Come together: after nearly a year of delays, Union opens on Ossington Avenue (Photo by Davida Aronovitch)

Inside Ossington Avenue’s long-awaited Union restaurant, diners find a Parisian oasis. The room smells of fresh baguettes, and Gilles Vigneault’s “Champs Élysées” floats over fin de siècle accents and a brasserie-style horseshoe bar. A look at this soothing atmosphere reveals nothing of the struggle chef-owner Teo Paul had in putting it all together, though readers of his Opening Soon blog, hosted here on torontolife.com, know better.

While most upstart restaurateurs air inevitable frustrations behind closed doors, Paul floundered publicly. Union was first slated to begin service last September, but building and permit complications pushed back that date by almost a year—much to the growing frustration of Paul and his readers. But since opening in early July, the new west-end hot spot has been met by giddy reviews.

“What we’re trying to do is clean and simple,” says Paul of Union’s short but robust menu of local, seasonal dishes. Such regular offerings as a homemade charcuterie plate and Scotch Mountain prime rib are rounded out by daily specials that are in line with Paul’s commitment to nose-to-tail dining: a hanger steak frites served with an egg is a cut from the same cow as the prime rib. Union sources much of its fare from its namesake farm in Grey County, and Paul has been working with the Brick Street Bakery to replicate boulangerie-worthy bread. In addition to lunch and dinner, the spot serves a classic French breakfast of coffee, croissants and tartines that’s already drawing an early-bird crowd. “It feels great,” says Paul of the response. “I was worried, but I think people get it.”

Decor is three parts old Europe, one part hipster chic. An ornate chandelier hangs above the U-shaped bar, where Paul hopes to cultivate a casual vibe. For the voyeur, a counter seat offers a prime perch for watching the dinner theatre unfold in the kitchen. Rustic exposed brick is offset by a playful Barbara Klunder mural. The pastoral scene is Roald Dahl meets enchanted forest. Opposite, a gilded mirror reflects the soft light from frosted orbs overhead.

In order to get to this point, Paul was happy to have writing as an outlet. “I never felt completely lost because I had that blog,” he says. “I just didn’t read the comments.” And though the trials of running a restaurant are ongoing and far from over, he’s still optimistic. “It’s all worth it, for the moments.”

The interior of Union, last month (Photo by Jessica Darmanin)

I am opening Union tonight and I’ve lost my stone. I lost it a while ago, sometime in the middle of preparing the restaurant. It was a half stone, which is why I kept it. I figured my grandfather had the other half. We were the same age when I found it—22. He flew those big Lancaster bombers in the war. He didn’t have a co-pilot, so he had to pee in a can because he couldn’t leave the controls. His name was Jack Gillies.

I found the stone at his grave, in a cemetery full of Canadians, in Harogate, England—my cousin and I drove out there when we were travelling. It was in the earth and leaves, with its smooth oval top poking out. When I picked it up there was just the half. It was shaped like a turtle’s shell. It was brown and smooth, with slight ridges on the flat side. We slept in the car that night, in a field, and woke up with a cop taping on our window. We ate an extra breakfast for our grandfather, like he was sitting at the table with us. I carried the stone for 12 years. It was my lucky charm.

I’ve been trying to make myself feel better by saying that it was time for the stone to go. I try to convince myself that I don’t need it anymore, but I know I do. I feel ordinary without it. I feel vulnerable. I didn’t need money or keys when I had that stone in my pocket. I didn’t need anything. It was pure faith. It was a kind of reminder to go for it and not to hide because good things will happen when you put yourself out there. It’s what took me overseas and brought me back home. I want to do something special, or at least try to, without fear of what could happen.

So I am determined to take all the dirt, crap and pain that came with building this restaurant for the past year and make something real, honest, good and clean. A friend of mine said to me a while back, when things were going really badly, that what I need is a soft place to land. I hope that is what Union will become: a soft place to land; a good warm place to refuel and be together.

Union, 72 Ossington Ave., opens tonight.

