TORONTO—Three prominent Canadian chefs have joined the academic world and become entrepreneurs at the same time.
Shawn Whalen and two of his protégés, Lesia Burlak and David Bakker, have bought the franchise for the Toronto West campus of Liaison College, the private cooking school that claims to be the largest trainer of chefs and cooks in Canada.
Whalen left his post as executive chef and director of food and beverage at the The Westin Prince Toronto hotel, a job he took after leaving the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville hotel where he had been executive chef for more than 10 years.
Burlak worked as sous chef at the Marriott Bloor Yorkville and Bakker as executive sous chef at the Westin Prince, both under Whalen who also coached the two young chefs for culinary competitions.
Whalen has won more than 50 gold medals and was captain of Culinary Team Canada which won four gold medals and one Olympic championship gold at the World Culinary Olympics in 2004.
Burlak hosts the television show Foodies and is the only woman and youngest person ever to win the Culinary World Cup. As a member of Culinary Team Canada from 2001 through 2005 she won 16 gold medals in international and local competitions, and in 2004 made the Maclean’s magazine list of the Top 30 Canadians Under 30.
Bakker was a member of Culinary Team Canada from 2005 to 2008 and is currently on Culinary Team Ontario. In 2003 he came out on top in a cooking competition and was named Canadian national junior culinary champion by the Canadian Culinary Federation. Last year he was named one of Toronto’s top nine up-and-coming chefs, at the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo in Toronto.
Liaison College is a franchise business that was started in 1996 as a school with a kitchen course aimed at sending out graduates with the practical skills that would allow them to fit immediately into a commercial kitchen and start working productively from day one. It also was started with a foodservice operator course teaching the business side of a restaurant, and a sales representative course for the supplier side.
Today the college has 10 campuses in Ontario and offers basic and advanced diploma programs in the culinary arts. Its head office is in Hamilton.
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