Chef Lee Cooper joins elite culinary masters to square off during annual Northern Chefs Alliance & FarmOn! Foundation Dinner
Chef Lee Cooper of L’Abattoir will chop it up with nine celebrity chefs from across the U.S. and Canada at the annual Northern Chefs Alliance & FarmOn! Foundation Dinner.
The charitable event will take place on Sunday, August 17, at the 175-acre Fish & Game Farm in Hudson, NY. The chefs will serve up a gourmet dinner featuring the bounties of the Hudson Valley region, with ice-cold cocktails and barbecue prepped using several fire pits, smokers and grills. All proceeds from the dinner will benefit the FarmOn! Foundation. FarmOn! is dedicated to bringing awareness to food choices and sources to reinvigorate respect for farming.
The invitation to prep dinner with some of the top chefs on the continent is an honour. Chef Cooper has racked up numerous accolades over the course of his career, bringing more than a decade of industry experience to the helm of L’Abattoir. In the past, Cooper has worked in several Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.S. and the UK, most notably Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck. Upon returning to Vancouver, he accepted the position of sous chef at The Pear Tree Restaurant before being scouted by Jean-Georges Vongerichten to be part of the opening management team at Market by Jean-Georges in Vancouver’s Shangri-La Hotel. Western Living has named Lee one of its 40 Foodies Under 40, and the Vancouver Sun ranked him among their Top 10 up-and-coming chefs.
Fostering connectivity between U.S. and Canadian chefs, the Northern Chefs Alliance was conceived by Matt Jennings of Farmstead Inc. in Rhode Island to foster collaboration between the culinary creators located just across the border from each other. Each year, the alliance hosts several charitable dinners as a primary facet of its mandate. The inaugural events took place in 2013 in Boston and Toronto.
The other nine chefs prepping this year’s dinner include:
U.S.:
April Bloomfield – Spotted Pig, The Breslin – New York, NY
Matt Jennings – Townsman – Boston, MA
Sean Brock – McCrady’s, Husk – Charleston, S.C. and Nashville, TN
Jamie Bissonnette – Coppa, Toro – Boston, MA & New York, NY
Zakary Pelaccio, Jori Jayne Emde & Kevin Pomplun – Fish & Game – Hudson, NY
Canada:
Rob Gentile – Buca – Toronto, ON
Matty Matheson – Parts & Labour – Toronto, ON
Derek Dammann – Maison Publique – Montreal, QC
Jeremy Charles – Raymonds – St. John’s, NL
Opened in 2010, L’Abattoir quickly won fans with its French-inspired West Coast cuisine. WestEnder named it Best New Restaurant that year, and it was ranked third on enRoute’s national Best New Restaurant listing in 2011. The following year it won the Best Casual category in Vancouver magazine’s Restaurant Awards, as well as being named the No. 7 top restaurant in Canada on vacay.ca. Located in the centre of Gastown between historic Gaoler’s News and Blood Alley, the building housing the restaurant was constructed in the 19th century and is the site of the city’s first jail. Originally buttressed to the city’s main butchery and meat-packing district, the name L’Abattoir pays homage to the neighbourhood’s colourful past.
