“Before I met my wife Jessie, her and her best friend used to comically say after drinking, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a place where we could work together? All that we would need is someone who could cook.” I was that missing piece. Jessie and I were both looking to meet someone and so I put my name is the paper. She got it in Sunday and looked up the name and gave the number a call. The interesting part about the whole thing is that we had lived two doors away from each other the whole time. I had never seen her before though.”
-Darcy Radies

Darcy Radies has been pinpointed as the only person in Edmonton to dabble in molecular gastronomy, a totally modern approach to food. The focus of this approach is to create entirely new food, meals that have never been done before. An example of this that has been replicated at Blue Pear is the breakfast for dessert that features caramelized French toast served with bacon and egg ice-cream.

1. When did you first become interested in the restaurant business?
I started cooking when I was around 23 years old. After I was entered into the business, I moved over to England to work with some friends. They had a small little restaurant in the Southwest part of England. I had left Toronto, a big mega-city to go to rolling hills, farmlands to work at a dingy little restaurant. People would travel though, two hours from London to eat at that restaurant. For the first time I was having fun at work, doing what I wanted, working with someone that I wanted to work with.

Then I moved on to Switzerland again in a small town, right in the mountains to work with another chef I had worked with in Vancouver. I worked right across the lake from the world famous spa where Evian water was created.
I felt very comfortable where I was in Switzerland because, being from BC, I enjoyed seeing a horizon with mountains. I also loved working for independents, working for people who had a stake in the industry. So when I came back to Canada I tried to find the same thing that I had found in Switzerland. I floated around from Vancouver, to the Island and then I found a resort just on the BC/Alberta border. Actually a mountain separates this resort and Lake Louise. All you need to do is climb the mountain and you could have tea in Lake Louise. It would take you like a day, but you could do it.
The lodge was only open four or five months a year, and so I was looking for a winter job. My sister lived in Edmonton and so I asked her if she new of any places. I was looking through a book and saw a place that did organic food and so I asked her about it. She then suggested I try another restaurant, and that was Jack’s Grill. I worked for Peter for six months and then I was back to the Lodge for another summer.
I liked working at Jack’s, for a chef who is very well trained. When I went back to the Lodge I felt there wasn’t enough challenge. I was getting older, and I felt that there was too much difference between the people I was working with. I wasn’t granola-ey enough I think. I would want to work, and the owners would take me on a walk and show me, you know, a squirrel. I think it was partly to give everybody else a break from me. I always wanted things to be done better and quicker because that’s what I was used to.

2. What are the most significant joys and struggles of being an independent restaurant owner?
The joy is coming in fresh and doing the work yourself. The joy is working and changing things as you can afford it. We’re different in that most people who want to open restaurants want to make a splash, have a million dollar restaurant. I’m not a flashy person, and money is not really a concern to me. I just want to live my life. I want to cook and make people happy. I want to go in the door and feel good about myself and leave this place and feel good about myself.
The struggle is the growing pains. From day one to now is the struggle. Having to learn to work with your new wife as a business person. Going through little boxing matches and growing from that.
The improvement for us has been huge. We started with a forty dollar price list on our menu and now we’re at $75. With that come all sorts of changes, improvements for our customers. Again, trying to evolve the food. We change the menu every month. But as we become busier it’s been a struggle to do the job, live your life and then come up with a new menu for the next month.

3. Where do the ideas for your food come from?
Everywhere. Jessie buys the New York Times on Sunday and we read food recipes in there, or we get on the internet, subscribe to magazines. They’ve even got food television now. The previous restaurant was a French restaurant, but I wanted to do other things. Still cooking real simple and letting the flavors speak for themselves. There are only two people in the kitchen so when we’re looking for things we have to consider that. We try to find simple recipes and try to duplicate them in our own little way.

4. How largely do you buy locally, organically, fair trade?
Since we’ve started, we’ve gotten from a crawling, to a walking stage, then to running, and now we’re floating. We’re at the point now where we can afford to buy organic. Right now we’re using organic vegetables because we’ve moved our prices up and we want to give our customers some added value. We are looking into doing that more as a year round thing. It may be new here, but in California and the States, it’s big. In Europe too. You know the farmer’s in your area. Whereas here, restaurant owners don’t often know the farmers. Down in the States it’s big. They’ve got grocery stores devoted to organics.
If I could, my dream would be to have my own garden to supply the restaurant. That’s where the pride comes from. Being able to go out the back door, cut something and serve it. Trying to give customer’s something that they can get at home. That’s the biggest pride, where you catch the salmon or trout and use it in the restaurant. It all depends on your microclimate and what is available.
Recycling too. It was fantastic, in the restaurant I used to work in, we used to give a big bucket of compost to the local pig farmer and he’d bring it back the next day to be filled again.
The garbage system that we have here is state of the art. There is one in Italy, and there is one here.

5. Where does the restaurant’s name come from?
The door was blue, and l’anjou is an area in France and is also a type of pear. I was thinking, we’ve got a blue door, and Anjou is a pear. I’m thinking, “The Blue Pear.” We looked it up on the internet, and the name “The Blue Pear” was not taken. So we decided to go with it.

6. What are some of your interests/hobbies outside of the restaurant?
My hobbies, since I’ve started this. You know, I haven’t played golf in five years. I love to run, and I’d love to run on a golf course. It’s the ultimate. I don’t run as much anymore and I’m just starting to get back into exercise because my health is starting to catch up to me. I’ve got young children and they’re at a place where they can walk and run and now I’m sure that my physical activity will only increase as they grow. Right now I get on the bike and tow them around. It doesn’t happen everyday though, because the restaurant is quite intense. Now I’m taking some Pilates to get some exercise that way. I’ve always liked things that are meditative and relaxing. The kitchen has kept me young because I’ve wanted to keep cooking. My exercise is coming to work, bending down and lifting this, constantly moving. Because we work at a small restaurant we get to do everything like washing dishes and stuff. It’s taxing because I’m getting older, but with the restaurant staying the way it is, busy, we may need to get another person to work in the kitchen.

7. When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I was like a lost soul when I was young. I remember when it was my sixteenth birthday and my sister asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Pink Floyd had just come out with “The Wall” and I said I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd’s “The wall”. That got me listening to music, whereas before I didn’t listen to much music.
I was struggling with what I wanted to do. My parents I think wanted to get me to work. I had lots of allergies when I was younger and I was constantly taking pills, so that put a bit of a deterrent on me. If I was playing soccer or something I was always wheezing and having to have an inhaler by my side. So when I was looking at what I could do, I tried to search and find something that would fit. My mom was always at home for me and she would cook supper, and I had to learn how to help her. My brother gave me a small deep-fryer when I was younger. One day my mom and I made doughnuts and I invited my friends over and we ate doughnuts. Then another Christmas I got a wok and so I started stir frying some vegetables, playing with fire, cooking, experimenting and whatever else. Then I worked on farms and in orchards. Again everything evolved around food. It may not have been spectacular but it was all fresh and home grown. It all tied in.
When my father passed away my mother suggested that I go back to Kamloops and go to a cooking school. So I did. I didn’t want to work in an office or at a grocery store. I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. I wanted something that was action packed, something that I was passionate about so that I could work as many hours as I wanted.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 10:58 pm and is filed under What's Happening, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.