Edible Profile: Don Genova
Once upon a time, little Donny Genova used to sling soda at his Aunt Polly’s Ontario diner for 10 cents an hour. That fact alone probably tells you everything you really need to know about one of Canada’s favourite food personalities: he’s comfortable with people, confident in a kitchen, and knows how to hustle.
Five decades later, Don Genova—the force behind popular CBC Radio columns such as Pacific Palate, Food for Thought and Food Matters, and author of Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands—is still working a room, this time at Victoria’s The London Chef, the Island’s premier cooking school for home chefs.
“London Chef teaches people how to do things that they can easily replicate at home,” says Genova, a former radio broadcaster who built an unconventional career from his unbridled passion for honest, local food and his unpretentious approach to preparing it. “For me, that’s Italian food. You come out with a full belly and you’ve learned how to make three new dishes, and I’m telling stories the whole time. My wife [Ramona Montagnes] calls it ‘edutainment’, and I think people really enjoy it!” (Indeed, they do: his classes always fill quickly.)
For the Love of Food and Teaching
Genova has recently come to realize that teaching is a core theme of his professional identity. “When my radio gig came to an end in 2015, I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my next chapter. All along, in one way or another, I have been teaching people, whether it was as a producer at a radio station, a continuing education instructor, or a blogger.” As a teacher, he says his most important contribution to the BC food scene has been “to connect people with their food, to put them in touch with good food.”
Retired CBC Radio host Mark Forsythe, who has worked closely with Genova over the decades, says, “Whether it’s broadcasting, writing or chatting across the dinner table, Don is one of the best storytellers I know. His gusto for celebrating quality local food culture knows no bounds and often inspires me to look more closely at what’s on my plate and how it got there.”
To that end, Genova is committed to featuring local Island ingredients—and the stories of the people who produce them—in his cooking classes (and in the second edition of his book, now in progress). It was, in fact, the abundance of quality local fare made by interesting personalities that drew him to Vancouver Island in 2004.
“Here, everybody has a really great back story,” he laughs. “Like, for example, Haltwhistle Cheese in the Cowichan Valley. Cory [Spencer] was an IT guy living in Vancouver who lived down the road from Les Amis du Fromage and got so excited about cheese that he decided to go to France to learn to make it when he got laid off. There’s hardly anyone in the business that comes with a simple back story.”
On a late August evening at The London Chef, Genova is showing the class how to prepare local Roma tomatoes for slow roasting and paying tribute to the late James Barber, aka The Urban Peasant, who inspired his own relaxed, accessible approach to cooking.
From Eating to Cooking
Genova may have grown up eating good food, but when he left Brampton, ON to take a radio job in Terrace, BC in 1983, he certainly didn’t know how to make it. (“My mom always did the cooking!”) At a yard sale, he picked up a copy of Barber’s illustrated Flash in the Pan cookbook for 25 cents. “I cooked my way through that whole book,” he says.
(He still has the book, bearing the tiny circles that marked his successful completion of each recipe—and an inscription from Barber himself, added years later when they became friends: “To Don. With admiration for a really great job.”)
While careful to explain to the class that he is not a trained chef—“just a guy who really likes to cook!”—Genova displays Red Seal skills throughout the evening, answering questions about the origins of certain spices, demonstrating proper chopping techniques, and calmly and efficiently resolving a small issue of soupy couscous.
For Qualicum Beach’s Lesley LaCouvée and her 19-year-old son Aslin, the class is clearly a hit. They have come for some bonding time before Aslin leaves for his first year at McGill in Montreal. When the Seafood Couscous alla Trapanese is ready, Genova lowers the lights, kicks up the music and invites the class to the long table to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Still at the stove, Aslin takes his first bite and tips his head back to savour the moment. “Yaaaaaaaaaah,” he sighs. “I wish I could do that at home!”
His mom smiles: “And now you can!”
