He wears the white hat: Dal chef wins national competition

Mike Silvester hasn’t had much time to celebrate his big win at Aramark’s national chef’s competition last month: he’s still got lots of hungry students to feed.

Chef Silvester is executive chef for Dalhousie's main food services provider on the Halifax campuses. Every day, his work helps keep thousands of students going with healthy, hearty meals in the four Halifax dining halls. Since joining Dal two years ago, his passion for food that’s local, sustainable, and nutritional has had a big impact on campus’ offerings.

Winning the 2015 Aramark Chef Competition is, in many ways, like a natural next step from what Silvester was already doing here at Dal.

A focus on local, sustainable food

The competition featured the Aramark’s top chefs across its various divisions (universities, corporate, catering and more). Chefs were invited to take part first via a menu submission contest requiring the use of Canadian pulses (legumes, peas, lentils, and beans) and sustainable fish — two things that Silvester loves to use already.

“I have a passion for legumes,” he says. “I love cooking them. I love the versatility. I love them because they provide a lot of the essential amino acids that meat does, but sustainably.” With Canadian farmers now growing more and more pulses, Silvester sees this as something to take advantage of.

Silvester is a big advocate for fish as well. Dalhousie is at the forefront of the sustainable seafood movement, having recently become the second Canadian university to be granted the Marine Stewardship Council Chain of Custody certification. Dal is also a partner in the Ecology Action Centre’s “Off the Hook” program. “For me as a chef,” he says, “it’s a phenomenal opportunity to start using local fish, and honestly using local fish.”

Silvester’s entry into the menu submission contest landed him a spot as a finalist. The next step was to compete with seven of his peers at the “Mission Impulseible” event in Toronto. The chefs had to reproduce their recipes, but with the added component of a black box competition, sort of like what you see on TV shows like Chopped.

This black box contained sustainable organic foods from a 100 km radius. While this meant produce local to Ontario in particular, Silvester is well versed in using local produce in the Nova Scotian context. “Thirty per cent of our produce now is bought locally, seasonally,” he says. “[That] doesn’t sound like a lot but when you look at the volume we do use, feeding four to five thousand students a day, it adds up.”

Nutritious offerings

There was also a nutritional component to the competition. “That’s the kind of food I love to eat, you know, that’s what I feed my family,” Silvester says, speaking to healthy food options. “I look at what [students] eat and I think, ‘Can I do better? Can I help them make better choices?’"

So what was his creation? It was seared bacon and leek crusted cod, with white bean cake, spinach and brown sugar pears. That main course was then paired with a dessert of warm lentil chocolate cake with vanilla bean whipped cream.

As winner of the Aramark competition, Silvester gets to take a trip to Napa Valley for the World of Flavours conference at the Culinary Institute of America next month.

“As a chef, how could you not want to go,” Silvester says. “Everyone’s like-minded, and they’re all talking the same language, about food and their passion for food. So I’m really excited.”