Brian Tesolin and Matt Cusano cut their teeth under Chef Brad at Olo, where the philosophy was simple: build relationships with a handful of farmers and use everything they grow, instead of spreading thin across hundreds of suppliers.
What that actually looked like day to day? Sometimes routine. Sometimes two lambs showing up in a cardboard box wrapped in packing tape with nowhere to put them.
The kind of detail that doesn’t make it onto a menu.
📺 Savoured Here premieres on TELUS Optik TV this September.
🎥 Watch the full trailer, link in bio
#SavouredHere #FarmToTable #VancouverIsland #ChefLife #LocalFarm
4 months agocolton.aa
This was a really special conversation for me. I came to Victoria for a school break when I was 17, leaving snowy spring in Northern Alberta for a sunny Easter break in Vic to scout the university. I walked by @olorestaurant while meandering downtown with my jaw dragging on the sidewalk. I read their menu and watched service through the window for what was probably a weirdly long time. It was the first place I ever saw that offered farm-to-table in a way that both made sense and felt real, I was smitten and carried that with me through the years it took me to get back to Victoria and into our culinary world here. Later, @how.i.handle.my.vices was the chef behind the first tasting menu I ever tried. Again, that kind of experience didn’t exist where I come from, that was something I only saw on TV. It was aspirational of me to have made that reservation and helped open my eyes even wider as to what we have here. After that, @matt_eo became the first chef that I apprenticed under. Someone I saw in a cookbook before learning how to filet salmon from him. Thanks to both of you guys for the role you’ve played and will continue to play in growing me and a whole lot of people like me. Honourable mention to @chefbradholmes for being the madman who built the place that stopped me in the street all those years ago.
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