The interior of Union, May 1, 2009 (Photo by Teo Paul)

We were hoping to be open by May 5, at the latest, but the usual happened. One guy held up another guy from finishing his job, so yet another guy has to wait for that guy to finish so he can get done what he has to get done—and then everyone needs more money. It drags on and on. I don’t recommend gutting a place and trying to build a restaurant from rubble and dirt. Who knew such a sweet little spot could demand so much? It’s been tough to hold on to the spark that shot me into this thing when it feels like it’s just spitting me out. It bangs up your faith because you start thinking it’s you that’s making it take so damn long. It’s lonesome waiting for something to begin. You’re out in the wind with just self-doubt and a bunch of expectations to keep you company.

Even though there are days I wish I were somewhere else, somehow I still feel I am in the right spot. This place is about forgiveness. No matter what pain and agony have gone into building it, this is still the place that’s going to give me a shot—a moment, a chance—to put something I believe in out there. I am not a builder, or a plumber, or a painter, or an electrician, or a metalworker, or a gas man. I’m the last guy who gets to do his job in this restaurant. The longer I have to wait, the deeper in doubt I get, and the farther I am from where I’ve been and what I’ve done and where I want to go. I am doing all I can to hold on to that one note I want to kick this place off with and build around.

Nobody really knows what I am about to do. Nobody knows how I got here. Nobody knows my certainty and the way I see it coming together. I can write about it, explain it, get drunk and wave my arms around about it. But until I get my shot, it’s just me, one guy, trying to explain himself enough to put it together. The closer I get to opening, the more tenuous and strained it starts to feel.

My mom called me from Switzerland while I was writing this and said, “I’m worried about how you’re going to do the potatoes. I woke up at three in the morning thinking about it. If you do them the way you said, I don’t think it will work.”

I said, “I know. They’ll be too soft.”

Then she went on and said, “I’ve been testing it. You just need 25 minutes to do it right.”

Then she said, “Are you excited?”

I said, “I don’t think excited is the word.”

I think I’m nervous. I’m nervous about what’s about to change and happen and where it will lead. I’m nervous about not getting across what I’m trying to do. I’m nervous about losing what has led me here and the places and people I used to know. I can’t just get up and find them now. I’m dug in; they’ll have to come find me.

I think about the artist Gerald Murphy and the energy of his time in Paris, the way life seemed to gather around him, and the ease and flow and discovery he found in the everyday. I like to think about Union having that way about it, that everyday ease and flow, a refuge for good food and good wine, a platform for discovery and togetherness. I want to cook how he lived. Taking the everyday and striving to discover and connect to it, finding rhythm and art in it all and weaving great moments within it.

I keep thinking about all of this when I’m pacing the joint, waiting for somebody to show up. I think about when this place will open and what I want it to achieve. I think about driving down dirt roads and meeting farmers and bringing stuff back to the restaurant to cook. I am trying to visualize it happening; I see myself in the kitchen cooking the way I want to cook, bringing out the essence of what I bring in. That’s the connection I want—to be the medium between what is raised and what is devoured. Union is the stage, the setting, for that to happen.

In Paris, even the dogs know good bread (Photo by Amy Paul)

The barn floors are in, and Union is feeling like a French tavern. There is something about the way Paris eats and feeds itself that I’ve always wanted to capture in a restaurant. I wanted to build something from what I saw in the taverns, tabacs and cafés I used to frequent; something that would lift me up and give me refuge. I saw them as fuelling stations: the warm lights, the mirrors, the marble bars, the vested waiters, the coffees, the demis and the wine—the bustle and the clatter of it all. Just being there makes you hungry.

There’s one other thing that every Parisian eatery has, a common thread that pulls it all together: a good baguette. A good baguette makes everything better. It’s a companion for saucisson, rillettes, cheese, preserves and butter. It’s there to wipe up sauce and soup and jus. In Paris, no matter how poor or down and out you are, you can always get a baguette. You can always duck into a place and have a sandwich and a demi at the bar, and recharge for pocket change. Union is going to be a refuge, a place to step out of the city and refuel. It’s good food for bad times. We’re not swinging for the fences here; we’re just trying to punch out a few singles and hit some doubles. We’re going right up the middle, keeping it simple and good. Union needed a good baguette. And because of Simon and Danielle at Brick Street Breads, Union’s got it.

