Culinary excellence

Sharon McLeay
Times Contributor

 

The son of our own Councilor Bob Sobol, Jonathan Sobol, is the Executive Chef of the Starbelly restaurant in Calgary, and he had an interesting and exciting journey that brought him back to Calgary, to provide excellent service and interesting fresh food offerings to residents of Calgary and the surrounding area.
Jonathon Sobol said he became interested in cooking at a young age, watching the television program Chefs.
“One of the things I saw was someone dressed in a chef’s coat and taking charge of a kitchen and that is something that inspired me,” said Sobol.
He said his mom was a very capable cook and cooked all the classics; he loves her spaghetti and meat sauce and barbeque chicken. When mom wasn’t around, he and his father cracked open the cookbooks and experimented with different recipes.
Sobol grew up in Fairview, Alberta, where his father was stationed as an RCMP. The Fairview Rotary Club arranged for a one-year educational exchange experience to Nantes, France, when Sobol was 16. He said it was an amazing experience and gave him a good perspective on a different culture’s eating preferences. He said there was lots of good quality food, even though he lost 35 kilos in the first three months of his visit, while he adapted to a different style of eating.
When Sobol returned to Canada, he thought about being an RCMP or a cook, so he took a six-month job in Banff at the Rimrock Resort Hotel to try cooking and fell in love with the trade. He had two choices to complete his culinary certification. He could take a two-year fulltime educational program at a trade school like SAIT or NAIT, or he could have an employer sponsorship agreement as an apprentice, which balanced work with two month on and off educational experiences. In the third year, he gained his Red Seal Certification and Journeyman certification moving into kitchen management.
Once he graduated he moved to Ottawa, and worked at the Play, Food and Wine restaurant, later was Sous Chef at the Ottawa Sheraton and Executive Chef at the Ottawa Hunt Club.
“Ottawa treated me very, very well,” said Sobol.
Sobol said that becoming a chef is more than just obtaining a certification. Sobol offers advice to those thinking of entering the field.
“I would ask them to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves if in five years they could become a manager. Whether they had the ability and capacity to get past that manager point, where they want to fit in up the totem pole. The hardest thing is that young people see that they can get into a culinary program and think it is a short-term thing. They think they will become a chef in two years. The thing they need to know is they have to take steps and consider, how are you going to get the proper training, are you going to work harder than anyone else there. They don’t see the big picture and they need to see the big picture,” said Sobol. “If you are not capable of leading a group, you have to be more than just some person with a degree. You have to be a mentor and dedicated, reliable and you have to be able to manage yourself before you manage other people. They have to have something more than just a skill set to become a chef.”
In 2008, he had a one-month internship in England at the Fat Duck, which retained an award for the best restaurant in the world, as well as having a history of many other culinary awards over the years. He explained the secret to an award-winning restaurant.
“You have to approach every patron of that restaurant as your biggest food critic. It may be someone’s family or an actual food critic. You have to treat them all with due diligence. There is no shortage of planning, dedication and hard work that goes into every single plate. There is no slipping of that standard,” said Sobol.
He said he moved back to Alberta because he missed his family, loves the mountains and Alberta. He worked as private chef for a Calgary billionaire and is now chef at Starbelly restaurant in Calgary.
Sobol said his favorite dishes are fish and breakfast.
He encouraged readers to check out Starbelly, which is located at 220, Seton Cres. S.E. in Calgary 403 570-0133. Customer reviews are great and menus can be previewed at www.Starbelly.ca.