Some of Ottawa's best restaurants have lost great chefs — to the pursuit of work life balance

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Buchipop and Burrow ran their course, and Larkin has returned to the restaurant business — but not as a chef. She is the operating partner of the Manx Hospitality Group, which owns the veteran, beloved, Elgin Street pub, The Manx, and the yet-to-open pasta restaurant Pony in Hintonburg.

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Former chef Patricia Larki is the operating partner of the Manx Hospitality group, which will open Pony, a pasta restaurant in Hintonburg. Photo by Jean Levac /POSTMEDIA

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“My heart is in hospitality,” says Larkin, 45. “I’ve landed in a place that is more operational.”

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Are her days of being a chef over? “Yeah,” she says. “I would not be opposed to cooking a little one-off thing here or there. It’s fun. I still love to do it. I do it for friends, I do it at home. I love it. But as a career, I think I’ve moved.”

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Larkin says that she enjoys the constant problem-solving that’s part of being a restaurant operator. “I like how every day is a little bit different,” says Larkin. “I’m always learning something new.” With Pony, which still has no fixed opening date, Larkin feels like she’s been able to flex her creativity.

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Another former chef, Marysol Foucault, feels like her new role allows her to reciprocate, in a way, after after being given many chances and opportunities as restaurateur.

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In August, Foucault came on board as the director of La Fab, the community arts centre in Chelsea. “It really touches me and moves me to see people who are so talented,” she says. “It moves me to help them flourish. It just makes me full of joy.”

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Marysol Foucault, director of Le Fab, a cultural centre in Chelsea, Quebec. Previously, Foucault she was a celebrated chef and restaurateur in Gatineau’s Hull sector. Photo by Jean Levac /POSTMEDIA

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Foucault was renowned on Ottawa’s culinary scene for two restaurants, Odile and Chez Edgar in Gatineau’s Hull sector. She competed in the 2014 Canadian Culinary Championship and she appeared on two seasons of the Flavour Network show Wall of Chefs. But she closed Chez Edgar, the last of her two businesses, in the summer of 2022, wanting to spend more time with her ailing mother and young family.

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How much does Foucault miss owning a restaurant or cooking in a restaurant? “I feel it’s part of a past life,” she says.

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Marysol Foucault, chef-owner of Gatineau’s popular breakfast-lunch-brunch spot, Chez Edgar, in 2014. Photo by Dyanne Wilson

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“My body couldn’t keep up with the volume that we were doing,” Foucault says. “That’s one thing that really led me to change career paths. I’m going to be 50 really soon, my body wasn’t following what my mind wanted to do. Had I done it on a smaller scale, maybe I could have gone on for longer.”

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Harriet Clunie, an acclaimed chef who had her own restaurant, the Beechwood Gastropub, in the late 2010s, has left restaurants behind for health reasons. She was the chef of Das Lokal in Lowertown about five years ago when a range of symptoms grew more acute — headaches, exhaustion, intense pain in her elbow that prevented her from using her knife, brain fog and short-term memory issues,” she says.

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“I didn’t know what as happening. One day my body just decided, ‘Nope, nope, we’re done.’

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Chef Harriet Clunie at Das Lokal Restaurant on Dalhousie Street in November, 2013. Photo by Wayne Cuddington /POSTMEDIA

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“At the time I really thought it was burnout, but as time went on, nothing got better, and some things got worse.” Clunie was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s possible that COVID-19 triggered her condition, she says.

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For the last year, Clunie has been on the Ontario Disability Support Program. “It’s only $1,400 a month,” she says. “That just covers my bills. I do have a bit of family support. If I didn’t, I would be going to the food bank.”

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Clunie says of her situation: “It’s not been all doom and gloom,” although she always has to be aware of her fluctuating energy levels and “what it will cost me if I need to do something.

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“If I do something social, it will probably take me two or three days to recover.”

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Harriet Clunie and her dog Peggy pose for a photo in Ottawa. Cluniet had to stop being a chef due to chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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Clunie says her condition has forced her to deeply contemplate who she is. “My identity for 20 years was in restaurants,” she says. “I was a chef. I was a cook. That was my life, and I don’t have that any more. So what is left?”

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She says she wants to work again, as long as accommodations could be made. “My mind is still there, and all the things that made me a good chef — solving problems and working under pressure. I’ve got notes and notes and notes about projects.”