James Walt
CELEBRATING A PASSION
FOR FARM-TO-TABLE DISTINCTION
Executive Chef Araxi Restaurant + Oyster Bar
STORY BY ALEXANDRA GILL
IMAGES BY JOERN ROHDE
It takes a village to grow a restaurant. Such is the subtext of Araxi: Roots to Shoots Farm Fresh Recipes, a sumptuous new farm-to-table
cookbook by Executive Chef James Walt. Following
on the success of his award-winning first book,
this one isn’t so much about Walt and his cooking.
Rather, it is a tribute to all the hard-working people
— the bartenders, the sommeliers, the managers, the
cooks and, most of all, the farmers and food suppliers
— who make the acclaimed Whistler restaurant go
round.
“I realized somewhere along the line that you
can’t do everything yourself,” Walt says, a humble
collaborator, who celebrates his 20th anniversary with
the restaurant this year. “I’ve worked with a lot of
egomaniacs in the past. As a cook, it’s not a great
place to be. It may be great for learning technique,
but not for your own personal growth.”
To keep his brigade engaged, Walt organizes a cook-off every two weeks. The suppliers donate the meat,
fish and produce, and come as guests for dinner. The
younger cooks create new dishes.
“It helps them do what they want to do, it helps the
producers see the potential of their products, and it
helps me with new ideas,” he explains. “The more you
can include other people and give them ownership,
the greater the payoff.”
Born and raised in Ontario, Walt moved to British
Columbia shortly after graduating from Stratford
Chef’s School, primarily because he was seduced by
the West Coast’s local-food philosophy, which in the
early 1990s had yet to hit the mainstream. He picked
fruit in the Okanagan and worked in a number
of Vancouver kitchens before landing a job with
Sinclair Phillip at Vancouver Island’s Sooke Harbour
House, the Canadian equivalent of Alice Waters’
groundbreaking Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.
