by Andrew Morrison | Our hearty congratulations to Ensemble chef/owner Dale Mackay for his victory in last night’s Top Chef Canada finale. That’s a pretty big deal. I imagine he’s not a little enthusiastic about the new GE kitchen set-up coming his way, and I’d wager he’s especially besotted by the $100,000 cash prize. The win and the added notoriety will go some way in assuaging whatever initial anxieties he may have had about his new restaurant’s long term survival. That the location –  850 Thurlow – had felled quite a few restaurants in the past seems a bit of a moot concern now.

Money and national fame aside, I suspect that the real prize for Dale is the victory itself. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more driven chef. I don’t know what his demons are, but they’re there, yanking him ever forward by the lapel of his short-sleeved jacket. For whatever reason, Dale just needs to win.

It’s a quality that I really admire and a need that I’ve seen up close before, having twice judged his food at Gold Medal Plates, the biggest professional cooking competition we have here in BC, and the precursor to the Canadian Culinary Championships. He blew our panel away with his finesse and near-robotic poise, and our accrued scores landed him podium finishes on both occasions…

But silver is not gold. That much was obvious to everyone who watched his crestfallen face as the national anthem played the evenings out and there was someone else standing just a little taller than him on the stage.

I’ve known expert cooks to be thrilled at scoring silver or bronze. I’ve known their ilk to be ecstatic at just cracking the invite. But on these nights, Dale looked as if he’d just been punched in the face by the guy who’d bested him. It was either that or he’d just discovered that everyone in the ballroom had spent the better part of the evening taking turns kicking his dog (I can assure you that we had not).

His need to win was also made plain at last year’s Restaurant Awards when his old restaurant (the now shuttered Lumiere) was pretty well shafted in a few categories. The speed with which he exited the venue was remarkable. Yet his retreat wasn’t the act of a sore loser. What I saw in his face – a grimace the likes of which are rare and deeply personal – was something altogether different from dejection. It was the determined expression of someone who was going back to work, of someone about to will himself to put the day behind him and do better.

I only watched one episode of Top Chef Canada. In it, Dale was pummeled in a challenge and taken to task by the judges. It looked as if he was doomed, like he wouldn’t be making the cut. But upon seeing him bow his head and take it – yet again – I felt there was a fair chance that he would eventually come out on top. He feeds off defeat, chowing it like so many vitamins. It’s something I’ve seen him do again and again.

When I called him a few months ago to invite him to compete in the Gold Medal Plates again this Fall, he politely declined. “Sorry, Andrew. I’ve done it twice before and I’m going to be really busy with the new restaurant,” he told me with no hard feelings. I understood completely, but I also wondered how long it would take for his competitive nature to take over his remembrances of previous defeats. It took all of an hour before he rang me back with three, wholly predictable words: “I’ll do it.”

Canadians, even the restaurant critics among them, don’t generally respond well to naked ambition in their fellow citizens. In search of self respect and that of others, we tend to travel the quiet road of nose-to-grindstone, lifting our heads up from our toils only to kindly acknowledge the person who says, “Good job”. Why? Because we’re the founders and protectors of nice and easy. We wrote the signage of the middle road. As one representative commenter put it in today’s Vancouver Sun article reporting on Dale’s victory — “He didn’t come off as a nice guy on the show.” As if that matters in the least when you raise a fork to your mouth…

Drive is the cornerstone quality that has anchored the rise of every one of the world’s top chefs. It’s the secret seasoning that makes food taste better. Nice? Fuck nice. Demons can cook, and the rest is bullshit.

Honour is due.