When I was in Paris, my friend Chris and I were knee-deep in oysters and wine on a Sunday at the Baron Rouge when he gave me the idea of making yeast from apples. I immediately thought of the apples at the farm. Once back in Toronto, I called a few bakeries, but no one was interested in helping me out. Then I called Simon Silander at Brick Street, and he was all over it. I brought him some apples I got off a big old tree just outside the farmhouse, and he made this great levain or “mother” (a growing colony of yeast he can use when he starts baking). He’s been feeding it for the past four months. That’s a baker for you. He’s going to use flour from Oak Manor Farms, a farm and now a mill that went organic in the early ’70s when the owners saw how the pesticides were killing their land. So Union now has its own line of bread, made from yeast born from apples at the farm and good Ontario organic flour by a great bakery. It’s the thread that’s going to be there every day and tie it all together.

Teo Paul mulls his menu (Photo by Robert Brodey)

My friend Ten Gallon asked me the other day how I was holding up. I said, “I am getting nervous, but I’d be more nervous if I wasn’t nervous at all.” I’ve been trying to get the menu done. I’ve known it for a while, but now I have to put it down on paper. I want a menu for us to rally around, something simple and strong—a building block. The thing is, I haven’t done a restaurant menu in a few years. It’s different now. I have to explain it.

When I started cooking in people’s apartments in Paris, I wanted to bring the restaurant into the home. I wanted them to feel like this was different, so the first thing I’d do was deep-fry something. It was always effective. Shrimp tempura is a crowd-pleaser—just sizzling shrimp in a pot of hot oil on a small four-burner stove means business. It’s the kind of amuse that calms those who are paying for it, who, in the beginning, are always anxious, wondering if you know what you’re doing when you arrive with a somewhat crazy Swedish girl and a backpack full of pans, sauces, sweetbreads, tuna, meat and vegetables. I hit my stride doing those private dinners; I learned to improvise, to cook in the moment and to keep it simple, because anything can happen when you’re cooking in somebody else’s kitchen.

I’ve been puked on by a three-year-old and have had to cook around an old dog who bit me every time I tried to get to the fridge. Through all that, I learned to gauge with my gut what would get me in trouble and what wouldn’t. I learned that simple and clean food always outperformed the over-thought and overdressed dishes. I learned that there is an awful gap between having an idea about a dish and being able to execute it in the heat of the moment. And I learned that there is nowhere to hide when you’re in somebody else’s home.

I started my own restaurant to get away from the dogs and children and the packing and transporting, but I don’t want to get away from the simple intimacy of that small-kitchen type of cooking. I don’t want to hide; I want to keep it open, cook in the moment. And when things go wrong, I want to cook my way out of it because cooking with your ass on the line makes the food taste better. It’s more seductive that way. I need a menu that makes anything possible.

PERSON ON THE PHONE: Okay, call me if you have an update.
ME: I’ve got an update for you. Nothing is happening! There’s your fucking update!

Building a restaurant is one hell of a road to go down. It’s amazing people even try to do it. It’s all gut and heart and not much brains. If anyone ever thought about it long enough and knew what they would have to go through to make it happen, they would turn around and go the other way. When they were sure they were too far away to even think about turning around, they’d probably pull over and hug the first person they saw and frigging celebrate.

It is uphill, every damn bit of it—yet all it’s doing is pulling you deeper and deeper into something. There is just so much you have got to get done, and get done right, to open a restaurant. I’m just talking about the behind-the-scenes stuff here, the stuff you don’t see when you walk into a place—the stuff inside the walls and behind the doors. All those lines and things you have to connect. It’s like building an engine: you don’t want anything too fancy; you just want to do it right so it runs tough and smooth and can be fixed when things inevitably start to break down. You have got to have limits, but you have got to have standards, too. You have to get what you need to perform.

You’ve got to have a big gas line to fuel the stoves, and a good, strong hood to pull the smoke. You’ve got to have a fireproof ceiling with double 5/8 drywall and insulation, and fire doors, and exit signs. You’ve got to have an HVAC system running all over the place so the space is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. You’ve got to have hot and cold water lines running to the kitchen, bathrooms and bar, and you’ve got to have them fastened and running right so they don’t rattle and bang and break. You’ve got to have bathrooms with fans and faucets and sinks. You’ve got to have drains for everything and venting for those drains and a grease trap, as well. You’ve got to have a walk-in fridge, and beer taps, and an ice machine and a good espresso maker. You’ve got to have outlets for the fridges and outlets for blenders and juicers and things. You’ve got to have lighting, good, warm lighting—lighting for task and mood and sparkle. You’ve got to have patience and good communication and cheques that don’t bounce. And you’ve got to have luck because sometimes there are snowstorms, and illnesses, and blackouts, and cars that break down.

