In a milestone year, Vancouver Chef David Hawksworth is counting his blessings

Chef-owner David Hawksworth of Hawksworth Restaurant. Photo by Mark Yuen Visuals /Handout

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It’s a busy year for David Hawksworth.

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The Vancouver-born and raised chef and restaurateur is celebrating 15 years of his namesake, Michelin-recommended restaurant, Hawksworth, along with 15 years of Bel Café and 10 years of Nightingale.

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Oh, and there also happens to be an exciting little beachfront restaurant in the works, too.

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“Our new restaurant project is the Kits Beach, the old Boathouse,” Hawksworth says. “We’re planning that meticulously right now, and hope to be open sometime next year.”

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Calling it an “amazing project,” the celebrated chef says he’s looking forward to bringing the downtown Vancouver restaurant’s family-style take on salads, pasta and more to the world-famous waterfront.

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“Kits Beach is such an iconic place in Vancouver,” he says. “We just really can’t wait to be open with probably Vancouver’s best view.”

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The project is one milestone of many for the chef, who has also been a culinary partner of Air Canada for a decade. In fact, he admits he still can’t quite believe what he and his teams have built in his hometown.

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“I’ve got to pinch myself all the time,” he says. “It’s really is a dream come true.”

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A selection of dishes from Hawksworth Restaurant. Photo by Mark Yuen Visuals /Handout

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That dream dates back to when Hawksworth was just 19.

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“To have my own restaurant here, in Vancouver downtown,” he recalls of that early ambition. Little did he know then that he would one day have not one, but several.

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Hawksworth’s love of food stems from his grandmother, who he says was an “incredible” cook.

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“She cooked everything from scratch, and it was all over the place,” he says. “As in, it could have been tripe, liver, all kinds of stuff that was a little funky. Very British cooking, but also it was cooked with her whole heart, and she would make everything from scratch.”

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The chef says there was nothing better than heading over to his grandparents’ house for dinner or lunch. But it was actually an experience with another family member that really lit the fire for Hawksworth to pursue a culinary career.

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“An uncle who was a chef in the U.K., I went to go see him at his restaurant, and he made me a dish, and I had it in his office, and we chatted, and I remember tasting that beef tenderloin with a peppercorn sauce,” he recalls. “It has haunted me ever since.”

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The triggering memory of that singular dish, Hawksworth says, was linked to the simplicity of it.

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“It was a perfect sauce, the perfect amount. The beef was cooked perfectly. It was so simple, yet so incredibly memorable,” he says. ”And, just to have that time with my uncle and to talk about what he did from day to day, I was really inspired. And it really clicked for me at the time.”

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Hawksworth’s path would take him to Europe, where he trained over the course of a decade, working at Michelin-starred restaurants such as Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, L’Escargot and The Square. Hawksworth returned to Vancouver in 2000 to take the helm of the former restaurant West.