Mark McEwan
Mark McEwan wears many hats. He currently is the star of The Heat with Mark McEwan and has been featured as a judge on the Superstar Chef Challenge. He is also Executive Chef and Owner of Bymark, North 44)°, ONE Restaurant and McEwan's, a luxury grocery retailer. He began his culinary career as a dishwasher in an upstate NY diner. In 1981, he was hired as Executive Sous Chef at the Sutton Place and was appointed Chef in 1983. Mark has a passion for old traditional recipes and tries to perfect them with fresh and local ingredients. In life and at work he strives to be "exceptional at whatever he does".
The finest Häagen-Dazs ice creams with all the indulgences you love like pralines, cookie dough and crunchy cone pieces.
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A Quick Twenty Questions
- I collect: Power tools
- Utensil you can't live without: Chef's knife
- My dream vacation would be: Road biking in Italy
- My must have item when I travel: Hair gel
- If I could live anywhere else it would be: I don't want to live anywhere else, I love Canada
- I'd like to spend more time: Boating
- The celebrity I would love to cook for is: Gordon Ramsey
- If I could live in a different time, I'd live in: 1600's
- My absolute favourite food is: Roast chicken
- My pet's name is: Molly
- My work day starts at: 6 o'clock
- Favorite time of year is: September
- Best time of the day is: Sundown
- My nickname is: Chef
- Proudest moment: My family
- I wish I could: Ski better
Do you consider your new gourmet grocery store to be a labour of love and how is it different from owning a restaurant?
Mark: Without a doubt a labour of love. As is every restaurant I ever built. Are they different? You have to approach your day differently, but it's still all about the product and the service. They're very similar actually.
Have you ever had to cook for a picky eater and what did you cook?
Mark: A lot of people are allergic to everything. And I don't believe they actually are; I think they're just preferences. They're lying to me. They do this all the time. And that's very, very challenging. I get people coming at me with dietary needs all the time and I think when did this all happen? Did everyone just become allergic to all these products? I didn't use to get it 10-15 years ago. It's sort of a new phenomenon.
What is your inspiration when developing new recipes?
Mark: Well it's always seasonal and we try to work with the seasons. I try to take one, two items and add a third element and come up with something that focuses on the main ingredient. So if it happened to be foie gras, or if it happened to be a piece of fish, or whatever it is, I always focus on trying to highlight the main item. I was speaking to my Chef Andrea yesterday about halibut and how to cook the ultimate piece of halibut. You have to scale the skin, leave the skin on, the skin has to be rendered down…we had this little conversation about it where nothing else matters on the plate if you didn't cook the fish right. If the fish wasn't cooked in the right butter, if the skin wasn't cooked properly, if the fish wasn't cooked right, if it wasn't browned right you lose the essence of the plate. So every time we complete a dish we try to capture the essence of the dish, without trying to get caught up with everything else around it. The other things are easy to do. The main ingredient is the hard part. You have to translate that message to the cook to make them understand what it is that makes that dish work.
How do you balance your love of cooking with the industry and business aspect? Can you really have one without the other?
Mark: No, they have to work simultaneously. When you run your business correctly it gives you the financial strength to run your business well. If you're starved for money and can't afford to buy the best fish, you always have to think about the dollar. You can't think about doing the right job all the time cause you have to invest in the right staff, you have to put that all out there before it's going to come back at you. So one without the other doesn't happen; it never happens.