If the apocalypse were to hit tomorrow — a massive, churning, global warming–induced wildfire, maybe — I like to think that amid the chaos and the sudden disappearance of all things edible, Toronto restaurateur John Bil would be one of the few humans to thrive.
While others would succumb to infighting or become enslaved by shotgun-wielding super-gangs, I’d wager that Bil would go seaward to harvest whelks, barnacles and other little-known sea creatures. He would become a seaside guru.
Bil is already on a mission, actually, to educate Torontonians about seafood — that there is more to it than salmon and tuna — at his restaurant/retail shop, Honest Weight, located at 2766 Dundas St. W. in the Junction.
One could be forgiven for not recognizing his name. Bil has never sought fame, and he has no interest in rampant business expansion. You’d be hard-pressed to catch him buying new clothes, and he’s flirted with poverty (he’s been known to live out of his van).
But aside from having helped open numerous great restaurants (including the legendary Joe Beef in Montreal and the Michelin-starred M. Wells Steakhouse in New York) and aside from having founded the much-lauded Ship to Shore in P.E.I. and aside from being “one of the greatest oystermen on the continent,” according to the Globe and Mail’s Chris Nuttall-Smith, Bil also built and ran Le Pavillion, last month’s otherworldly pop-up restaurant inside the derelict Hearn Generating Station.
Born in 1968 in Toronto and raised here, Bil is that rare breed of person who has always just done whatever seemed like an interesting thing to do in the moment, and it seems to have worked out for him.
“I don’t have anything on my bucket list,” he says. “No regrets, nothing. Everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve done it.”
Growing up, he never expected that restaurants would be his calling. He does have fond food memories from his youth — he’s of Polish descent, so he grew up with his grandmother’s perogies, cabbage rolls and chrust pastries — but he was more concerned about punk music and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“I was always interested in getting outside the mainstream somehow,” he says.
Bil has always been curious, but he found high school tiresome. Eventually, he ditched class altogether in order to work various jobs and hang out downtown. In his late teens he saved up enough money to open an indie-punk record store with a friend. Harbord Street’s Sketchy Records didn’t last long: “We didn’t know anything,” Bil says.
His next fascination was with cycling. So then came days of couriering, of competitive racing, of biking through the Yuha Desert, living off corn nuts and carrots. Once back in Toronto, he needed money, and bike riding wasn’t paying the bills. But a new oyster bar — the now-famous Rodney’s Oyster House — had just opened, and it needed shuckers.
“I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it,’ ” he says.
At that point, Bil didn’t think much of oysters. He also wasn’t very good at shucking them, at first. After a while he started to get into it, and he was asked to help launch a new Rodney’s in Prince Edward Island.
This was when Bil realized that seafood wasn’t just a novelty. Being on the East Coast, it wasn’t long before he found employment at an oyster farm. He loved it. For 10 years, he spent long days cultivating and harvesting, and he became transfixed by life in the sea.
“You see the fish, the mackerel and trout, and you see the seaweed,” he says. “We live in this universe, and other things live in that underwater universe, and I became fascinated with it.”
Bil started experimenting with seafood in his kitchen. He’d catch green crabs and cook them, along with eels, razor clams and surf clams. He’d pickle seaweed.
He also got into oyster sales, which is how he met Montreal restaurateurs David McMillan and Fred Morin. Although oyster farming gave him a taste for seafood, it was Joe Beef — which he helped build — that gave him a more nuanced palate for food and wine.
“John Bil is a legend,” says McMillan, an owner and chef at Joe Beef. “He’s legitimately one of the greatest people I’ve had the honour of knowing in my life.”
Bil moved back to Toronto in 2012, lending his expertise to St. Clair West’s Catch restaurant as a manager and shucker.
Honest Weight, though, is his true gift to Toronto. In addition to serving up pan-seared fish sandwiches and a much-buzzed-about okonomiyaki (a Japanese-style savoury pancake), this small shop showcases lesser-known delicacies such as Berbigao cockles from Portugal, limpets from the Azores and gooseneck barnacles.
Not only do these shellfish contain some of the best flavours on the planet, you might find yourself eating them out of necessity. Soon, when the end of days hits, barnacles might be the only food left.
