Chef Tawfik Part 1
My name is Tawfik Shehata. I’m the Executive Chef at Vertical Restaurant.
Food is very important for us. Everyone in my family, men and women, cooked. My father is a great cook. My uncle is a great cook. My mother and all my aunts, everyone was a great cook. We always had home cooked meals and never ever fast food, never—it was a treat for us if my mom got KFC for us or even more relatively Mc Donald’s. We never ever had that. It was always home cooked meals.
Every day of the week, we always had hot meal on a salad. Everyday we had breakfast. the other Saturday, Sunday that my mom or my dad will prepare. So, and it did definitely influence me of taking interest in cooking because I learned an appreciation for food and I learned to—. My mom went shopping all the time so we always had fresh produce, fresh meats. There was very little in our freezer and never ice cream. Once in a blue moon maybe ice cream but my mom always went shopping. We always had fresh food on the table.
So it gave me an appreciation for buying fresh and also with when local things were in season, mom used to have still making her jams and her marmalades and things like that. So it made me understand that just because things are around all year long that they’re not actually in season. I mean even more so now than it was 20 years ago. Things are available all year round now which is a shame but back in the old when the orange will come in and my mom would go and buy bushels and begin to make her marmalade and until your strawberries come in, she goes out and buy strawberries to make her jam. So it made me understand the importance of the seasons and food.
I’ve probably spent a lot of time with my mom in the kitchen at around 13 or 14 years old, I was always around and choose doing and trying to help and I tried probably around on 15, I would cook family dinners. Some of them were quite disastrous but my family always took it and just tried and smiled and said it was really good and I know it wasn’t. Now I know it wasn’t and I would destroy the kitchen in the process trying to get everything ready on time.
I worked at a place in Scarborough as a dishwasher. It was a little pizza place and it was called Fluffy’s Pizza and Pasta and it was in Scarborough. And I started as a dishwasher there and then I just showed interest in the line and what they were doing and they move me on to pizza cook and I became a sort of big 17-year-old Kids titles but served like a kitchen manager position who is just man there. You were the one who showed up all the time.
I think that’s a two fold answer. One, I love food and even if I hadn’t taken this root and become a chef I would be doing something food related, somehow I don’t know what it would be but I would certainly be doing something food related and two.
After high school I didn’t know what I want to do and cooking was a good way not to go to the University so I did go to the Cordon Bleu in Ottawa for cooking and I went to George Brown later on Apprenticeship Program but it was way not to have school at a university and I tried my hand at Colton in Ottawa and I drop out by Christmas of the first year so it was just wasn’t for me.
It was kind of forced by my parents. Both my parents had an education background. My mother was a teacher and my father was the secretary to the Ministry of Education in Egypt so school does always say a very big deal to them and they were fine more so my mom than my dad for me becoming a cook but if I was going to, I had to go to school as well. So it was cooking school or university and I chose cooking school.
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