By Joanne Sasvari
Chef Andrea Alridge brings hot skills and live-fire cooking to restored Rosemead House.
Andrea Alridge is ready to light a fire under the Victoria dining scene. The talented chef is bringing her passion for live-fire cooking to Janevca Kitchen and Lounge, the gorgeous new restaurant at Esquimalt’s lovingly renovated, circa 1906 Rosemead House.
“The whole concept is local ingredients, wood-fire driven,” she says. “With the fire, we’re going to have a bit of a steak program. We’ll have dry-aged steaks and whole-animal butchery. We’ll be doing wood-fired smoking as well.”
The 2021 Top Chef Canada finalist is inspired by Francis Mallmann, the Patagonian chef known as the king of outdoor cooking, but brings with her nearly a decade of experience in some of Vancouver’s best Italian restaurants — CinCin Ristorante and Osteria Savio Volpe — and plans to introduce a “really extensive” pasta program. But she also intends to explore the cuisine of her own Jamaican-Filipino heritage. “Now it’s time to show what else I can do,” she says.
The restaurant, named for owner Lenny Moy’s three children, Janelle, Evan and Cailee, is scheduled to open October 23rd and features 96 seats, a year-round patio, a cozy bar and lounge, and two private dining rooms. But for Alridge, it’s all about the luxe Grillworks wood-fired oven. So what is it she loves so much about cooking with fire?
“The smell. The feel, the attention to detail it demands from me. The flavour you get out of, not just meat, but vegetables, you just can’t compare,” she says. “It’s all of it.”
