Calgary restaurant Charbar honours Buenos Aires chef

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If you’re walking through the East Village and the wind is just right, you may catch a deliciously smoky smell wafting from the Simmons Building. That campfire aroma is coming from Charbar’s parilla, a traditional Argentinian-style grill that requires significant skill and natural instinct to operate — the meat cooks over embers and the chef moves the grill plate up or down to control how much heat gets to the meat.

It’s a technique you don’t often see in these parts and one that Executive Chef Jessica Pelland had to travel to Argentina to perfect. In January 2015 she went to Buenos Aries to stage (the culinary equivalent of an internship) with chef Fernando Trocca at his restaurant Sucre, which placed on the World’s Best Restaurants Top 50 Latin American list in both 2013 and 2014.

Last week Trocca got to witness the results of his mentorship when he travelled to Calgary to see what Pelland has done with Charbar and to participate in a collaborative dinner with Pelland and Charbar co-owners Connie DeSousa and John Jackson. The dinner was part of a series of events hosted by American Express to celebrate food writer Jacob Richler’s latest Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants List, which includes Charbar at #39.

Trocca says that he was excited to see how Pelland interpreted his take on elevated food that’s inspired — but not bound by — traditional Argentinian techniques. The chef, who enjoys a certain celebrity status in his native Argentina, says that he often doesn’t love Argentinian restaurants that are run in other parts of the world by ex-pat Argentinians, because they tend be too restricted by tradition. He sees Pelland’s Canadianized take on Argentinian food as being much more interesting.

“Jessica has an Argentinian influence, but she has a different vision because she sees us in a different way,” Trocca says. “Her empanadas for example — the shape is exactly like an Argentinian empanada, but there is an almond chimichurri on top. It’s a different way to do a classic Argentinian dish. Sometimes Argentinians think that they can’t do anything different with an empanada.”

From Pelland’s perspective, she sees so many similarities between Argentina and Alberta — from the focus on beef and ranching culture to the multi-cultural influences — that and the Argentinian-influenced menu seemed like a perfect fit when she and Jackson and DeSousa were brainstorming a concept for Charbar before it opened in 2015. Unlike some Latin American cuisines, Argentinian flavours tend to be subtle and not particularly spicy, and she was also attracted to the idea of making the parilla a cornerstone of the restaurant.

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a passion for cooking over fire,” she says. “There’s so many different ways to use coal and fire to cook things low and slow or hot and fast and it’s not just limited to meat. We do multiple vegetable dishes on the parilla as well.”

Pelland and Trocca reflected Charbar’s twists on Argentinian fare at their dinner collaboration: the menu consisted of an octopus and tuna ceviche, morcilla (a Spanish version of blood pudding) with red shrimp, three kinds of empanadas, slabs of Charbar’s signature 100+ day dry-aged beef grilled on the parilla, and a dulce de leche flan for dessert. While they gave each dish a special spin, most of the courses weren’t a big departure from what’s on Charbar’s regular menu. 

“We’re not an authentic Argentinian restaurant, but I’m influenced by Argentine cuisine,” she says. “What I learned at Sucre was really about using the traditional ingredients but elevating them and incorporating some Asian influence and Italian and Spanish influences as well.”

While Trocca certainly has taken on a mentorship role with Pelland, the Argentinian chef also got a chance to learn from his trip to Calgary (only his second time in Canada, hot on the heels of a trip to Toronto only a few weeks ago).

The Charbar crew took Trocca to the Stampede rodeo finals — a novelty that he found quite intriguing, since despite its strong cowboy culture, sports like bronco riding and steer wrestling exist but aren’t common in Argentina.

Trocca also got to go canoeing and horseback riding in the mountains and enjoy a Canadian-style cookout in the woods, complete with hotdogs roasted over a fire (“Well,” says Pelland, “the Charbar versions of hotdogs”). But it wasn’t all for fun: travelling far to stage, to do these collaborative dinners, or just to meet with fellow industry professionals is becoming an increasingly important part of many chefs’ jobs and it’s something both Pelland and Trocca are happy to embrace.

“It’s good for business, it’s good to share,” Trocca says. “I’ll learn from Jessica, she’ll learn from me, we’ll share techniques and ingredients and ways to cook.”
“I think one of the main things that has happened in the industry is that people are opening up to each other and sharing,” Pelland adds. “It’s not about protecting recipes and keeping them secret — it’s about sharing those recipes and letting other people adapt them.”