YAM magazine’s Best Restaurant Awards 2024 celebrate Greater Victoria, B.C.’s exciting food scene, judged by an independent panel of chefs and food experts.
BY CINDA CHAVICH | PHOTOS BY JEFFREY BOSDET
Chef of the Year: Clark Deutscher, Hanks, Nowhere and Ate *A Restaurant
1001 Douglas Street | $$-$$$ | atearestaurant.com/hanks-a-restaurant | Reservations suggested
Clark Deutscher is the first to admit that he’s not a chef, in the strictly “culinary school, Red Seal-certified” sense of the word. He’s a hard-working and creative cook, but his restaurant experience comes from his own entrepreneurial endeavours, with a focus on ethical ingredients and the local farmers who produce them.
“I read a lot, I travel a lot, and I just love food,” says Deutscher, who started his career as a banker and now has three restaurants, clustered together in the historic Sussex Building on Douglas Street.
It all started with his obsession with competitive slow BBQ and a little joint in Ucluelet. A decade ago, he opened the meat-centric Hanks in Victoria, where he honed his cooking skills and gathered a solid following for his nose-to-tail butchery.
Next came Nowhere, with co-owner Devon Revelle, channelling the same hyper-local ideas in seafood-forward tasting menus. Last year, his wife Jonna — a geologist with an MBA — gave up her day job to open Ate, a casual spot showcasing her Filipino family recipes, with a modern twist.
Deutscher is in charge of developing menus for all three restaurants — as seasonal ingredients arrive from their farm partners, he riffs on the possibilities. At Hanks there’s a $50 “Today’s Best Things” menu and a $75 chef’s tasting menu, along with a variety of innovative plates. It’s a scratch kitchen on every level — whether the Filipino purple yam (ube) buns made with house-milled Island grains for Ate or the ricotta cheese for smoked sturgeon agnolotti.
A zero-waste approach makes for innovative, and sometimes challenging, ideas. The Count Chocula pig blood, chocolate and cinnamon ice cream, based on an Italian dessert, is just one example.
Runners-up:
Corbin Mathany, Ugly Duckling Dining & Provisions
Ken Nakano, Inn at Laurel Point