My thoughts on food and drink
People often ask me what my specialty dish is. It’s a hard question to answer because I’m quite diverse in what I like to eat and make. Having grown up in a Toronto, it’s hard to say what flavour profile or cuisine stands out to me most. It may be penne in a perfectly acidic tomato sauce one day, soy-braised eggs that errs on the sweeter side with some rice and furikake the next, and slurpy noodles in a pho-spiced chicken broth on Friday. What I prefer to eat or make any given day or time totally depends on my mood or what’s going on that day.
I suppose my relationship to eating has been this way since I discovered the extremely diverse and accessible multicultural food culture of Toronto in my early twenties. But it also goes further back to my childhood when, due to some combination of necessity and convenience, mama Chu would crack open a few cans of Chef Boyardee, and voila, dinner was served.
I personally love a good chocolate chip cookie, which is so obviously perfectly crispy around the edges with a slightly chewy centre. Nowadays when I eat out, I enjoy moments that transport me to a simpler time—food that evoke smells, tastes, textures, and feelings of being a younger me. I especially like it when these dishes tell me a story about Toronto, one that both resonates and challenges my expectations about a specific dish. I like creative takes on nostalgic food.
I like dishes that unfold in layers while you’re eating it and continue to evolve long after you’re finished eating. I aspire to make dishes and create menus that do exactly that. When I make food, I’m methodical and process-driven. I create food and drinks and like to tinker with recipes until they feel just right. A good example is my chicken & chive dumplings (halal, and as one friend put it “tastes just like pork!”).
Work with me
Many people call me a chef, or see me as one, but I think that label devalues the immense energy and time the people that I consider chefs put into their craft; they spend the majority of each day in a kitchen, while my preference is about a third of that time.
What I can say is I’ve been cooking for two decades and enjoy it so much that I went to culinary school. I’ve also:
- lived on a farm and worked at Pearl Morissette (before it became #1 best restaurant in Canada)
- executed events for 25-1000 people at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of their events catering team
- designed menus and personally catered several small events (10-40 people)
- worked as a cook at a meal delivery company and at and/ore
- run cooking classes
I’m primarily interested in collaborating with people and organizations who see food as more than delicious. I use food as a way to communicate complexity and meaning in the world. I’d love to hear from you if you have a project or a seed for one where you want to explore food as a means or object for learning about other cultures, communicating culture and/or identity, or exploring broader food system issues (e.g., sovereignty, sustainability, corporatization, power, access, shared responsibility, etc).
Services
You can bring me in to help with conceptualizing, curating, and delivering events or experiences from end-to-end, design and execute customized food and drink menus (including the recipes!), to create a menu that tells a story and find others to execute, or facilitate a food-based event as the host. I’m skilled at working with various budgets so just reach out for a conversation!
Diana Chu 