Kitchen Obsessed
Chef/Owner Fern Kirouac of In Ferno’s Bistro combines high quality presentation with surprisingly low prices. It’s an obsession that ensures his customers leave happy, making this one of the most popular restaurants in the city.
By Brad Hughes
We sit in the restaurant awaiting the chef on a late Monday afternoon. Improbably, there are still half a dozen tables lingering over their late lunch, including an older couple discussing restraint as they eye the pastry case filled with delectable tarte tatin, maple sugar and key lime pies. Chef Fern arrives, his spiky hair, dark good looks and designer glasses lending him a boomer-era rock star aura. Patrons come over for hugs, kisses and quick chats about travel, life and the pursuit of happiness as he works his way through the room. We take it all in, thinking—this is a pretty fun place to hang out!
That’s exactly what he wanted to create when he left the family-owned La Vieille Gare to open his own “little place” on December 12, 2003. “It was supposed to be a retirement project.” says Chef Fern as he joins us. “I had six people working in a small restaurant with an unlisted phone number,” he explains, “offering simple French bistro food.” He opened on the cusp of winter, with no advertising or publicity. Yet the place was jammed from day one. The buzz was fierce as foodies and Francophones burned their phone lines to tell friends to get over to In Ferno’s. Here was a place serving classic continental bites at everyday low prices; a chef cooking Michelin-influenced food with a Wal-Mart fanaticism for cost control.
“My needs are simple,” explains Chef Fern. “So, I don’t charge a lot. I would rather keep the prices low and put a lot of people through the restaurant.” In classic French style, he uses less popular (and less expensive) cuts of meat such as beef cheeks and ball tip sirloin to keep food costs down. But the human touch is important. The kitchen is alive with bodies, even on a so-called “slow day”.
In fact, this day started at 5:30 am for the busy chef when he was out picking goldenrod and bullrushes for a 7 am photo shoot for Canadian Geographic magazine’s November issue. They wanted some traditional wetlands-inspired cuisine, so Chef Fern obliged with goldenrod bullrush crepes with wild berries and merlot raspberry sauce. Our needs were a little less esoteric, seeking a seasonal fall menu that was relatively simple for a home cook to prepare, and one that required a minimum of foraging. Since it was being photographed, we wanted all the food in a harvest colour palette. A minor challenge for a chef who has been tinkering with food his whole life.
In fact, it was while working with his father, the late Fern Senior, in the kitchen at La Vieille Gare, that the younger Kirouac discussed the concept that would become In Ferno’s. “Pop felt that fine dining was going to evolve into a more relaxed atmosphere. One that still offered high concept food,” says Chef Fern, “The last thing I had not done was build a restaurant from the ground up. So that was my motivation.” Now there is a new generation of father and son in the restaurant, as son Chris manages the front while his father cooks.
Fern Kirouac Senior was the executive chef at the International Inn in 1970 when his twelve -year-old son started helping out in the kitchen. Young Fern spent ten years apprenticing with his dad, learning on the job while eating unusual foods at home like sweetbreads and calf brains. Today his seven-year-old son Zach is following a similar path; dining twice a week on sashimi with his father at Edohei, while taking food like foie gras and octopus to school for lunch. Both his dad and Edohei Chef/Owner Ohno see Zach as a budding chef. When asked how he eats, Zach answers, “I eat with my eyes.”
That philosophy imbues the In Ferno’s experience where colour and presentation is evident everywhere from the local art on the walls to the mismatched multi-coloured napkins on the tables and the fresh flowers from a neighbourhood florist throughout.
The Kirourac family have been restaurant owners since 1980, when they bought the Red Lantern in St. Boniface. At the time, Fern spent a brief stint with the Airliner Hotel as executive chef, but he was soon enticed back into the family fold. In 1983 his family also bought La Vieille Gare, with father and son running that operation, while mother and sister continued at the Red Lantern.
Although it seems destiny that he would be a chef, Fern says that music has always been a big part of his life, and when he left La Vieille Gare he considered opening a recording studio before diving headline into the renovation on Des Meurons that became In Ferno’s. He still plays guitar and piano “whenever I can, to relax.” He also claims yoga as a great counterpoint to the 16 hour days the restaurant can easily demand.
Three years after opening, Chef Fern is just putting the finishing touches on his restaurant. “Doing all the things I didn’t have the money for when we opened,” he says. There are new chairs and colours upstairs and down. “The idea is to give each room a different feel,” Fern says. He’s especially excited about the high-concept bathrooms and environmentally friendly touches throughout like natural fibre carpet and LED lighting.
In the kitchen, Chef Fern has a musician’s flair, intense and fluid, he treats cooking a lot like music. “I like to improvise,” he says. Hence the lengthy list of daily specials. Along with a new longer menu being unveiled this month that is teeming with appetizers, he also has a whole new list of specials in his head ready to go.
The chef/owner obsesses over ever detail, from recycling his wine bottles to sourcing the best lamb shanks for his most popular dish. “What keeps us going is the customers,” he says. “We like to send them home with memories.” Their enthusiastic response is his best reward for all that effort.
