Why No Menu?

Why No Menu?

One of the interesting details of the Dep's new Indigenous Food Lab dinner series with Chef Taylor Parker is there are no menus prepared in advance. Why? Wouldn't it be more convenient if people knew what they were going to eat? Wouldn't it be easier to sell tickets I had the opportunity to use seductive and evocative language to describe the flavours and ingredients of the dishes?

There are a few answers to this, some personal, some political, some philosophical. Like many chefs, Taylor likes to draw inspiration from the season, from what looks best in the markets that day. The caprice of nature informs his creative process and he often arrives with only a rough idea of what he wants the finished dishes to be — this improvisation is part of what makes his cooking fun, exciting and rewarding. (IMO, when a dish is more meaningful and rewarding for the chef, it is almost inevitably also more exciting and memorable for the diners as well). 

There is also the fact that many ingredients that are key to Indigenous cuisine, like most kinds of wild game, are illegal to sell — they can be consumed, or gifted, but not sold. This has historically been justified on health or food safety grounds, or out of environmental concerns — the irony that those who have sustainably lived off these ingredients for centuries are being forbidden by the those who have wreaked havoc on those same ecosystems seems to be lost. But in practise it acts as another constraint on Indigenous food sovereignty and economic participation. No menu means more freedom to put anything on it without risking scrutiny or potential 'evidence' of a 'crime'. 

Furthermore, some of the ingredients are essentially completely unknown in Canadian kitchens. Many of the elements Chef Taylor uses in his cooking are ones he forages himself and are simply unavailable through any other channel. What is the point of listing ingredients to describe a dish if no one knows what they are or what they taste like? Part of the purpose of the Indigenous Food Lab project is to create a unique opportunity to experiment with ingredients native to Ontario which are not otherwise available in stores or restaurants.

Lastly, there is a quiet subversion of a whole set of expectations around what it means to be a restaurant, a diner, and a chef that are deeply rooted in colonial attitudes. Nature is not a supermarket, conveniently stocked with whatever you need whenever you need it. Challenging this mindset is part of the deeper conversations around decolonization that the Lab seeks to explore. I wrote a bit about this lesson in The Depanneur Cookbook:
 

"Perhaps to actually embrace an indigenous cuisine was to forego the notion that any ingredient can be had at any time, that there should be a set menu of dishes with specific names, that can be reproduced year after year, regardless of the season or the fertility of the land. Perhaps the definition of a chef also needed to change: not as someone who can faithfully execute (?) a recipe, but as someone who could bring to life whatever Mother Nature had decided to share. Perhaps every meal is a unique improvisation of availability, and a chef's skill is marked not only by the perfection of a fixed dish, but by their ability to make something delicious and nourishing under any circumstances. Perhaps that gift is made more valuable when it serves the whole community and not just a marketplace. Perhaps it embodies a reciprocity with the land that sustains it, with all the people and species that share it, who must all eat from this dish with one spoon." 
—Len Senater, The Depanneur Cookbook, 2024.
Read the full profile of Chef Taylor from The Depanneur Cookbook
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