Feast on local food in Chisholm garden of delights

Visiting the Wasi Chefs social media pages should come with a cautionary note about scrolling while hungry.

The sites are jam-packed with eye-popping images of their kitchen creations: thick and juicy bison-pork burgers, sky-high nests of meatball-topped fettuccine, crisp, cucumber-tomato salads, sugar-kissed raspberry-vanilla turnovers.

It seems impossible to look away without a rumble in your stomach and a hankering for the real thing.

Luckily, fans can indulge in René and Laura Dubois’ gastronomic delights by reserving a seat at one of their well-received garden dinners, held at the couple's Wistiwasing Farms property in Chisholm, south of North Bay.

There, under a covered pavilion, surrounded by the site's vegetable gardens, flowers, and resident meat animals, guests are treated to a themed dinner created by the couple from scratch. One night pasta's on the menu, while on another, burgers might be featured.

More than just a meal, the dinners are designed to be an experience, where guests can see the farm-to-table concept in action.

“Some people walk around before dinner, and they go and check out our animals that we raise; we have the lake, we have the gardens,” René said. “We've had a really good response so far.”

​This marks the first full year of operation since the Dubois launched the concept in 2022, he noted. But they're far from newbies to the northeastern Ontario food scene.

For more than 16 years, the couple owned and operated the White Owl Bistro, a North Bay mainstay known for its commitment to local food, which they purchased some time after each graduating from Canadore College's culinary management program.

See: Popular local restaurant sold

A little more than two years ago, after a “booming” period during COVID, René said he and his wife decided they wanted a break from the hectic pace of restaurant life.

"We had been thinking about selling the restaurant for a couple of years prior to that, and were just trying to decide on when was a good time to do that,” René said.

Their initial plan was to promote their sous chefs to more prominent roles in the kitchen, enabling René and Laura to focus on their farm, which they purchased in 2010.

When they didn't get the response they were hoping for, they instead decided to sell. Anticipating it would take some time to find the right buyer, the Dubois were looking forward to having some breathing room before the transition.

But after a brief time on the market, a buyer was secured and the sale was complete within a couple of months.

“It happened really, really quick,” René said. “It caught us by surprise.”​

​It was time for the Dubois to start their new chapter.

Their first step was purchasing a kitchen trailer, which they hauled to local farmers markets and catering jobs where they cooked up tasty dishes for eager patrons. By the following year, work had begun on their outdoor pavilion and the garden dinner concept started to gel.

“We knew we wanted to do something here at the farm,” René said. “The initial thought was possibly to build that pavilion so that we can basically have an outdoor kitchen where we can have cooking classes and things like that. But then it ended up being a sitting area for customers.”

The Dubois release a month's worth of dates a few weeks in advance, René said. Each dinner is limited to about two dozen guests, who sign up for a spot at the table by reaching out to the chefs directly.

On a recent August evening, the multi-course menu included zucchini fritters with garlic aioli to start, accompanied by house bread, followed by an entrée of either beef lasagna or courgette and mushroom cannelloni, with dessert, tea and coffee rounding out the meal.

Continuing the trend from their restaurant days, René said he and Laura use as many local ingredients as possible in their kitchen, sourced either from their own land, or from nearby farmers, producers and suppliers.

In addition to expansive vegetable gardens, the Dubois raise their own chickens, pigs and turkeys, and they’ve even dabbled in duck. Everything else is made from scratch.

“Local food is definitely the focal point of our business here,” René said.

Garden dinners are really just the start of what the couple hopes to achieve on their farm.

At their farmstand, customers can purchase a range of homemade, ready-to-eat comfort foods like hearty soups, mac and cheese, and chicken-cauliflower curry. Sweet treats and pastries, hand-crafted dips, and fresh veggies can also be picked up here.

Last year, the Dubois installed two units from the Algonquin Pod Company — small wooden cabins that can each fit up to four people — for vacation rentals. Equipped with propane, they can be used year-round, and the Dubois will even prepare food for guests, depending on their availability.

“We always do some trails in the bush for snowshoeing, and we have a nice, big campfire, and I usually like to try to make an ice rink on the lake, too,” René said. “So we can attract people with those activities as well.”

After recently acquiring their liquor licence, they'll now be able to offer alcoholic beverages during their dinners, and work is ongoing to winterize their greenhouse, so they can host events there.

They've built a cob oven to do more cooking outside the kitchen trailer, and René said they're mulling the addition of a wood-fired stove, so pizza nights could be an option in the future. Their original idea of holding cooking classes on site is also on the table.​

​Though there are some aspects of the restaurant business they miss — having a larger staff to help with dinners, for one — René said the move to a home-based business is the fulfillment of a long-held dream to offer local-food experiences of their crafting.

Leaving behind the frenzy of a busy eatery means he and Laura now have more time to spend meeting their guests, getting feedback on their meal, and spreading the word about local food production as an economic driver for the region.

“We tell them how important it is to support local,” René said.

“And we know how your food is being taken care of — the animals are being fed right, produce is from around here. So you're keeping the money within your surroundings and trying to support everybody around you.”