By GRAHAM HICKS

Many years ago, at the opening of the West Edmonton Mall Cactus Club, mall owner (with his family) Nader Ghermezian couldn’t stop singing the praises of a young indigenous chef recently placed in charge of the dining room at the mall’s Fantasyland Hotel.

It culminated, a few weeks later, in one of the best multi-course chef’s dinners I have ever eaten. All kinds of wonderful edible things were going on – like meats literally being smoked at the table.

The chef was none other than Shane Chartrand, barely out of his ‘20s and already making his mark on the city’s culinary scene.

Chef Chartrand’s story was all the more interesting, as he is Cree First Nation, adopted into loving Metis family from Southern Alberta at the age of six.

As a young teen, Chartrand started washing dishes in a restaurant, worked his way up, and by his late teens had discovered he was a pretty Damned Good cook.

Today,  Chartrand is executive  chef at the Enoch Cree Nation-owned River Cree Resort’s SC Damned Good Food. The ‘SC’ stands for Shane Chartrand.

His parallel interests, a passion and talent for exploring indigenous-inspired cooking, has propelled him into the top rungs of extremely talented Canadian indigenous chefs who are introducing, integrating and  adapting First Nations’ culture and cuisine into the mainstream.

For four long years, Chartrand and food writer Jennifer Cockrall-King have been working on a cookbook, Tawaw  (In Cree, Tawaw translates as come in, you’re welcome, there’s room.)

Tawa, however, is far more than a series of recipes.

Shane, you see, is one of Edmonton’s great characters. He is a jumble of happy contradictions, a non-stop talker, a mind that darts about like swallows dancing in the air, an individual with a distinctive childhood of foster homes and then loving adoptive parents, a culinary explorer within his ancestral culture, a brilliant chef who always wears a backward ball cap and a black t-shirt, who drives a pick-up truck. And did we mention the man can cook?

Tawaw is much more than a cookbook – though it has hundreds of interesting recipes from all over the place both culturally and geographically – along with practical suggestions on substitutions if family members don’t bring home moose tenderloin from the fall hunt.

Tawaw is an autobiography, filled with stories told in Chartrand’s unique, straight-ahead refreshingly clear-of-clutter writing style (and polished up by co-author and food writer Cockrall-King). In a sense, it’s a spiritual guide, building bridges through Chartrand’s personal experience, between Canada’s First Nation cultures and the mainstream … always through great food.

Tawaw has yet to migrate from my bedside reading table to my kitchen.  It’s too full of an interesting fellow Edmontonian’s observations and life stories touching on culture, spirituality in the 21st Century, nurture versus nature.

At the River Cree Resort, CS Damned Good Food has a few indigenous touches – like bannock bits for dessert – but for the most part it is thoroughly mainstream.

Is there enough appetite, I ask Shane, for a small, chef-run restaurant in Edmonton, specializing in contemporary indigenous cooking? “I’d love to find out,” he says. “This book is a start. Can you find me some investors?”

FOOD NOTES

A suggestion for the good folk at the Oliver & Bonacini-run casual Kindred restaurant, off the lobby of the new JW Marriott Hotel in Edmonton’s Ice District.

Turn down the “background” music!!

A perfectly good meal, a delightful meal in pleasing surroundings, was ruined by far-too-loud “background” music. My dining companion and I had to move our chairs close together and literally shout to be heard. Neither of us are hard-of-hearing.

The two entrée-sized dinner salads we had ordered – a classic Cobb with its sliced hard-boiled eggs, roasted chicken, avocado etc. and a Niçoise salad re-imagined and built around a small salmon filet with a crispy, salted skin – were excellent.  As was Kindred’s signature fluffy chicken pot pie tried on another occasion.

But to have an enjoyable dining experience spoiled by an assault on the ears … is not what anybody wants.

Kindred’s prices are reasonable for a “family-dining” restaurant in a fancy hotel – about a 20% premium over outside restaurants of comparable quality.

But to have an enjoyable dining experience spoiled by an assault on the ears … is not what anybody wants.

Kindred’s prices are reasonable for a “family-dining” restaurant in a fancy hotel – about a 20% premium over outside restaurants of comparable quality.