That’s when you’ve got to stay out of the mud, and the bar, and the despair. You’ve got to keep yourself from worrying about every little thing that goes wrong, because everything always gets fixed, and then forgotten, so there’s room for the next thing to come along. Most of all, though, you’ve got to believe; you’ve got to look beyond all this so that you don’t lose faith in the one thing you caught a glimpse of and wanted to make real. You’ve got to believe you are in the right place and you have something to justify building this place, something real and something strong: a beginning, a chance to be together.

I'll pass on brunch, thanks

“I don’t do brunch.” That’s what I tell people when they ask me if I want to eat out at midday on Sunday. Brunch just doesn’t work for me. Maybe what makes it unenjoyable is that I know what’s involved in getting it on the table. I feel it’s not worth the pain for something so fleeting. It takes too much effort and goes down too fast—it’s just too fragile and sensitive to try to get right on a Sunday. With Monday always coming on fast, people expect so much on such a helpless little day. If the orange juice isn’t sweet enough, the coffee’s too cold. And if the eggs aren’t runny enough, they need more toast, more water, more everything. Throw in a hangover (or a handful of hangovers), and it’s just painful. I have a friend who’s worked her fair share of brunches. She wanted to get a T-shirt that says “Your hangover is not my problem” on the front and, on the back, “But next week, my hangover might be yours.” That pretty much sums it up.

I’ve done a few brunches myself, and I can’t say I’ve had a lot of success. When I cook, I tend to leave space for chance. I won’t worry about something in my prep until it comes up during service—that way, I have to dig my way out. I like to think that it makes me do stuff in the moment that I wouldn’t think of if I were perfectly set up. You can’t do that with brunch. You must be ready—really ready, because everything about brunch is so damn fragile.

I cooked a bit of brunch in Paris. I got a gig doing it one time when I was desperate for money. It was good in the beginning—the owner even let me design my own menu. I tried to do it a little differently, with a spicy pimp (pork and shrimp) burger on a rösti with an egg on top and some seaslaw salad (coleslaw with seaweed) on the side. I did other stuff, too, like French toast with fresh, runny chèvre and maple syrup and peaches. I had poached eggs and hollandaise and cured salmon and warm, spicy cornbread to give out. I even told people to come. It was good in the beginning. Steady. Simple. Easy. I kept myself sober the night before, treating my Saturday night like a Sunday so I’d be rested and ready to work in the morning. But as time went on and my confidence grew, my Saturday night became just that. Soon enough I found myself hunched over a pot of boiling water on Sunday morning, desperate and sweaty, searching for some poached eggs that had become bullets for a table of 14 that walked in out of nowhere. I broke eggs, I stepped on eggs, I threw pans, I broke dishes, I burned myself. I crashed big time. I wanted to die. Or start over again—just walk out onto the street and leave the tables and chaos and disappointment behind me and just keep going. I almost did, too. Brunch can be that bad.

But I get brunch, too. I know it’s like a celebration, an end-of-weekend thing. I appreciate it, but I have to do it a little differently. I read about a guy in New York who does the same brunch every weekend: a giant terrine of eggs stuffed with smoked salmon and whatever else, on a table piled with croissants. That’s good thinking. My kind of brunch is standing around a big barrel table eating oysters and charcuterie and drinking good, cheap wine with friends and old drunk French guys drinking wine out of silver ladles. That’s a celebration. I know I’m not in Paris, but I’d like to try to bring something new to Toronto, something different. So I’m thinking somewhere between those things, something festive, strong, and not so fragile.

