MAKING SOUP AND sandwiches to feed hundreds of homeless people in Canada’s poorest postal code is not how you’d expect one of our top chefs to spend his Sundays.
Yet that’s exactly what Marc Thuet did while he was in Vancouver filming the second season of his criminally underrated resto-reality series Conviction Kitchen, which premieres Oct. 24 on Citytv.
“It was a life-changing experience,” says Thuet during a recent phone interview. “Living in Canada, you never believe it can be as bad as this in your own backyard.”
Speaking of backyards, Thuet has just returned to Toronto and his thriving mini empire of gourmet food stores in the city’s downtown. The four Parisian-flavoured Petite Thuet boulangeries/patisseries are a bustling business offering an extensive menu of house-made terrines, charcuteries, sandwiches, salads, pastries and croissants as well as takeaway dinners.
“Every day is busy, as busy as we have ever been,” says the superchef. “And we have plans for more [bakeries].”
Thuet is also preparing to reopen the briefly shuttered Conviction, the King West restaurant setting for season one of Conviction Kitchen. The reality series saw two-dozen ex-convicts (including at least one bank robber) compete to work in the pressure cooker under Thuet and his business partner and wife, Biana Zorich.
“We are trying to give people an opportunity that they would not otherwise have. We’re giving these people second chances,” he says. “Hopefully we show them a way out, give them some direction, show some confidence in them that they might not see in themselves. It allows them an opportunity to have a job, to get up in the morning with a purpose, to earn a paycheque. But they’re not going to be cooks and servers for the rest of their lives.”
Thuet and Zorich are already preparing a third season of the show, which they hope to go into production later this year. And they’re planning to take the show south of the border, to Boston.
The fall will also see the launch of his new cookbook, French Food My Way. The title is trés apropos given his aggressive head-to-tail approach to meal making. How many other chefs routinely hunt, kill and butcher the food they prepare?
Born in Alsace, France, in 1963, Thuet is a fourth-generation chef with cooking in his very marrow. He started on garbage duty in his uncle’s restaurant when he was six, and by 12, he was peeling vegetables and skinning rabbits for the main course.
By 19, he’d attended cooking school and landed a prized position to serve at the Dorchester Hotel in London under Anton Mosimann, who would go on to become the royal caterer to Prince Charles. The Dorchester was the first restaurant outside of France to be awarded two coveted Michelin awards, and while there, Thuet was introduced to the concept of cuisine naturelle, a style of cooking that emphasizes seasonality and natural flavours that has influenced his cooking ever since.
Young, headstrong and restless, Thuet packed up and headed to Canada to make his mark in the mid-’80s, becoming the executive sous-chef at Windsor Arms Hotel Courtyard Café.
By the early ’90s he was sous-chef at Centro and later executive chef and co-owner.
The executive chef role at the Fifth followed, as did the consulting chef position at the Rosewater Supper Club before Thuet finally got around to putting his own name on an establishment, starting with Bistro & Bakery Thuet, the shortlived Bite Me! and the Atelier Thuet and Petite Thuet.
Now, his focus is on promoting Conviction Kitchen, which saw a casting call for reformed criminals interested in cooking (and in having their personal trials and tribulations aired on TV) posted on Craigslist.
The second season is “much more powerful than the first one,” says the Thuet with a thick Alsatian accent.
“The first season, there were people with troubles, and this season, the troubles just become greater in some ways.”
Filmed in Vancouver, the show drew its cast of would-be restaurant staff largely from the city’s downtown East Side, which is well-known for its drugs, crime and urban squalor. As a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for five years, Thuet knows something of the tough experiences his protégés have been through and the demons they are fighting.
“I have not lived the lives they have, but I know about troubles, and I think that makes it a little easier to relate to them,” he says.
Not that the production was all rainbows and gumdrops. There was the expected turmoil in the kitchen as personalities clashed more often and with more volatility than pots and pans. That simply makes for good television.
Thuet and his production team also had to contend with meltdowns and relapses among the cast.
“One, in particular, after the show finished, we took him right to rehab,”he says. "He was a heroin addict. There were horrible tracks in his arms. He needed help.”
Listening to Thuet talk about the people he worked with on the show, you get the feeling that it’s not all about creating drama and conflict in the name of higher TV ratings. While the blond-haired and tattooed Thuet may resemble another reality TV chef, you get the feeling that he actually does care about more than whether the reduction sauce was burned.
“I don’t watch other cooking shows, like Gordon Ramsay. I’ve seen a few of his escapades. But if you treat people the way he does, you’d get a black eye in a minute, especially with the people I’m working with on the show,” he says. “Not that I’m an angel. I scream, too. It’s the way it’s done. It’s great for the show, it makes good TV, but it’s not reality.”
