Career Options
Bringing cosmopolitan flair to Royal York diningOpening a new signature restaurant at Toronto's historic Fairmont Royal York Hotel was a welcome challenge for Jean-Charles Dupoire. |
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 [ 2002-05-15 ] |
As chef de cuisine of the hotel's Epic Restaurant, he combines the classic French style of his native land and an appreciation for other cultural influences.
Born in Tours, France, Dupoire, 29, credits his grandmother with his early interest in food, and recalls picking strawberries and helping tend the garden with her as a child. He began his apprenticeship training in the Loire Valley District in France at age 16.
"I knew as soon as I started my apprenticeship that I would stick with it," says Dupoire, who found his niche in fine dining after studying banquet preparation and pastry.
Dupoire worked in two area restaurants during his apprenticeship. When it finished, he spent 10 months as a corporal in military service in the French Alps -- and savoured his first taste of travel. He nurtured his love of the Alps by working at La Reserve, a five-star hotel in Geneva, Switzerland.
Eager to learn more about the cuisine of cultures outside Europe, he headed off to the French Polynesian island Bora Bora with just a backpack and a dream of landing a job.
He managed to find more than just employment, as he experimented with the mixing of spices and further developed his culinary style.
"I wanted to study a variety of chefs, cultures and countries, and to work on my English," Dupoire says of his interest in travelling. He moved on to London, where he worked at the Savoy Groups' five-star Berkeley Hotel and The Dorchester, both luxury business hotels.
He travelled to Canada for the first time in 1999, working at The Relais and Chateau Inn at Manitou in Ontario. He then travelled to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, where he served as restaurant chef de cuisine at The Ritz Carlton, a restaurant highly acclaimed for its French and Caribbean-inspired cuisine.
While there, he learned of the opening at The Fairmont Royal York through a colleague and began working on a menu to propose to the hotel. "It was my goal to come back to Canada," he says.
Toronto's cosmopolitan character offers Dupoire a chance to dine out and experience new tastes and new ways of doing things. "You need to go out, to see different things and to open the books," says Dupoire, who lists Asian, Japanese and Thai among his favourite foods.
Despite the long hours, Dupoire relishes the rewards of his career.
"The biggest reward is to see customers who really enjoy the food. The second biggest reward is my team," says Dupoire, who was deeply influenced by a mentor from his apprenticeship while working in London.
He is proud to be a mentor to those honing their skills and recognizes how much they can teach him as well.
"The guys come here not just to work. They come here to learn. It is my duty to teach them," he says. "When they say, 'Thank you', that is a reward for me.
"You can be the best chef in the world, but without a team, you aren't anything."
(Linda White is a freelance writer based in Brooklin, Ont., and can be reached at linda.white@rogers.com..)
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