The theatre of the Chef is the dining room. The kitchen, their stage. The kitchen brigade, an ensemble of cooks presenting a culinary performance. Nowhere is this analogy more apropos than in the kitchen of the Stratford Festival, where Executive Chef Kendrick Prins imagines dishes and menus to complement each new season’s playbill.
Since The Stratford Festival offers world class theatre, Chef Prins, an eight-year veteran of the theatre’s kitchen, relishes the challenge to match that with world class food.
“I really enjoy the aspect of coming up with food that compliments the playbill,” he says. “I don’t like doing the same thing year after year, so when the plays change, I get to do something that mimics the theatre with food.”
In the café at the Festival Theatre, Chef Prins wanted to come up with a subtle nod to the musical, Something Rotten, so he created a vegan kimchi, which is a fermented salad.
His perimeter-garden on the patio outside the Festival’s Green Room is a veritable pantry of herbs. Chives, rosemary and thyme, among others, perfume the air as the chef does his walkabout to select just the right notes for his dinners.
The Festival’s Anniversary Dinner on July 13 is a journey back to the 1950s when the Stratford Festival stage was first built, with a modern twist to showcase the evolution of the Festival over the past seventy-one years.
The dinner will be hosted by David Prosser, a 26-year veteran of the Festival as its literary and editorial director. He will be joined by Ross Stuart, teacher, administrator and researcher in the theatre faculty at York University for 43 years, whose Ph.D. thesis analyzed productions on the Stratford open stage.
Dinner will be served family-style with guests offered Citrus Salad with white wine vinaigrette, Waldorf Salad, and Broccoli Salad Supreme to start, followed by Boeuf Bourguignon, Duck a l’Orange, Nutty Stuffed Mushrooms, Zucchini Casserole and Gratin Dauphinois, and for the final act, Chocolate Mousse, Summer Fruit Tart and Ambrosia.
The ‘Stage to Plate’ dinner event enables a dynamic immersion into the world of this season’s plays.
“I take inspiration from the shows this year and translate it into food, so I’ll build the dishes with accents from the different plays within them,” Prins said.
The August 11 dinner event includes a Pâté en Croûte with gravlax, caviar and miso devilled egg; Codfish Dumplings; Jerk Elk Tenderloin with broccoli florets, potato pave, chèvre and spinach; and Tarte Tropézienne with dates and pears.
During the dinner, select speakers will initiate discussion on the myriad ways theatre from around the world has influenced the Canadian stage, as well as what Canadian theatre has been able to offer the world.
The 2023 season’s dinner series, which included collaborations with celebrity chefs, was met with great fanfare. Chef John Higgins prepared an Elizabethan Feast in tribute to William Shakespeare; Chef Tawnya Brant shared the Tastes From Turtle Island, inspired by Women of the Fur Trade; Chef Matthew Sullivan and Maître Fromager Afrim Pristine presented Un Grande Pasto Italiano, inspired by Grand Magic. Chef Sullivan returned for a molecular gastronomy experience called Franken-Dine, inspired by Frankenstein Revived.
The 2024 season’s Meighen Forum events include these not-to-be-missed culinary experiences worthy of the stage by a kitchen passionate about the intersection between food and culture, dining and theatre.
