Vancouver Culinary Event Celebrates Women in the Food and Beverage Field

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Yes Shef!

When: August 15 at 6:00 p.m.

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Where: Chambar Restaurant, 568 Beatty St., Vancouver

Tickets and information: Sold out; valelaasociacion.com

Siobhan Detkavich’s passion for cooking ignited with a dual credit culinary training class at Okanagan College she he enrolled during high school.

Since then, the Kelowna-based chef has made her way in the industry, making a name for herself with her cuisine that focuses on locality and draws from her indigenous Cowichan-Pacific Islander heritage.

At 23, the professional chef’s resume includes an impressive list of experience. He apprenticed at Terrafina at Hester Creek Winery with Chef Jenna Pillon; he worked as a chef de partie at Mission Hill; competed on the ninth season of Food Network Canada’s cooking show Top Chef Canada; just finished filming in Ottawa on a new food series; and has been given the green light to begin production on another food-focused TV show.

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“This year marks 10 years of being homeless,” says Detkavich. “And now, I just finished filming my first TV show.”

Without a doubt, his success comes down to his determination, talent and drive. But according to Detkavich, it’s also down to a few key culinary guides.

“I’ve had my share of amazing chefs and amazing mentors,” says Detkavich. “I definitely don’t think I’d be anywhere near the position I’m in if I didn’t have the nets that I’ve done.”

Detkavich points to Chef Pillon in particular as one of the biggest mentors of his young career.

“She was very patient with me,” says Detkavich. “Not only as a mentor in education through work, but she definitely took on an appropriate role as an employer mother.

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“Because my mom wasn’t always around when I was in high school and all that, she wanted to be that role model for me.”

During his time at Top Chef Canada, Detkavich sought to honor Pillon by recreating a plate of French toast that they had shared many times during their weekly lunches. Detkavich will look to honor that mentorship again on April 15 during the Yes Shef! event at Chambar Restaurant, where he will be joined by 15 other BC food and beverage professionals for the special event.

“I’m going to make brown butter gnocchi with mashed pumpkin kombucha. And then you’ll have wild mushrooms and sunchoke chips,” explains Detkavich of the planned main course. “I had so many different ideas of the dish I wanted to create. But then at the last minute, I just scrapped all of that and said, let’s make a dish that makes me feel at home.”

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The planned gnocchi recipe is a version of a dish that Pillon first taught Detkavich to make when he started working the “hot side of the line” in the Terrafina kitchen.

“It’s like my interpretation of that dish,” says Detkavich, noting that the addition to the menu is a fitting nod to his own role model during an event that is designed to create new relationships between mentors and trainees in professional kitchens.

The upcoming culinary event will feature an all-female team of five chefs (Detkavich, Andrea Carlson of Burdock and Co., Tia Kambas of Chambar, Mariana Gabilondo of Richmond Country Club and Daria Andriienko of Five Sails) along with five chef apprentices from Vancouver Community College creates dishes that will be paired with wines by five sommeliers (Shiva Reddy of Burdock and Co., Jo Owens of Vin Van, Esmé McLaughlin-Brooks of Chambar, Jenna Briscoe of Cafe Medina and Reverie Beall of AnnaLena), and a cocktail of welcome from waitress Yana Holdsworth of The Fifteen Group.

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The ticketed long table dinner will be hosted by Chef Meeru Dhalwala of Vij’s and My Bambiri.

Organized by the Women’s Recreation, Tourism and Hospitality Association (WORTH), a local society “dedicated to promoting women in the recreation, tourism and hospitality industries,” according to the website, the first Yes Shef! dinner was in 2019. That initial fundraising event (funds go to WORTH’s educational and networking events for women in the industry, which are offered for free or a minimal fee, depending on the organization ) equally exhausted.

Although not as fast as this year’s offer did.

“We sold out like two weeks after the ticket launch,” said Kambas, Chambar’s chief operating officer and event organizer. “And in Vancouver, which is known to be an up-and-coming city, it’s kind of wild that we were able to sell everything out so quickly.”

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Capped at 80 attendees, the event also aims to celebrate women working in an industry that is consistently dominated by men.

According to recent data from Tourism HR CanadaThere are currently 10,000 fewer women working in the food and beverage industry in BC compared to pre-pandemic levels. The number of men working in the industry during this time has increased.

“I came at a time when it was quite difficult to be a woman in a kitchen. It’s not as difficult as it was 10 or 15 years before me, but we’re definitely taking a lot of steps to make kitchens more inclusive,” says Kambas.

Starting out as a dishwasher at Chambar 17 years ago, Kambas is no stranger to the slow path to higher positions in a restaurant environment. It’s a career path that she says can often be slower for women due to lingering biases within the industry.

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“There came a point in my career where I thought, ‘Well, I don’t think I can go on.’ And that’s because sometimes I felt like I was being overlooked, especially when I was leaving Chambar and going to other places,” says Kambas.

Events like Yes Shef!, and the broader network of WORTH initiatives, aim to empower women in the industry to enter the field, take the steps to the next professional level and beyond.

“Having strong female leaders and working with young women essentially gives them the opportunity to grow and set goals,” says Kambas. “Just giving people the forum to speak openly. There is something great about that.

“And that’s how we become successful.”

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