While I was digging around salvage places looking for the finishing touches for Union (like sinks and mirrors and dishes), I came across some lights that used to hang in an old theatre in Collingwood. My gut told me to buy them and put them above me in the kitchen. I think all the drama, the concrete, the ’hood, the plumbing, the loans and the anxiety that have come with building Union out of an old karaoke dive have made me look at the restaurant in a different way. I now compare the undertaking with building a theatre on a lively street, where a play will run for as long as it can. Union—with its brick walls and barn floors and great lights and horseshoe bar and open kitchen—is going to be a big stage, an opportunity to perform, to dig in a little bit and see where it can go. If building Union had been smooth, easy and on time, I would have missed the chance to understand it this way, to see what it can become. Now I can define it; I can visualize the food and the flow and the acts. I want it to be a place where people perform and lift life up a bit and feel as if they could be anywhere.

Maybe all this theatre business is just an act, a way for me to diffuse the anxiety I am feeling about the grind and routine that awaits me in the kitchen. But seeing it all like a drama reminds me that cooking is not just a tiring trade; it’s creating and expressing and performing. And if I can build a place where I can cook and feel as if I am anywhere, then maybe something different can come out of there. The food I begin with is just the introduction; where it all will go from there is a mystery. All I know is that I will have theatre lights to remind me, on the darkest and roughest of restaurant days, to see Union like I do right now—with excitement. A place where, at any moment, something great could happen.

My brother, Chase, and I dropped by JoAnn the Chicken Lady’s farm last weekend. We were picking up a bird for me to kill, clean, pluck and eat for a photo essay Chase is working on for school. After she picked us out a nice Cornish bird, we started talking about what kinds of ducks to serve at Union. She’s been raising five breeds for the past few years and knows a few things about their characters—and not just how Muscovies, with their darker flesh, are more goosey than Pekin ducks. She has found that they tend to be a bit dumber, too, and a little more vicious with their claws. As she puts it, they are “just not as pleasant company.” Some types of Pekin ducks are like broiler chickens: “Eating machines,” she says. “It’s sad when you get to know them—you can just pick them up and toss them about like turnips.”

JoAnn wants to offer me Silver Appleyard ducks. They sound like they are going to taste really good. They were bred way back when, by an Englishman named Reginald Appleyard who wanted a good eating duck that could also lay a few eggs. JoAnn wants to build the breeding stock back up to the quality of Appleyard’s “old fashioned” birds—that is, to a commercial level, but without having all the survival skills bred out of them.

The lesson here is that by keeping the integrity of the birds’ genes intact, their survival skills, like foraging for food, make for a more balanced bird that has a richer, cleaner flavour. Basically, good genes make for good meat because the ducks can fend off disease on their own without being stuffed with antibiotics. You could say JoAnn is raising and breeding ducks to taste how they used to taste. I am looking forward to serving these sweet, plump, tasty ducks at Union. So when I write about giving Union windows, this is what I mean: cutting away the crap and building relationships with people like JoAnn so that Union, like a good, strong tree, can grow from the core.

The Cornish chicken Chase and I took back to the farm was a beautiful, tasty bird, and the photo essay was a success, too. When the professor asked Chase if this shot was staged, he told him, “No, it’s not staged. My brother just thinks his life is one long Bob Dylan song.”

The way I see it, I am only as good as my last dinner. Thesedays, however, as I wait for Union to open, I guess I am only as good as mylast blog post. So here goes: I cooked the first farmers’ dinner last Sundayup at the farm, and it was one of the best dinners I have ever made. There issomething special about cooking food for the people who raise and grow theingredients. This was a five-course meal cooked on the wood-burning stovewith everybody sitting around the kitchen table.

There were Barbara and David, who started the 100-Mile Market and ownStoneyfield Elk Farm; Brad and Marianne from Barbetta Orchards, who broughtsome of the best pears I have ever tasted; Frank from Scotch MountainMeats, a seventh-generation farmer, and his friend Rita; Ivan and Lisa fromPheasant Hill Farm; and Fiona, Joanne-the-chicken-lady’s daughter, whosupplied hybrid birds hatched on the farm for the first time this year. Igot a lot of help from my sister, Amy; my business partner, Kate; my brother,Chase; and my sommelier friend, Christopher, who helped me serve the food andthe wine that I rounded up in Beamsville a couple days before. The crowd wasa nice mix of country and city.

