Ciao Aug/Sep 2017 Digital Digital_CIAO_AugSep2017 | Page 10

inthekitchen
team effort
GOODFOODMANITOBA
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restaurant of the year:
Era Bistro
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Ciao! Magazine’s annual awards for
producer, retailer, and restaurant of the
year celebrate the creative use of and
dedication to local ingredients.
by Joelle Kidd
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights holds many distinctions:
it is the first national museum outside of Ottawa, as well the first
museum in the world to focus entirely on the study and advancement
of human rights. It is also part of a new breed of museum that extends
its mission to every aspect of the visitor’s experience—even their lunch.
For Era Bistro, the bustling contemporary dining room in the
corner of the ground fl oor, the secret to success has been delivering
food as beautiful and socially conscious as the museum itself. Under
the direction of Executive Chef Steven Strecker, local ingredients
are transformed into dishes that inspire. In celebration of this, Ciao!
Magazine has named Era Bistro the Good Food Manitoba 2017
Restaurant of the Year.
The rules for Era’s sourcing are simple: local, wherever possible,
and anything that can’t be grown locally (such as chocolate and coffee
beans) must be sustainable and fair trade.
Luckily, Manitoba yields a bountiful harvest of ingredients with
which the kitchen can play. The menu is a who’s who of local farms,
a cherished a network of suppliers with which chef Steven maintains
close contact.
The dedication of restaurants like Era is vital to making local
eating the new norm. While small farms love to connect directly with
consumers at farmers’ markets, packing product is time consuming,
and it is bought in much smaller quantities. Chefs like Steven have the
opportunity to bolster business by placing large orders.
The perceived limits to eating local—time intensive preparation,
seasonal unavailability, a smaller pool of ingredients to draw from—
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ciao! /aug/sep / two thousand seventeen