Here we will intro­duce you to the young, pas­sion­ate entre­pre­neurs behind some of the prod­ucts on our shelves. These are the peo­ple who are help­ing to shape the way we eat with their new and inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts.

Hall’s Kitchen

Katherine Hall, Executive Chef

At Hall’s Kitchen we believe in healthy, hand­crafted veg­e­tar­ian foods that are made with fresh, whole­some ingre­di­ents of the high­est qual­ity and pre­pared with­out the use of chem­i­cals, preser­v­a­tives or addi­tives. We recently launched a new and unique line of vegan soups and stews that are doing very well in many spe­cialty food and health food stores around Toronto and the GTA. All of our soups and stews are made fresh, are GMO free, gluten free, dairy and yeast free.

Each one of our prod­ucts is also care­fully made by hand, not machine, and is slow cooked in small batches in stain­less steel soup kettles.

Where did you start out in the food world?

I did my appren­tice­ship at George Brown in Toronto in the 80’s and my first job was at the Ramada Inn. I spent 3 years at the Ramada where I worked through all the dif­fer­ent kitchen sta­tions includ­ing saucier, garde manger, pas­try, butch­ery, ban­quet ser­vice etc. After that, I took a posi­tion with The McGill Club in Toronto as saucier and soon after­wards became Chef de Cuisine for the Accor Group — a European hotel chain (eg. Novotel). With the Accor Group I had the oppor­tu­nity to train in France and then held Executive Chef titles at sev­eral major hotels, resorts and restau­rants in south­ern Ontario.

What inspires you to do what you do?

I think that the aspects of plate design, menu and recipe devel­op­ment feed the cre­ative side of my per­son­al­ity and know­ing that peo­ple enjoy eat­ing the food I’ve worked hard to make for them, feeds my nur­tur­ing side. Being a chef is a very sat­is­fy­ing career for me, it always has been. With soup in par­tic­u­lar, they are heart warm­ing, com­fort foods. When some­one is sick, peo­ple will bring them soup. There is some­thing very heal­ing and ther­a­peu­tic about a hot bowl of soup. I also like how so many dif­fer­ent flavours can be lay­ered together in just one soup or stew dish.

Why make veg­e­tar­ian soup?

We orig­i­nally started with chicken in our Bangkok Curry Coconut soup actu­ally, but found that the shelf life was con­sid­er­ably less with meat than with­out meat. Meat can spoil quickly and to be hon­est, after all the processed meat scares this past year with the lis­te­ria out­breaks etc. we just didn’t want to work with meat. I’m a “flex­i­tar­ian” not a veg­e­tar­ian cur­rently, but I can see  myself becom­ing a veg­e­tar­ian in future.

Fresh veg­eta­bles are just so much cleaner and eas­ier to work with. People can add their own meat to our soups and stews if they want. It’s a fresher way to eat in any case. And, now the veg­ans have some more inter­est­ing options to eat!

What has been the biggest strug­gle or obsta­cle you’ve had to over­come in order to get your prod­uct onto shelves?

I think the biggest strug­gle was find­ing the right space to set up our pro­duc­tion kitchen. It took months to find the right space and it was incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing! It was like shop­ping for your first home all over again. We finally found this great space in the west end with lots of light, high ceil­ings and lots of artists as well as other small food com­pa­nies and cater­ers around. It’s the per­fect cre­ative space for me to work and get inspired!

Related posts:

1. Ontario Food Hero — Chef
2. Required Reading
3. For the Love of it — your chance to win a framed print!
4. Sweet Potato Chowder for my vegan pals
5. Ontario Food Heroes– Connector