photo by Jo-Anne MacArthur

For those who don’t know vegan chef Doug McNish, the easiest way to describe him is as a vegetarian culinary savant.

Cooking for 12 years, he trained in French Cuisine at George Brown Chef School and  his enthusiasm for his profession is immediate to anyone in his vicinity. Currently head chef at Port Credit’s Raw Aura, a raw food and organic haven for those in the GTA, McNish has also manned the stations at Live Organic Food Bar and Urban Herbivore, putting his unique spin on vegetarian menus throughout Toronto.

Doug recently chatted with Toronto Vegetarian about his life in―and out―of the kitchen. What follows is the story of one man, a twelve-course meal, and how haute cuisine went veg.

Just starting off, the obvious question: What led you to become a chef?

I started cooking at the age of 15, I’m now 27. So, from an early on age I fell in love with the kitchen. I loved everything about it. I loved how it was different. I loved how you don’t sit behind a desk; how everyday something different can happen and does happen. And I loved the camaraderie of working with people. It’s very much a team thing when you work in a kitchen; it’s everyone coming together to create amazing food.

So at 15, I realized, I’m really good at this and I love doing it and the sky’s the limit.

I read that you made the transition to being vegan while working at the Air Canada Centre, where you were cooking a lot of meat as part of this position. What was that like? Did you take a lot of heat form your colleagues for your dietary choices?

Yes. I had my colleagues and I had my bosses; I had sous chefs; I had the chef of the Air Canada Centre―they all thought I was crazy! They looked at my tattoos and they asked me “Why?”

They all were trying to feed me chicken! I would bring in my own lentil soup and I would have salad and bread, and [they’d say], “Oh, you don’t eat chicken?”  I said, “Well, I’m vegetarian now.” They’re like, “Well that means you can still eat chicken, can’t you?”

At that time, I was young and I wasn’t as knowledgeable as I am now, so I was still eating a little bit of cheese, and every now and then I would put a little bit of salmon into my body to make sure I was still getting enough protein. I was worried about that.

But that year, the Maple Leafs didn’t make the playoffs, and the season finished early. I was no longer cooking 200 steaks a night. I was no longer responsible for the pork and chicken, so I decided to cut it all out and go vegan.

What that influenced by dietary reasons or ethical reasons?

What happens in the kitchen is you’re always eating. At an early age, I was out at the bars, I was drinking beer, I was partying. I was doing everything in excess. By the age of 21 [ed. note: he's now 27], I was about 270 pounds, and I’m only five foot seven.

I was drinking far too much. I was partying far too much. My lifestyle was awful. I said to myself, I need to smarten up and change my life now, before I get into my mid-thirties and I have to change my life.

At that time, I didn’t know what it meant. All I thought it meant was going to the gym and working out. I met a woman along the way and she lived in New York; she was vegan. I had no idea what that meant. She started talking to me about the ideas of animals having feelings. I just laughed at her. I said, listen, I’m a chef. I cook meat and dairy―that’s the only way there is to do it.

I’ll always remember the last night I ate meat. We went out for a twelve-course tasting menu at one of the best restaurants in the world. She had a vegan tasting menu, twelve courses. I had everything―foie gras, veal. You name it, I had it.

We went back to her apartment and she said, “Douglas, I just want you to watch something.” I said, “I’m game, I’m a very open minded person. I would love to.”

So I watched, “Meet Your Meat” ―the PETA video. [WARNING: link goes to a very graphic video.] What I saw, I couldn’t get the images out of my mind for the rest of my life and that night I decided to go vegetarian. I just couldn’t believe I saw pigs being kicked in the face, chickens being spit on, screamed at, yelled at. I said, I’m not going to contribute to this anymore.

[In New York], there are over a hundred vegan restaurants there. Anything you can imagine, from nachos with cheese sauce to hot dogs and hamburgers―all the way up to fine dining.

What I started to see was these guys are using the same techniques and the same flavours that I know how to use, just different ingredients.

I would go back to my ACC  job at the time, and I would play around. I would bring in okra. I would bring in mushrooms. I would bring in quinoa. I started playing around with flavours and I would just create. It came to a point where I was largely into animal rights…but I was responsible for cooking fifteen racks of veal back in the catering restaurant.

I decided to stop being a hypocrite. I took a paycut. I went down to half of what I was making and I went to work in a vegan café, Urban Herbivore. I decided to see what it was like to be in a professional setting, but totally using only vegetables. I loved it.

After about a year of being there, I was offered the head chef position at Live Organic Food Bar. I have nothing but the best to say about Live. They helped me grow as a chef, as a leader, as a manager…I loved it.

In this industry, you have to move around. You have to always be learning and always on the newest things. I am fully into raw food right now, I love it. [When] I was offered a head chef position at Raw Aura in Mississauga, I jumped on it. That’s where I am now.

You mentioned that when you were in New York, you were exposed to this form of cooking that was similar to what you were doing, but used different ingredients. What did you learn in your training as a chef that you apply today?

The whole idea about good cooking, when you go to a restaurant, is utilizing fat. In French cooking, it’s butter, it’s using cheese and egg.

I was able to say, a rich sauce is delicious on the palette. How can I take that alfredo sauce that I know how to do using cream and butter, how can I substitute that using other fats? It was very simple.

When we think of vegan food, or vegetarian food, we often have these stereotypes that it’s hippie food, or that vegetarians eat chicken and fish. Why is that?

I think, looking into the past, we were much more primitive in the way we looked at food. As we go further into technology, different people are becoming more ethical and have more money to spend on research. New products are being developed all the time. With the advent of factory farming, more and more people are realizing that is isn’t the way to eat or treat the world or animal and that there are other options.

I think the end answer is more and more people are going towards this road. More and more people are choosing to become vegetarian. More and more people are choosing to become ethical.

It’s the same idea, if you were to compare granola to cell phones. Back in the late eighties, cell phones were the size of a telephone book. People had to spend the money and the time to realize these things are amazing; these things change your life.

If you look at it now, it’s the same thing. There’s all this vegetarian and vegan food that is leaps and bounds ahead. It’s the same thing as an iPhone or a BlackBerry. Look what you can do now; it’s like carrying a little personal computer with you.

I think that’s a big thing, a lot of people are making the choices that turn into change. Whether it’s ethics, whether it’s health, whether it’s that you just look better―that’s the bottom line is people are choosing to eat more vegetables and I think it’s a great thing.

Familiarizing food to people is important as well.

When it comes to familiarizing food and this cuisine to people, what do you say to the skeptics who say that a meal isn’t complete without meat?

I say, it’s time to open up the box. Look outside what we’ve been taught our whole lives.

Look around you. People are getting diabetes People are getting cancer. People are getting diseases at such young ages and in such large numbers.

Let’s take it back to that idea and think, what if I don’t put meat as the centerpiece? What if I start to understand that iron and calcium and especially protein can come from other sources?

It’s definitely a difficult one. People are set in their ways. Change is not an easy thing. That’s the biggest thing in choosing to go vegetarian or vegan or anything at all. Anytime you want to change your life, it’s not easy. It’s not an easy task. You have to be a go-getter, you have to be open minded.

I think flavour is a big thing: “I want my food to taste good.” Food still tastes good without meat. I don’t know. Go to a vegetarian restaurant, go to a vegan restaurant with a friend―order something you would not normally order. It’d be exciting and blow your mind.