Flavors Unite: Craig Wong’s Culinary Journey at Patois, Toronto

Wong’s ties to Jamaica go back three generations on both sides of his family, to his parents immigrating to Canada in 1975.Craig Wong, whose family has deep Jamaican roots going back four generations, emphasizes his fusion culture at Patois Restaurant in Toronto, Canada.

Born in Scarborough, north of Toronto, Wong has fond memories of her paternal grandmother preparing a wide range of delicious Jamaican and Chinese dishes, including fried chicken, potato salad, and steamed eggs with ground pork. When she returned to Jamaica, she ran two canteens for factory workers and government employees, cooking Jamaican food with Chinese ingredients and Chinese food with Jamaican ingredients. .

“It wasn’t because she was trying to innovate. This was her way of life,” Ms. Wong said in a video call from Toronto.

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Jamaican cuisine is a combination of Spanish, African, Indian, and Chinese cuisines, resulting in dishes such as goat curry, fried dumplings, braised oxtail with peas and rice, and sweet potato pudding. Masu.

Since growing up, Wong says she has lost the desire to study. “As a mischievous child, I was drawn to seeking out people who could inspire me. I had a bad attitude,” he says with a laugh, adding that he attended seven high schools before graduating.

“If someone wanted my respect, I would have to prove myself. And in the kitchen, I was able to find chefs who mentored me. It was a very special time.”

In the late 1990s, the restaurant scene favored French and Italian cuisine. That’s when Wong picked up the book and read it. Alain Ducasse’s L’Atelier (1998) He decided he wanted to work under a top French chef.

“It was one of the first professional cookbooks I ever picked up,” he says. “And the way he used ingredients, the way he incorporated dishes, and the care and precision just oozed off the page. It was something I hadn’t seen anywhere else.”

In 2003, with the goal of mastering fine French cuisine, Mr Wong left for France to study at Institut Paul Bocuse (now Institut Life) after experiencing various kitchens. Luckily, his parents encouraged him to attend a French school, so he was fluent in French and quickly learned how to network to climb the kitchen ladder.

“You can’t just go to a restaurant. You have to know someone who can recommend you. […] I started in a small kitchen and worked my way up to being the granddaddy of all kitchens,” he says of his goal of working in a Ducasse restaurant.

But it wasn’t easy, and Wong recalls many rivalries in the kitchen.

“It was the most competitive kitchen I’ve ever worked in,” he says. “The people there were like a pick-me-up kind of people. If it helped bury someone, that was the way the kitchen did it. It was a completely different experience when I went to The Fat Duck. [Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant in Bray, England], for example, where it was nurturing, it was kind. It was a place where people did their best to help each other. ”

Wong spent three years cooking in France and England, which inspired him to open his own French restaurant, but he also felt conflicted.

“I led a double life,” he says. “At home, I cook Jamaican food and Chinese food. But in my professional mind, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, there’s no way I would do something like this in my restaurant,’ and It builds an almost schizophrenic approach to cooking. It took me a while to fill in these two aspects, but that’s when I started to feel more comfortable. ”

After returning from Europe, Wong worked for other chefs in Toronto in 2006, eventually opening a restaurant that reflected his identity as a Jamaican-Chinese Canadian. In 2014 he opened Patois, a name that refers to the Jamaican dialect that is a mix of African, Spanish, Portuguese, French and English.

In the beginning, Wong worked full-time in every department of the restaurant, from cooking to serving and managing. A few months later, a client arrived who was looking for a chef to open a Caribbean restaurant in Dubai.

“When I first met my business partner, I was like, ‘Please let me call you back,’ and I waited about a week before calling back. It wasn’t like I wasn’t serious about it, but I had some chicken on the grill and the next day. I was focused on the necessary preparations,” he says.

But Wong rose to the challenge and opened Tin Ily in 2016, serving modern Caribbean dishes such as roasted plantains, jerk fried rice, ackee (an ingredient similar to lychees and longans) and salt fish.

In 2018, Wong had plans to open Bar Mignonette, an intimate space serving natural wine and seafood on the upper floor of Patois. But by the time he was ready to open, the coronavirus pandemic was sweeping the world. But Wong didn’t get discouraged and pressed on, launching the bar in the summer of 2020.

“COVID-19 has been a shock for all of us and a really troubling time for the industry as a whole,” he says. “During that time, I feel very fortunate that our team stayed strong and did everything we could to be successful. There were a lot of changes, a lot of thinking on the fly, and a lot of thinking on the fly. It was flexible […] And don’t be afraid to be creative. It took all our creativity to make us successful. ”

If the pandemic has taught Wong anything, it’s to be open to new ideas.

“Gone are the days when the food industry was a single restaurant that relied on people coming in-person,” he says. “We need to offer new conveniences, such as more deliveries and ‘heat and serve’ care packages. That’s the new normal. I’m a very forward-thinking person, so I’m always thinking about how I can better serve people and create new and exciting experiences. ”

New things he did in 2023 include traveling to Hong Kong for a pop-up at Artemis & Apollo in Wan Chai and cooking with “Devil Chef” Alvin Leung and Liberty Group’s Yong Sood did.

In April, Wong will travel to Guangzhou to attend the Canton Fair and then to Shanghai to collaborate on a contemporary Chinese restaurant called Bastard.

“The more I get involved in this business, the more I realize this business is about people. It’s not about the food, it’s not about the guests or the experience, it’s about the people,” he says. “There’s a lot of trust. So when you find someone you trust, you do everything you can to foster and maintain that relationship.”