I was given an address for the test kitchen, just over Lions Gate Bridge in North Vancouver, with instructions to enter through the back. There were no instructions about a dusty concrete staircase though, so hesitantly I climbed, emerging in the glass lobby of a law firm. The receptionist told me my address was ten years old, would I please leave. I walked quickly, first along the edge of a small forest, past one back lot and then another. I walked behind a Travelodge, past Denny’s dumpsters, the delivery door for a Vietnamese joint, back and forth, almost an hour lost. My name was shouted. Another lot. Two doors.
And I was inside.
There is nothing remarkable about the Earls Test Kitchen, which is known to insiders as tk1. It is stainless steel and tile, six burners, two long counters, a double fridge, some gadgets. With the door closed it feels like a subway car, its windows revealing the hallway of a much larger kitchen. This larger kitchen opens out to a shiny, boisterous room called Earls Tin Palace, which in turn gives way to the world outside, where fifty-one other Earls are strewn from Fort McMurray almost to the Mexican border. Fifty-three, fifty-four, and fifty-five are on the way.
If you live in the east, you may not know Earls, which surfaced in the west, with oversized papier-mâché parrots dangling from its rafters, about the same time as U2 and Tom Cruise. Earls is known for inventing and reinventing much of our casual-dining canon, most notably the dry rib and the hot chicken Caesar salad. It is known for servers who are not exactly hard on the eyes. It is arguably the safest bet for a first date in the history of dining out. Until recently, a typical Earls was 7,000 square feet and averaged $3 million in annual sales. However, the newest generation of stores have flashier decor and tonier locations like Polo Park in Winnipeg, with sales averaging $5.5 million. One competitor I spoke with equated the Fuller family, which runs Earls and several other high-end chains, to nasa scientists, so systematically have they stayed a teaspoon ahead of the public’s tastes. What they’ve shown in their latest incarnation is that the essential qualities of elite cuisine can be reproduced, packaged, and delivered—without the elitism.
In the autumn of 2004, Michael Noble left Catch, a $5-million fine-dining experiment in downtown Calgary that critics had christened “Canada’s best new restaurant,” to become Earls’ Director of Culinary & Product Development. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, he travelled five times from Calgary to tk1, summoned each time by Earls’ Executive Tasting Panel. On this, his sixth trip, things would get interesting. In a span of thirty hours, he would attempt to crank out ten dishes, representing the final crack at his first full-fledged Earls menu. And then, because this is how the stars sometimes align, he would prepare a single course for La Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, an international gastronomic society dating back to Louis IX’s Royal Guild of Goose Roasters that is dedicated to safeguarding fine dining as we know it.
Unlike, say, the philharmonic, fine dining has never found itself in special need of safeguarding. But these days, in Europe, Michelin three-star chefs are opening relaxed high-volume “gastro bistros,” while in North America “three-ring binder” chains like Milestone’s, The Keg, and P.F. Chang’s are parlaying their laminated spreadsheets into shares of the casual-gourmet/relaxed-fine-dining niche. Earls’ latest gambit in its ongoing domination of casual gourmet is to infiltrate the Chaîne’s traditional domain by delivering one thing that has always separated authenticity from homogeneity: mystique. Haute cuisine is haute cuisine because of the mystique of its chef.
tk1 has the earthy smell of golden beets, hand-picked for this evening’s Chaîne meal. Two halibut filets, two mahi mahi filets, and two pork chops thaw on the counter for tomorrow’s Executive Tasting Panel. Noble empties two packets of Thai noodles into a pot. As they soak, he opens a can of San Remo white kidney beans. An “automatic towel dispenser buzzes as he washes his hands again and again. “They’re like a tool,” he says. “Keep them clean!” Out in the big kitchen, prep cooks have been at work since 6:30 a.m. “I test and I test,” Noble says as they pass by the window. “I put myself into the headspace of a young guy working at Earls.”
You’re forty-three years old. You spend sixty-plus hours a week inside the relentless whir of a world-class kitchen, more time mentoring misfits with knives than with your own kids. Some guys offer you the chance to work regular hours, you think The hell with it, I’ll start living in the headspace of a sixteen-year-old line cook. While you’re at it, maybe you’ll change some ideas about what a chef is supposed to be.
No device has ever come along that would allow a chef to reach more than a few dozen eaters on any given night. Yes, there are recipe books. Yes, the Food Network has changed what the masses know about eating. But this is not food in your mouth—the evanescent, visceral experience of licking fingerprints off a bone. No one can ship Auguste Escoffier’s “Suprêmes de Poularde aux Ortolans Sarah Bernhardt” halfway across the earth in temperature-controlled Tupperware the way they can an original Vermeer. Until Ferran Adrià figures out how to carpet-bomb Flin Flon, Manitoba, with tiny bubbles of carrot, haute cuisine will be dispatched only one plate at a time. The further cuisine is removed from local ingredients, processes, and theatre, the less profound it seems.
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