Junior

I get some pictures up soon enough. We have been painting today and dealing with some producers, so yes it's been busy. I did notice something, I spelled the name wrong on the thread title and my first post. When I noticed that I had to check our registration with the provincail government to make sure i hadn't spelled it wrong there, I didn't. Thank God.

Well here goes, even though I don't have a blog, I have you guys. It's a bit wierd talking about this, as this project has been a dream for myself and my wife for such a long time, that it's finally happening is something of a.... relief. For starters, the name... Weczeria... For you Ukrainain or Pole out there, you should be able to pronounce this. It's Ukrainian for supper. Our orignal name did not do with our market survey, so we abandoned it and with the help of a translation site, came up with Weczeria. I'm Ukrainain and Nicole, my wife, is Polish, so we figured this fit us pretty well. Central Saskatchewan is home to many Mennonittes, Poles, and Ukrainain's as our concept is to feature Saskatchewan food as much as possible. In my time here, I have met with many farm families who can grow many things for us. We are getting morel, chantrelle's and pine mushrooms from the north. Fresh fish; walleye, trout, and pike, fiddleheads, & wild rice as well. We also have suppilers for beef, pork, lamb, wild boar, deer, elk, caribou, and many game birds. Summertime will offer up the farmers market with it's many veggie producers. I have about 12 different farms I can get veggies from. We also have a maple syrup producer and one farm just south of us who is growing cantuloupes. So we have lots to pick from, which is great. Anything else we need we'll get from our local organic co-op. As for the menu itself, we are going to try and change every 4-6 weeks or I'll change when I get bored. Lunch has about 10 items on it and our dinner menu is small with 6 appies and 6 mains and 5 desserts. This will keep me busy enough. I'm just finishing the first men's now, I'm just waiting on some professional input. Our renovation is coming along, the dining room is almost finished, we are applying the last coat of paint tonite and I hope to start drywalling the last kitchen wall tommorow. Our stoves aren't expected to arrive until next Wednesday. So I'm hoping for no delays. The basement also needs a good cleanup. The weekend will be our let's see where we are time and to go over any last details we may have missed. So sometime next week, Weczeria will be open for it's first customers. Actually our first customer will be our landlord who owns the antique store in the building. He has been complaining that since the last place closed in November, he's lost 10 #. I'm very lucky to have great landlords who have bent over backwards to help us out in everything we have been doing.

Who is the chef at CinCin and those were great pics. The only thing I have to say is that the picture of the scallops; it looks like there is alot of scallops on the plate. How many scallops were on the plate ?

My wife and I are in the process of opening a new restaurant. We have been cleaning up the mess left by the last tenant. This inculded the coolers and one freezer that was in the corner of the basement. The freezer was packed to the lid with stuff in it, most of it was freezer burnt and unusable. The funny thing was that there was frozen food product that dated back to the late 90's in the bottom. It took about 8 large garbage bags to get everything out.

the recipe is a preserved lemon and olive stuffed chicken and another recipe that calls for them to by themselves. It's good to know the subistute is a dry cured olive.

I have a recipe that calls for using Morccan olives. Can anybody tell me what they are similar to ? Or even what they are ?

Thanks everyone, once we get a little more organized we'll share more info and pictures. It's funny you should mention Canard noir as our chairs came from there. Yes, it's still open but the previous owner of the restaurant we are taking over was also a owner of the Black Duck.

There is one new thing going on here in Saskatoon. My wife and I will be opening a new restaurant on Broadway in (hopefully) 3 weeks. We secured the lease on a small space in the old Wentz lumber yard building which is just off the street. The room seats about 25 people. We are still waiting on the government to register us for our business name. We are in the midst of renovating the room, giving it a new paint job and installing new kitchen equipment. I'll keep everyone posted on what's going on, as we go along. Calories is not moving to downtown Saskatoon until 2007. The restaurant was closed for January while they renovated. They reopened on Feb 1, a week ahead of schedule.

Jamie I haven't seen out our way and we are in the middle of everything in the West. We are the defination of rural. Chris Mills doing a good job at Joey's ?! Sorry, disagree, knowing what he is capable of and what we ate at one in Edmonton 2 weekends ago. Sorry. Everything was medicore. He needs to spend some more time in his kitchens. There has been talk of a Joey's coming here but I hope by that time the food gets better. Saskatoon is blessed with many chain restaurant's, you name it we have one. These places just kill independent restaurant's here. The last place I was at our owner who is a very talented guy from around Nice had us making new menu's every month, working with local producers and keeping it in season. Good solid food. The main complant that we received was that we needed to make our portions bigger and have food more like Earl's !!!! Give me a break. I can count on one hand the number of independent's we have in the city. Our Earl's here was one fo the first to be opened so it's been here forever. Another probelm we have here is the provincial government. If you wanted to open a new restaurant here; their first suggestion is to find a franchise,if you can't do that, buy an existing one, and if all else fails open on your own. The government is more than willing to hand over money to a franschise but as an independent I am at the mercy of the wolves. Case in point our new Eastside Mario's was given an injection of $3 million to help finish the project from the government's venture capital fund. Does someone who does not need that much money get any money form that fund, nope. To small. Eastside Mario's does not even bring in any economic benefit to the city. While a small independent who is working with local farmers and producers brings about alot more benefit than they do. Any kind of chain restaurant to me, just plain sucks.

We purchased the Krups Xp4050 and I will keep you all posted on how well this machine works. When I the time comes, which pretty much means when I have the money we will upgrade to a better machine. For now the amount of espresso drinking going is limited. So thanks for your input.

does anyone own or had any Krups espresso machines ? The one I am looking at is a XP4050. I looked it up on Coffeegeek.com and the 2 reviews were split. So can anyone help ? What also would a comparable machine to this one ? Thanks

I can add about 25 more through ebay and the book club and I have another 6 coming in the mail, so that's another 31 to add to the list.