We kicked things off in the living room with champagne and a coupleamuses-bouches: smoked splake on toasted challah with Mennonite crème fraîcheand elk sliders with smoked havarti and pickle. Then, once everybody wasnestled around the big kitchen table, I started them off with thinly slicedsmoked duck with seared scallops and a seaweed-fennel-radish salad with asoy-ginger-mirin glaze. I followed it with smoked Peking chicken, servedwith squash and sunchoke-truffle purée, Swiss chard and jus. Next came anamazingly flavourful roast prime rib that Frank brought, done in the woodoven with sweetbreads and pappardelle, roasted beets, parsnipsand jus. Dessert was a maple-apple bread and butter pudding caramelized onthe wood stove with ice cream. When that was all done, we had somecheeses from Ruth at Monforte Dairy.

The meal turned out to be a great, warm country gathering. The conversationnever waned. All the guests were engaged, and we talked about everything fromthe decline of the bee population to the need to recondition Canadians topaying more for food, and how pigs always look you right in the eye (unlike dogs, which always look down, and cats, which always look up), and how younever get used to taking your livestock off to the slaughterhouse. Near theend of the evening, Brad was talking about how he trims his fruit trees andgives them “windows,” so when the sun comes up and over them, it’s alwayshitting them right at the core because, as he says, “I grow fruit, notfirewood, and fruit comes from the core of the tree.” I reckon that the wayBrad trims his fruit trees sums up what I want to do with myrestaurant—cut away all the crap so that Union can be healthy from the core. I want to give it windows so it can have depth.At the heart of Union are the farmers; they are the ones on the front lines,and without them and their passion I would have nothing worth cooking.

Nights like Sunday strengthen and inspire me. I get fired up to open Unionso that I can bring nights like that into the city—nights with the simplebeauty of good, clean food, all of it cooked with the belief that it canbring people together on snowy nights, warm them up, and allow them to bewho they are. Great things can come out of nights like that. When everybodyhad left, the bottle of scotch Frank had brought was sitting on the tablehalf-empty. Chase walked by, picked it up and said, “That’s a sign of a good night.” Damn straight.

The cold weather makes for good smoking, so I’ve been in the farm’s smokehouse a lot lately with duck breasts and suckling pork bellies from Cumbrae’s. I’ve been experimenting with Union’s future charcuterie plate: curing the duck breast overnight with a mix of coriander seeds from the garden, brown sugar, salt and some chili flakes, then smoking them with plum wood the next day and slowly roasting them afterward with maple syrup. Sliced thinly, it’s a beautiful mix of sweet, spiced fat and subtle smoked breast that is going to be a great addition to the menu. As for the pork bellies, I am still working on them. I was a little overzealous the first time around, and I gave them an unsavoury “campfire” finish. I think the smokehouse will give the meat the uniqueness I am looking for in the charcuterie plate, so I scrapped the efforts to get it from Spain. It doesn’t feel right anymore for Union to search for stuff beyond what is right here. Keep it local and do great things with it—that’s the idea.

I want Union to have purpose and meaning and conviction. For me, that means creating a place that is not just a restaurant, but also a refuge for people and a beacon for small, good suppliers who are doing things the way they should be done. I am going to keep the food at my restaurant homegrown, rustic, affordable and real. I am heading to the farm this weekend to cook a dinner for some of the local farmers. It will be a five-course country dinner using each of the farmers’ specialties (elk, lamb, chicken, apples and some root vegetables). The way I see it, this is a chance for everybody to sit together and taste what I will be doing with what they’ve raised. I hope it is the first of many farmers’ dinners to come.

While Union is being pieced together, I’ve been taking apart whole lambs and pigs at Cumbrae’s. I go in on Wednesdays because it’s the day they get the bodies in—that’s what they call the animals there, “bodies.” I’ve been working mostly on the lambs, which is more intense than cleaning chickens and rabbits and beef tenderloins. The atmosphere in the shop is great—full of happy, patient butchers who don’t mind taking a bit of time to show me how it’s done. The art of butchering is all about knowing where to stick the knife, and then slicing with force and conviction in order to make good, clean, straight cuts. When the knife hits bone, you take the saw and cut right through with long, strong strokes. It takes a while to get a feel for it, or you over-think and the lamb takes you apart instead (and drinking whisky the night before doesn’t help much, either).

