Ottawa’s Cam McGihon went from making pub grub to elite food in Sweden

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Not that long ago, Cameron McGihon was frying chicken wings and flipping burgers at an Ottawa pub. But the 28-year-old Ottawa chef began 2024 by spending three months cooking at Frantzén, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Stockholm that has climbed the prestigious World’s 50 Best Restaurants list to rank as high as sixth.

McGihon, the sous chef at Bar Lupulus on Wellington Street West, wasn’t paid for his long hours in Stockholm. He paid his own way to Sweden and found cheap lodging in the outskirts of the capital so that he could be a voluntary member of the Frantzén team. But he calls his internship at a world-class restaurant “an adventure to remember.

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“The passion, skill, knowledge and drive they all carry is inspiring,” McGihon says.

It used to be that Ottawa’s chefs typically went to Algonquin College or Collège La Cité, and worked their way through Ottawa’s restaurant kitchens. Or perhaps they sought opportunities to learn, cook and eat in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. But McGihon is one of several Ottawa chefs and hospitality industry professionals who more recently have raised their game through stints at or connections with some of Europe’s top restaurants.

Perhaps inevitably, the Copenhagen restaurant Noma, repeatedly regarded as the world’s best restaurant in the 2010s, attracted some of Ottawa’s most ambitious culinary talents. Ottawa-raised, Algonquin-educated chef Ben Ing was even Noma’s head chef in the mid-2010s. Alex McMahon, the co-owner and sommelier of Arlo on Somerset Street West, interned at Noma in 2015.

Briana Kim, the acclaimed Ottawa chef whose next restaurant, Antheia, is eagerly awaited, has forged a bond with Noma. Kim, who closed her cutting-edge restaurant Alice in January, visited Noma soon after.

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“I was invited by Noma and was given an opportunity to work with their R&D team to explore new fermentation techniques and flavours,” Kim says. “I worked with a very talented group of staff for a week at one of the best restaurants in the world, which culminated in a presentation to senior members of the Noma team.”

Kim is tight-lipped in discussing her visit to Noma, having signed a confidentiality agreement. She will say she considered relocating to Copenhagen. “But while at Noma, I was able to further solidify my vision for Antheia,” she says.

Coincidentally, Kim ate at Frantzén in April, after McGihon’s time there was done, during what she called an “R&D trip” to Sweden and Denmark. Eating at Frantzén, Kim says, “was one of the best dining experiences I’ve had… probably (among my) top three experiences ever.”

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McGihon made it to Frantzén despite getting into restaurant cooking late and “on a whim.”

The Ottawa native skipped culinary school. He studied business at Algonquin College and the University of Ottawa, then worked in the federal government for several years before deciding that career path wasn’t for him.

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Having worked in Ottawa pubs when he was younger, he returned to them, thinking that being a chef might be for him.

“I knew that I had to start from the bottom, which was the hardest part, going from making a decent amount of money to just above minimum wage to throw myself back into kitchens,” McGihon says. “Imagine how my family and friends reacted to that.”

But while making pub grub, McGihon eyed fine dining, studying cookbooks and following industry leaders on social media. “I wanted to try to see if I could make it work without going back to school,” he says.

McGihon says his big break was meeting and then working for Ottawa chef Justin Champagne-Lagarde, who was running the kitchen at Bar Lupulus.

“A lot of what I love, and the style of my food, is definitely reflected in what I learned in my first few years with Justin, trying to be more adventurous and using techniques that Ottawa hasn’t really seen before,” says McGihon, who by 2018 was a chef de partie at Bar Lupulus.

Both Champagne-Lagarde and McGihon moved on. More than two years ago, Champagne-Lagarde opened his Preston Street tasting-menu restaurant Perch, which made the enRoute list for best new Canadian restaurants and Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list. McGihon went to work at Gray Jay Hospitality and then at Gitanes. After more than a year away, he returned to Bar Lupulus to be the sous chef under chef James Bratsberg.

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McGihon says he has always pondered how to advance in his career. He has ambitions to be a head chef, but figured an overseas stage was his next step to improve himself.

Last summer, he emailed Frantzén, which has been described as an immersive Nordic restaurant with Asian influences, about its internship program. He was accepted and started three months there in January. Because he was “trying to be extremely frugal,” the experience cost him $8,000, he says.

McGihon began with 10- to 12-hour shifts doing basic but essential prep work such as slicing and dicing, making sauces and cooking the staff meal. But he realized that promising interns were given much more responsibility.

He moved up, and for his last two months, McGihon worked on Frantzén’s lounge service team. He put in even longer hours, but was able to make and serve guests some of the canapes that began their $600-a-head dinners, as well as some of their meal’s final courses and flourishes.

“It was nerve-wracking at first,” McGihon says. But Frantzén’s staff nurtured interns, he says. “They instill a lot of confidence in everyone. There’s no anger or rudeness coming from the higher-up chefs. Everyone was incredibly respectful.”

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That’s not to say that working at Frantzén was relaxed. McGihon says a colleague’s motto was “We have to drive, always drive.”

McGihon says he learned a lot while at Frantzén, from cool recipes to an elevated attitude. “They have such respect for all the guests, and respect for the ingredients and their style,” he says.

He’s keen on applying what he learned in Stockholm back home in Ottawa, and will hold a June 9 pop-up dinner at Corner Peach in Chinatown.

McGihon will serve 10 courses, from mushroom tempura with fermented honey, mole and sunflower to aged duck with black garlic, smoked beet, sweet onion, spring leaf and jus to preserved strawberry with lemongrass, rhubarb, vanilla and spruce.

“We have great produce and opportunities for great food,” McGihon says. “It’s just a matter of learning what you can do with it.”

Cam McGihon En Masse Pop-up Dinner
When: June 9 at 5 and 7:30 p.m.
Where: Corner Peach, 802 Somerset St. W.
What: 10-course dinner
Price: $137.50, including taxes and gratuity
Reservations: resy.com, search for Corner Peach and then click “June 9”

phum@postmedia.com

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