I worked at the Cafe on Burrard in 97 and 98. I was only there for 6 months as I was going to PICA at the time. The only people I remember where Andreas and Simon the sous chef's, Chef Don and a little Lebanese guy who I can not remember his name off the top of my head. would that be Omar ?

Thanks Neil for the offer of hanger steak lessons, would that be available for vactioning chefs as well I'm sure Cory would be grateful. He has a sort of hit list of places to talk to. Lumiere and West are on the list. When I first came out to Vancouver I spent time at the Moustache Cafe and worked with Andreas there, so I will be pointing Cory in that direction as well. Andreas should be considered in the Unsung thread as well. Any thoughts on what Don Letendre is doing at Exilir ? I'm a little surprised at the Le Croc suggestion but when you have been around as long as him or even Pino that tells you they are doing something right. Thanks for all the help. I'll be passing this along.

Howdy. This is directed to the chefs and kitchen guys in the crowd. My friend Cory is moving to Vancouver in Feb of 06 to live He is currently finishing his Journeymen's paper this week and has been cooking for about 10 years in some of the fine dining places here in Saskatoon. He is looking for work in a high end/fine dining restaurant with a chef who is willing to teach him. I spent a little over a year with him and he is a hard working talented guy. I have a few contacts left in the city and I am reaching out to them, if anyone here can help it would be appreciated.

In Saskatchewan, the provincial government implemented a non smoking ban across the province last July. This past week the government released a statement saying that for the first time in 18 months the province has had a decline in employment. The majority of jobs were in the service sector. I am not sure of the exact numbers either. Also our min. wage is increasing to $7.55 an hour this Janurary. That growing population of young professionals comes from our province. The government is in a battle that they are continually losing due to our successful neighbour to the west. In trying to keep young professionals the government is almost bending over to keep people in 25- 40 age range here, for any reason, no matter what the profession.

We used to go to Trafalgers every sunday for brunch. One of the best little spots in the city. Never been for dinner though. Another place that we frequetened alot was Tangerine.

The montana's here in saskatoon has some food that is good ie ribs and the burgers but other than that everything else is medicore. The other probelm is that the place is expensiove in comparisan to the other chain restaurants that line 8th St. I would not recommend going to Montana's. Ever.

Up until a little while ago Boffin's is/was a private club for people from Innovation Place and the University. So I have been unable to eat there. I don't know exactly when but the restaurant is now open to the public. As for Regina, I do not know much about the new chefs there as I (to be honest) have no reason to go to Regina. Other than Rider games I suppose.

Susur Lee's new book Susur a culinary life is a great new book from a great chef from Toronto. The book itself is unique much like it's author. The book is divided into 2 parts one that tells the story of his career and the second is 60 recipes. The recipes are interesting and are not the usual mish mash from just the restaurant, they follow the path of his career. French/Chinese with a Canadain slant. I would also have to agree about the Michael Schlow book. I bought a copy of it and I have enjoy cooking from it as well. I also have a copy of the new Herbfarm book on order.

I bought mine at the local bookstore. Once or twice a year I usually buy something from there. I usually buy my books from Amazon. They are selling it for $42.00. No matter what the cost it's worth it and the wait from the library.

I bought the book 2 days ago and I haven't put it down. The book itself is unique as is Susur. the first part of the book is a history of Susur's rise to culinary fame. The seond part is about 60 recipes. These recipes can be found throughout the first book's story as how Susur evolved as a cook. There is lots of great photography throughout the book, which makes me feel better about the $60 price tag. I would recommend this book to any cook to learn more about this great chef and to expand your knowledge of French/Chinese cooking.

John Mariani has selected Cryus chef Douglas Keane as his chef of the year in the latest issue of Esquire.

Ray Henry is without a doubt one of the best chef's I've ever worked for and to this day he is the only chef, I call chef. To read Ms. Gill's review, I think to myself; she was maybe somewhere else and/or mixed up her notes. This is not the chef that I spent time with. This is a guy that bends over backwards to please all of the guests who walk through the door of the restaurant. He instilled in every cook that was in the brigade that we had to cook with excellance all the time. He also made sure that he spent time with each of us making sure that we could produce his expectations. He taught, he cooked, and he showed us passion for the profession.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was held at my wife's grandparents farm about 3 hours northeast of Saskatoon. We did not have all the usaul accompaniments because it was the grandparents 50th wedding anniversery. My wife's family planned a big evening of dinner, song, videos, and general entertainment for the grandparents and a 100 close friends. The majority of our meal came from surrounding commuties and there repective gardens and one cow. We prepared Roast Beef (50# worth), a fall vegetable medley (celery root, rutabaga, yukon gold potato, russet potato, red yams, carrots, and butternut squash), cabbage rolls, peroigies, 3 different salads, homemade buns and horseradish, gravy, and several desserts inculding a wedding cake that my wife made that was the same as the one they had when they were married. We also found the original man and wife plastic figure. Last night we some leftover beef with mashed potato, more gravy, veggies (what we could find in the garden), stuffing, cranberry's, some grilled lamb shank and shoulder(that had been marinated for about 4 days in a mix with garlic, onions, and some other stuff that Baba wouldn't divulge to me.) This dish was called Shislakeah, I think I spelled that wrong but it is a Polish tradition from this time of the year. More cake and more cake. Lots of wine and beer, of course over the weekend. Just before we left central Saskatchewan had a few days of low temp's and rain but when we came home today, the weather had turned nice enough to see that the farmers were back to harvesting. Nearly every field we passed had combines running or they were swathing the field getting them ready to combine. The news is reporting we as a province are to have a record year for the harvest. Which for once is good news for the guys in the fields.