But I tell you, there are some beautiful bodies coming into that shop. Last Wednesday, a big Angus came in. Stephen took apart the forequarter (where the prime rib lives) as it was suspended from a swivel hook. The hanging method lets gravity help; the pieces come apart when you find their seams. Stephen makes it look easy. An incision here, a cut there. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. For me, the best part is finally seeing where all the cuts come from—like the bavette, the hanger and the New York. I saw the tenderloin nestled in there, clinging to white fat, and watched the technique used to take it out. I finally understood why every tenderloin I’ve cleaned up has had ridges along its back. They sent me off with a piece of super-aged prime rib to try. I cooked it up at the farm, and the flavour in the aged fat and meat shot my dad back 50 years, to when my grandmother insisted that the butcher hang her stuff as long as he possibly could. I can’t wait to get back in there.

• Watch a video on the dry-aging process (and a number of other meat-related subjects) on Cumbrae’s TV.

My last stint in Italy was in Siena. I got into town at 3 p.m. and found a dingy little hotel room, then stopped at an enoteca (wine bar). I had brought my A game, so I was talking to everybody in there like it was my birthday or something. I was just so damn happy to get out of that lonely hotel in Alba where I was working and living up in the storage room with a leaky roof and a hose for a shower. By dinnertime, I had drunk enough brunello to kill a small deer, so I asked for the bill, but the bartender charged me nothing because she said I had done her job for her. Then she quickly declined when I asked her to come for dinner with me. My mother had told me about a slow food restaurant called Osteria le Logge, so I drifted there by my weaving, weary self. The place looked like a library inside, with big old shelves full of books. The kitchen was beautiful and glassed-in and had all the stoves and ovens set in an island that the chefs worked around. I wasn’t looking forward to eating on my own, but luckily an Italian couple that I had just met earlier at the enoteca spotted me and invited me to their table. The guy, Francisco, has his own vineyard, and the woman was a tree farmer. They were both nice and had their hands in the earth. We talked about tree farming and wine, and we ate like kings—ravioli and rabbit and a steak that barely fit on the plate—and then we sat with Mirco, one of the owners, till three in the morning, sipping grappa and talking about the restaurant business (by then I was telling the world what I was going to do). He stressed that the big part of the game—half the battle, really—is serving stuff in your place that nobody else has and to keep it simple, “like a good engine.”

Good advice. When I got back to Toronto, I spoke to my friend Pierre in Paris about a really good comfort wine his father had found from a small supplier. Pierre had a case of it in his kitchen, and when he let me stay at his place while I was trying to make my way cooking privately, he would crack a bottle every once in a while. It’s sort of light red, but with depth. It’s smooth, rustic and affordable. So he is looking into lining up a few things over there for me to bring some over. Also, my good friend Chris gave me the number of a Spanish supplier, so I hope to have some really nice Spanish charcuterie, as well. Plus, on Wednesday, I am going to Cumbrae’s when they get the pigs and lambs and cows in. I am going to watch and learn from Stephen how they take them all apart. I can’t wait for that because I have been doing nothing lately but stewing, and to spend the day learning some moves with some great butchers will re-inspire me. There is nothing like cutting up whole animals to take your mind off things, so when meat comes into Union, it will not come in a box but over my shoulder.

Part of the reason why it has taken so long to build this restaurant is that I romanticized the whole process. I envisioned myself coming home from Europe and building Union with old friends, bringing everybody together. When I left Alba on an early morning train, I felt like a ripped-up five-dollar bill. As I watched the big fields and trees shoot past my window, I was hit with a vision and desire to create this restaurant, and then everything started to make sense. I don’t know if it was a survival instinct kicking in—some desperate realization that I know what I want to cook and don’t need to wait for somebody to show me anymore—but after that, I felt like a million bucks. I rode that feel-good train all the way home. But in feeling good, I got too many heads involved in my restaurant project. They clogged up the process with their visions and ideas, and the momentum got slower and slower. Bad decisions were made. And now that there is finally a clear, bright path to the finish line, I am so damn tired of the place that some days I feel I would chuck it in the river if I could. Needless to say, I have shed the romance. I’m trying to find the cold edge that is needed to create and protect your own business—to “toughen up,” as my business partner Kate told me the other day. It has taken me a while to get here, but there is no room left to be anywhere else. So I am putting the building crap and the romance behind me and getting back to what propelled me here in the first place: the farm, the food and the desire to cook it.”