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Convention Centre foodservice team readies for guests By Kristen Smith HALIFAX — When the Halifax Convention Centre opens in 2017, the foodservice team could serve as many as 3,500 seated guests at full capacity. The fifth-floor ballroom can seat up to 2,000 guests for plated meals and the convention hall has capacity for 1,500 seated guests. An anchor tenant of the Nova Centre, the five-storey convention centre has dealt with a number of delays. Excavation of the site started in 2012 with the expectation it would be ready in January 2016. The completion date was extended to Sept. 30, then March 2017, but the opening has been delayed again. At press time, a new completion date hadn’t been confirmed and the centre was working to relocate events planned for April. When the new facility does open, the foodservice team will be ready. Director of food and beverage Greg Smith and executive chef Christophe Luzeux have worked together at the World Trade and Convention Centre for two decades. “Christophe and I have worked together for a long time. Between the two of us, we have more than 80 years of industry experience, so I hope that’s coming through when we’re doing
our planning,” said Smith, who has been in the food and hospitality business for about 40 years and at the trade centre since 1995. A France native, Luzeux joined the convention centre in 1989. Before coming to Halifax, he completed his culinary education and worked in his home country, including some Michelin-starred restaurants in Northern France. “I started travelling the world; I wanted to do the world tour, like most of the chefs like to do sometimes. My first stop was in Nova Scotia and I’ve been here for 25 years,” Luzeux said. He took a commis position at the convention centre and worked his way to executive chef, a position he has held since 1993. Smith said there is a diverse team in the kitchen, including executive sous chef Pierre Gaudet, who is from New Brunswick and brings an Acadian influence to the team, as well as cooks and chefs from places such as Sri Lanka and Korea. “We want to make sure that when people come to Halifax, they get that local experience as well,” Smith said. “That all factored into our new menu. It definitely has some Mediterranean and European influences, but it also has local fare — we even have donairs.”
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The food and beverage team researched convention centre trends and talked to meeting planners to ensure the new menu fit with their needs. “We wanted to make it as easy on the meeting planner as possible,” said Smith. They discovered a desire for grab-and-go options and market-style food stations. “They still exist, but the days of those formal sit-down dinners with everybody sitting with the same 10 people for three days are kind of gone,” said Smith. “They [delegates] want to network, they want to talk to each other, and so you’ll see more grab-and-go style.” In the kitchen, Luzeux and his team are focused on from-scratch cooking and sourcing what they can from local suppliers. “We just changed the breakfast sausages to a local supplier, because we find the flavour is much better. It was not a question of cost, it’s a question of flavours,” Luzeux said. “We want to make sure we provide our guests with the best quality of product we can get and really reflect what’s local and available.” With the volume expected at the new convention centre — as many as 3,500 at one time — Luzeux said they aren’t able to source everything locally, but perhaps they will be able to down the road.
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“As part of our strategy, we’re also engaging the local providers and seeing what they can provide. So we based the menu on what we knew we could get,” Smith added. This extends to the beverage list as well, which includes Propeller Brewery’s craft sodas, a selection of Nova Scotia wines and some local beer, which Smith said he is working to expand. With about 50 people on the food and beverage team, plans call for hiring more staff when operations move to the new Halifax Convention Centre. “When we get up and going at full production, we’re going to need that doubled — that’s our goal,” Smith said. At the trade centre, Luzeux and his kitchen brigade cook for groups as large as 2,500 guests. When they move into the new state-of-theart production kitchen, Luzeux has full confidence in his team’s ability to adjust to the extra capacity. “The crew we have in the kitchen, a lot of them have been with me from the beginning,” he said. “We have a lot of understanding of how
things are going to flow and how many staff we need — it’s amazing to see how fast we can deliver a dinner at night with the crew we have.”
The Canteen gets new digs DARTMOUTH, N.S. — At the current location of The Canteen, above Two If By Sea Café, staff get creative to replicate common kitchen equipment often taken for granted, such as a gas stove. “I’ve got an amazing team and I know they’re all super-excited to get in there and meet a new challenge and be able to really cook in a kitchen, because right now we’re in a tiny space with induction burners,” said chef/owner Renée Lavallée. “I think we do really well with what we’ve got, but to get into an actual kitchen is going to be really amazing for us.” The new kitchen is admittedly still small, but will have a gas stove, flat top, grill, salamander and a walk-in fridge. In October, Lavallée announced the sandwich shop was moving from Ochterloney Street to 22 Portland St., into the former home of the Sun Sun Café. The Canteen is expanding in size from 25 to 55 seats in the 1,800-square-foot space as well as adding dinner and brunch to the menu. She envisions a neighbourhood establishment, not a special occasion restaurant.
“You’re going to feel like you’re in someone’s home,” Lavallée said. “I want it to be as seasonal and local as we can. Keep it so it’s simple enough for everyone … just some really solid comfort food, done really well.” Menu plans call for dishes such as seafood chowder, roasted heirloom carrot salad, fried chicken sandwich, steak frites, house-made sausage pappardelle and salted caramel tart. When Lavallée opened The Canteen in March 2014, she didn’t have plans for expansion. “It was never part of the bigger picture. My lease was coming up in the New Year, in 2017, and we realized we were getting busier and busier,” she said. Lavallée’s friend, Elliot MacNeil of Bruno Builders Inc., purchased the Portland Street property and is renovating the building for both retail and residential space. Local design firm By + Large Studios will be behind the new Canteen’s décor. A $30,000 crowdfunding campaign reached its target in four days. The stretch goal of $50,000 was surpassed by another $15,000 for
Local design firm By + Large Studios will be behind The Canteen’s new décor. a total of more than $65,000, with contributions coming from 484 backers in exchange for rewards ranging from T-shirts to private parties. “We set what we thought would be a reasonable goal over three weeks; we did not expect this at all,” said Lavallée. “The community support has been overwhelming; it’s been amazing.”
Construction is slated to begin in November and take six to eight weeks, with the move scheduled for January. “We’d love to seamlessly move everything over from our current location into the new location and not have to be closed for more than a day or two, or not close at all, if that could work,” Lavallée said.
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