dishes before Bear presented them with scallop ceviche and brined and seared venison with fondant potato, carrot puree and butter poached celery, his work impressed the panel enough that he placed second in the category.

"Doing ceviche was risky, very risky, because you don’t know if your judges are educated or not," Bear said. "But it’s better than a seared scallop, it’s pretty beautiful, and ceviche represents my style."

He said one spectator asked him as he quickly plated the dishes if the sauce he was spreading was supposed to represent something.  "Yes, it’s the symbol for ‘hurry,’ " he said, drawing a laugh from the room.

When the chefs first arrived in Whistler, they were given a bottle of wine with no label. After tasting the wine, they had a day to create a dish that best complemented it and prepare 60 portions while spending not more than $300. Bear’s two lamb preparations drew raves from the public but only a fifth-place mark from the judging panel.

At that night’s gala, in which each chef prepared whatever he wanted in order to show off his skills, Bear’s scallop and Kobe short rib presentation left him right in the middle of the pack in fourth place. He was also fourth overall, less than two percentage points from being on the podium. Mark McEwan, the host of Heat on Food Network and the owner of three Toronto restaurants, finished third in Whistler and made it a point to taste everything Bear prepared during the weekend.

"His food is all very, very flavourful," said McEwan, who was followed every waking moment by his own camera crew.  

"Ray has a real interest, so he’s always pushing the envelope and learning new techniques.
"I first met Ray a couple of years ago, when the Fountains brought me out to Halifax to do a wine dinner for 55 in their home. Ray just walked up the driveway and volunteered his services. A great guy, and I didn’t know at the time that he was as accomplished a chef as he is. It was great to work with him, because he’s a real technician."

Arriving back in Halifax, Bear resumed work on two lines of sauces he will launch soon, one in New York and one in Toronto. There’s also consulting work available to him.

"But you can’t spread yourself too thin, or you won’t do any of the jobs well," he said. "And really, the Prince George and gio is my main focus. I’ve put almost eight years into the place and that’s what I care about." 

Ray Bear’s scallop ceviche with pickled vegetable salad with a garnish of pickled onion and quince on a lime and black pepper sauvignon sauce took second place in the black box competition at the Canadian Culinary Championship.
ANTON FERCHER / Gold Medal Plates 

( bspurr@herald.ca)
Bill Spurr was a judge at the recent Canadian Culinary Championship. 
His trip to Whistler, B.C. was courtesy of Gold Medal Plates.