RUPERT BLADES
293 Wallace after the rebranding
Food Co. Since returning from the internship, Takeda
has become more focused on foraging and incorporating wild ingredients in his work.
Paying His Dues
Takeda has been cooking professionally for about
twelve years. After high school he did an apprenticeship at Newlands Golf & Country Club in Langley, and
then he worked at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. He
did show dinners in their lounge for Rocky Mountaineer tours, and spent a few months at Diva at the Met.
He left the city in 2010 to work as an assistant cook
at Squeah Camp and Retreat Centre just outside of
Hope. His contract was for six months, but he ended
up staying an additional three years as Head Chef.
“That was a very pivotal experience in my life,
where I was able to learn how to manage people. I
was working mainly with a group of volunteers. Most
of them had very little to no cooking experience, and
most of them didn’t really want to become chefs or
anything like that…we really made everything from
scratch there, and we worked very hard. So I had to
find some kind of reason behind why they were doing
the work they were doing. I tried to incorporate teaching life skills into the kitchen environment.”
During his time at Camp Squeah Takeda met
Jason Harper, the chef of a restaurant in Hope called
Joe’s Restaurant and Lounge. He and Harper decided
to buy the restaurant from the previous owners, and
they began operating on May 1, 2013. A year later they
changed the name to 293 Wallace Street Restaurant,
and around the same time Takeda bought Harper’s
share of the restaurant.
A Strict Japanese Upbringing
Good food has always had a prominent place in Takeda’s life. “My dad was a chef for a long time. One of
his main jobs was at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver… My mom did the daily cooking, and she was
a fantastic cook as well. So I grew up eating really,
really good food.
“My parents met in Canada, but they’re originally
from Japan, so I grew up in a pretty strict Japanese
household. We ate a lot of food that would be quite
foreign to most peers that I had growing up. I definitely
remember going to school with bento boxes, rice and
seaweed and fish and that kind of thing, and people
would be eating cheese sandwiches and looking over
and seeing what I was eating.”
Takeda’s Japanese heritage has influenced his
cooking to some degree: “I’m very comfortable with
[Japanese] ingredients in terms of flavour profile.
The Japanese use quite a lot of different fermented
ingredients and pickled goods.” At the moment he is
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