My Story

Buckle up, it’s a long one.

My name is Michael Collings Moore, but my whole name is Michael James Aurel Nelson Collings Moore. I go by Michael for short.

I was born in Sudbury, Ontario and moved around throughout my whole life. After being born, my family moved to Timmins (ON) until I was 10. After Timmins, I spent a year in Britt (On), then a year in Vancouver (B.C). For middle school, I moved back to Timmins and then for grade 9,10,11, I moved to Haileybury(On). For my senior year of high school, I moved back to Nelson(B.C). When I graduated, I moved back to Sudbury where I settled for about 7 years. When I was just about 26 years old, I moved to Toronto to start the rest of my life.

I didn’t think it at the time, but I’m very happy I had the opportunity to move so much. I was able to experience different communities that helped shape what my values are today, food being one of them. Moving and traveling across Canada gave me some perspective on how big and diverse Canada really is. Every province and territory has something different to offer and I want to take advantage of that.

When I moved to Sudbury after high school, I was lucky to meet my girlfriend, Sara-Anne. One of the first things we talked about was what we wanted to do now that we’re older. I always wanted to be a chef, but was intimidated because of the unglamorous lifestyle people told me about. A few years after meeting Sara-Anne, she was hired as a server at a new Italian restaurant. She told me that they were looking for more staff and that I should apply. Wanting to still be a chef, I jumped at the opportunity, but didn’t expect much considering I had no experience in a kitchen. I thought, best-case scenario I would be hired as a dishwasher or maybe a server. I went to my interview and was told that they would be happy to hire me as a line-cook and train me from scratch. I now had my first kitchen job.

While working at this Italian restaurant, I learned a lot about Italian cuisine and even more about working hard. I was now living an ‘unglamorous lifestyle’ and I was loving it. I told the owners that I wanted to go to culinary school to learn more about everything a restaurant had to offer. They told me, “If you go to culinary school, you wont learn anything there that you haven’t already learned here” and I believed them. My drive to learn as much as I can helped me work my way up to kitchen manager. When I got the position, I was initially ecstatic, but was soon underwhelmed. I felt like there was so much more I could learn, so I quit.

My next kitchen job was at one of the top restaurants in Sudbury. It was a vegan Mexican restaurant. My excitement was back, and I started absorbing as much as I could about this completely different type of cuisine. It wasn’t long before I worked my way up to another manager position. In my time there, I started to think of what I wanted to do with my career. I’ve helped run an Italian kitchen and a Mexican kitchen. I started reflecting on my life and one thing I took pride in was being Canadian. I’ve moved and traveled across Canada multiple times and was able to see what my Country had to offer. It came to me; I wanted to own a Canadian style restaurant.

I saw my vision for the first time and a newfound excitement. The only thing was, I didn’t know what Canadian themed cuisine was. I thought there must be more to it than poutine and maple syrup. I did some research and saw that Canada had close to no reputation when it came to restaurants. I thought if other countries were able to showcase what foods they had to offer and be globally ‘delicious’, so could Canada. I added to my vision that I want to help shape the foundation for Canadian ‘haute’ cuisine.

I realized that I was still only a cook and needed to be a chef. From the inspiration of my vision and a loving push from Sara-Anne, I applied to culinary school. I was accepted and soon quit my job. I moved to Toronto to start the rest of my life and I couldn’t be more excited.