At his Quebec City restaurant Laurie Raphaël named after his two children (he has another restaurant of the same name in Montréal) Daniel Vézina  assumes various roles – chef; owner; teacher. 

For a chef who has achieved star status in Québec, with cooking shows, books and restaurants, I expect that Vézina had long ago left the kitchen. As I wait to speak with him, I peer through a small window in the dining room that looks onto the kitchen and see him working. “Being a chef means being at ease in the kitchen, going shopping, wandering the markets, knowing how to handle a knife – all of it,” explains Vézina when we meet. He is a guy’s guy, with what I can only describe as a deeply masculine personality. He is without airs or pretense noting that people come up to him in the street and pat him on the back greeting him with a friendly hello. “If I’ve done anything in Québec it has been making great cooking accessible to everyone.  I’ve taught people that fine dining is also taking a carrot from the garden, and cooking it to perfection with a little bit of butter,” says Vézina noting that television has given him the forum to teach.

Vézina’s rigour in the kitchen stems from a difficult childhood where he saw cooking as a way out. “I was a real gourmand as a kid. Even when I was very little I would tell my Mom what improvements to make on her cooking – more salt, more pepper, whatever I thought it needed.  One day I went to see a school counselor. ‘Chef’ was one of the professions on the list. My mother had always said I should be a chef so when I went into cooking it was love at first sight.”