O U R A LU M N I
NURTURING COMMUNITY THROUGH FOOD C hef Shauna Godfrey’06 started her first food business in Grade 8 selling apple pies “under the table.” While she has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, she didn’t ever think she’d be a chef. “I’ve always loved food. I collected cookbooks from a young age and had my first pasta maker at the age of 11 or 12,” she says. “I was obsessed with food, but didn’t know where to take it.”
Shauna thought she might be a nutritionist or work in science. After attending Bialik and then TanenbaumCHAT for high school, she moved to Ohio, earning an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College, majoring in biology. Oberlin provided her with a grant that she used to start selling bread at farmer’s markets in Muskoka in the summer. “I used to make my Bubbie’s challah recipe,” she says. Her grandmother figures prominently in her cooking to this day. Learning Yiddish at Bialik offered Shauna a way to connect and bond with both her grandmothers during that time. She recalls Bialik as being the perfect place to grow up, thanks to its academic rigour, while still feeling nurturing. “I always felt supported there,” she adds. Although she worked in some of Toronto’s and New York City’s upscale restaurants after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Shauna prefers nourishing people with satisfying comfort food that’s “not fancy.” In November 2020, she started Godfrey’s Supper Club. It was an experiment and a way to occupy her time as she explored the next step in her career, having left her role as Sous Chef at Momofuku in Toronto earlier that year.
Now, her club is a thriving community, with regulars who anticipate the weekly menu shared on Sunday and look forward to their interactions with Shauna when they pick up their orders on Thursday. Her grandmother’s challah is a menu mainstay. Each week’s offering features Shauna’s take on the Jewish food that she found comforting growing up. Still, her 92-year-old grandmother often weighs in. “She’s an avid texter and pitches tasty things for me to cook,” says Shauna. “During the pandemic, when I couldn’t see her all the time, it helped us to stay connected.” Through her endeavour, Shauna has been pleasantly surprised at the relationships she’s developed with her customers too. “I know what’s going on in their lives and I’m so appreciative that people want to take the food I make and serve it to their families in their homes,” she says. “That’s why I like to cook — food helps us connect with people.” While Shauna had no expectations of how her supper club would pan out, she is pleased to have gotten to know many of her regulars over the past year. “It’s cool that it hits home for them,” she says. “Now that I’m cooking Jewish food, it’s like I’ve come full circle to my Bialik pie days.” And yet, she continues to explore. Recently, that’s meant having pop-ups at Contra Café in Toronto. Shauna is also working towards opening a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, where she can continue to provide comfort and connection through food.
THAT’S WHY I LIKE TO COOK — FOOD HELPS US CONNECT WITH PEOPLE.
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Here the Soul of the People is Forged |
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