Saskatchewan
Prairie on a Plate
Hearth Restaurant in Saskatoon is nationally recognized for its elevated prairie cooking
By Izabela Jaroszynski
The mushroom dish at Hearth is almost too beautiful to disturb. Feathered with a spring-green lichen and studded with golden chanterelles swimming in a delicate sauce, the dish is a showstopper.
"It's kind of like the ultimate dish that everyone loses their mind about," says Thayne Robstad, chef and co-owner of Hearth Restaurant in Saskatoon. Alongside his partner, Beth Rogers, Thayne has built a restaurant that has appeared multiple times on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list.
Beyond the beauty of the dish and the complexity of its flavours is the prairie-first philosophy that brings it to the table. The mushrooms are a mix of wild and cultivated varieties. The lichen (or reindeer moss) is foraged in the province's northern boreal forest, where it grows alongside the Saskatchewan chanterelles. House-made sourdough ciabatta pulls it all together.
It is a dish that has been on the menu in some form since Hearth first opened and has evolved as Thayne, Beth and their team have learned more about the ingredients growing around them.
Housed inside the Remai Modern, Hearth itself is a work of art, with a wall of windows overlooking the South Saskatchewan River.
For Thayne and Beth, the view outside those windows is more than a backdrop. Saskatchewan — what grows here, the people who produce it, and the friendly prairie welcoming spirit — has shaped the restaurant from the beginning.
"We try to champion Saskatchewan food," Thayne says. "To be a library of Saskatchewan flavours and hospitality and dishes."
In the beginning, that meant taking what he and Beth had learned as chefs and applying it to the food their grandmothers had made for them as children. Over the years, that understanding of prairie cuisine has continued to grow.
"It's a soul-feeding food. It's a joyous food," Thayne says. "Generally speaking, when I'm enjoying it most, it's certainly lacking in pretension."
And regardless of how many ingredients or techniques find their way onto a plate, there is one requirement: the food should be grounded here.
"It has to be comprised of ingredients that are from here and give us a sense of time and place."
Putting that philosophy into practice has meant developing relationships with an ever-growing network of Saskatchewan farmers, producers and foragers.
Thayne estimates that he and chef de cuisine Kevin Monych have about 45 people in their Rolodex. He rattles off some of them almost as shorthand: "Jim — tomatoes, Brad — rabbits, Curtis — lentils."
Others have introduced him to ingredients he didn't know Saskatchewan produced at all. He's particularly interested in wild foods and has built relationships with foragers who bring mushrooms and other edible plants into the kitchen.
"We just discovered samphire," he says, describing an edible succulent similar to sea asparagus that grows in salty conditions in Saskatchewan.
Picked at the right stage, he says, it can be as salty as a brined olive. At Hearth, they've been pickling it, frying it and finding different ways to work it into dishes.
"It’s a soul-feeding food. It’s a joyous food. Generally speaking, when I'm enjoying it most, it's certainly lacking in pretension."
Thayne and Beth met in Saskatoon in 2007, when they were working at restaurants down the street from one another. Thayne was completing his Red Seal apprenticeship, but at the time, he felt that advancing as a chef meant leaving the city.
The couple moved first to Vancouver, later to Toronto, and spent time travelling across North America, eating, drinking and learning along the way. Still, Saskatchewan kept pulling them home.
“We have to come back. We have to do a business. We want to be independent,” Thayne recalls of the feeling that began to take hold.
Eventually, they did, opening Hearth in Saskatoon and turning their attention to the food of the prairies.
When Hearth first opened, it operated out of a Saskatoon strip mall in a space roughly one-third the size of its current home. The move to the Remai Modern gave Hearth room to grow, expanding its team and kitchen capacity and allowing the restaurant to add lunch and brunch alongside its dinner service.
But through that growth, Thayne and Beth have held onto what they wanted Hearth to be from the beginning.
“At the core of it, like we always wanted the restaurant to feel very warm, very inviting and have that kind of prairie hospitality that we were raised with.”
Visit Hearth Restaurant inside the Remai Modern at 102 Spadina Crescent E in Saskatoon.