SUPPORTING PARTNER
Active Restaurateur : Sinclair Philip Sinclair Philip has co-owned the Sooke Harbour House, a hotel and restaurant just outside Victoria, on Vancouver Island for thirty years. Sinclair Philip received his Ph.D., Doctorat d'état, from the University of Grenoble in France and holds post-graduate degrees in Political Science and Economics. His restaurant, the Sooke Harbour House, has been rated "Best Restaurant in the World for Authentic, Local Cuisine" by American Gourmet Magazine and "Second Best Hotel in North America" and "Sixth Best Small Hotel in the World" by Travel and Leisure Magazine. The restaurant's wine list has been awarded the Grand Award by the Wine Spectator for having one of the five best wine lists in Canada and one of the 75 best wine lists in the world and received a Platinum Award from the Vancouver Playhouse Wine List competition in 2008. This wine list specializes in the wines of British Columbia. The inn has been the recipient of several awards for sustainability including the Four Green Leaf Status by Audubon International, the highest eco-rating in British Columbia for a hotel. Sinclair is a proponent of seasonal, regional and whenever possible, organic foods and believes that terroir or cuisine based on local ingredients and traditions is the foundation of all of the world's great regional cuisines. The menu at Sooke Harbour House focuses on local fish and shellfish as well as on a very wide variety of organic herbs, vegetables, salad greens and edible flowers from its year round gardens. Sooke Harbour House relies heavily on local foragers for a wide variety of delicious wild mushrooms, fresh wild seaweed and berries. The restaurant also features local artisnal cheeses, rare breeds and vinegars. The menu at Sooke Harbour House changes daily to reflect the best ingredients available on any one particular day of the year. Sinclair Philip is the co-founder of the Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands Slow Food convivium, was the president of Slow Food Canada from 2003-2007, is presently a member of the Canadian National Board, and has been the Canadian representative to the International Slow Food Board in Italy for the last 4 years. He has been an active supporter of the Slow Food University, and his restaurant has presented Canadian dinners in the framework of Salone del Gusto in Italy. He has attended numerous Slow Food events in the United States, Germany, France, and Italy. Sinclair was recently involved in a Slow Food Foundation fact finding mission on cheese and beans in Bulgaria. He has written several articles for the Slow Food Canada Journal and in 2006 was awarded honourary status in the Confrerie du Porc Noir de Bigorre in France with Carlo Petrini. Interview with Sinclair PhilipWhat was your first job in the industry? Sooke Harbour House as owner. Before that, I taught at the University of Grenoble in France. What is the most memorable moment of your career? There have been too many! Serving the ex-president of France, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, lunch. I’d only ever seen him on television before, and I got a chance to get to know him on a first-name basis and learned to appreciate the man. It was also very interesting to get to know Mikhail Baryshnikov, who became friends through the restaurant, and then later we visited him as his guest in Florida. We’ve met lots of nice and interesting people so, there’s a lot of high points. What advice do you have for people just starting out in the industry? Get as much training as possible – formal training or on-the-job. And if possible, try and experience the food and restaurants of another culture – a non North American culture. It helps put everything in perspective. What do you think is the biggest issue facing restaurateurs today? I don’t know where to begin. A big issue facing restaurateurs is the decline in the quality – dealing with increased costs as a result of global warming and the decreasing quality in the foods available, particularly from long distances. What’s the next step for raising the bar in the B.C. foodservice industry? Serving a greater amount of regional, seasonal food and developing a British Columbia restaurant food culture. Interview by Jessica Scharien Click on the images below to start videos Introduction movie shown during the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame Gala, April 2008. Interview and award acceptance speech recorded during the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame Gala, April 2008. |