Doing Time In Conviction Kitchen

[Free stuff by Wilfrid:  January 18, 2011]

I was pleased to accept a recent invitation to view clips from the second season of "Conviction Kitchen," a restaurant reality show airing on Planet Green, a Discovery Communications cable channel.  In which our heroes, chef Marc Thuet and manager Biana Zorich - husband and wife - work against the clock to open a Vancouver restaurant.

Oh, we've seen all that before, right?  Certainly, the show has all the predictable trappings of reality television - including what I like to call "whoomp!" close-ups - but the first twist is that the restaurant staff, back and front of house, are more-or-less recently released convicts with histories of addiction.  Not enough?  Okay, where it gets interesting is that Huet, a lifelong chef from a restaurant-bakery family in Alsace, is himself a recovering addict.

 

A huge, spiky-haired, tattooed bear of a man, Thuet carries a passionate sincerity hard to contain within the frame of a television screen.  The first series of "Conviction Kitchen" was set in Toronto, creating a restaurant which Thuet and Zorich continued to run for a year alongside their catering business.  Members of the first series cast continued in employment with the restaurant.

The Vancouver project was not expected to be permanent, but some of the cast members who completed the project (there are drop-outs of course) were successfully placed with other restaurants in the city.

Despite the evident and sometimes painful-to-watch struggles some cast members have with their addictions, with self-esteem, and with the alert commitment restaurant work requires, there's humor in the show.  The server who can't memorize the dressings on the salad, another server with no memory for table numbers.  The glue which binds the mix is Thuet's huge personality: an emotional man, he is always overflowing with rage or compassion or hunger.  Wife Zorich is his cool, composed anchor.

Their presence dominates the room in which I watched clips from the current series.  Thuet has been clean, he says, for five years.  The show is therapeutic for him.  "These guys are very good for me.  They help me, actually, to stay sober."  He and Biana found it hard to leave the cast members behind in Toronto:  "We became like a mum and dad, so we got sucked into them."  They continue to be in contact with some of their charges, once or twice a week.

If you expect Thuet's food to reflect his personality - big, bold, impulsive - you're in for a surprise.  In his new cookbook, French Food My Way, Thuet demonstrates a taste for French classicism and elegant plating.  A Thuet menu might feature pea froth with scallops and caviar tian, quail consommé with poached foie gras, a sweetbread casserole and veal tenderloin with morel essence.  He does not shrink from luxury either - plenty of Wagyu and truffles herein.

One recipe only contributed by a protegé of the show, who had learned a few tricks on the inside:  Scott's Prison Chicken - and it looks quite makeable ("...perhaps ketchup or mustard (works well either way)."

Find out more about Marc and Biana's plans here.