A new restaurant in Esquimalt is cooking on fire

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Janevca at Rosemead House

Where: 429 Lampson St., Esquimalt

When: Dinners, Wednesday to Sunday

Info: 250-384-0941. janevca.ca

Chef Andrea Alridge likes a challenge. For instance, as a cyclist, she opts to ride an incomprehensibly difficult fixed-gear bike with no brakes.

“It’s the most archaic form of bicycles and I love the challenge of it. You have to be focused on your surroundings at all times. Hyper-focused,” she says during a phone interview.

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Are you crazy? I ask. “A little bit,” she replies and then turns technical on me. “You build it, switch ratios out with the build, and ride with that one gear. It’s all in the legs and you never stop pedalling.”

As the opening exec chef at Janevca restaurant in the impressively restored Rosemead House in Esquimalt, she’s the same. Alridge designed the kitchen and menu around a prehistoric style of cooking — with fickle fire, albeit with a state-of-the-art, wood-fired grill.

“It’s like riding a fixed gear bike and that’s what draws me to it,” she says. “Every day, it’s different. The fire is always changing. It’s almost never exactly the same and you learn to really focus and adapt.”

Focus, she did, on that day years ago when she was an entremetier (vegetable chef) at Cin Cin Ristorante in Vancouver, which also boasts a monster wood-fired grill.

“A grill cook called in sick,” Alridge says of her baptism of fire. These massive grills are equipped with cranks to raise and lower the grates. “There’s a lot of mechanics. It’s a full body workout.” She went on to become chef de cuisine there and again, at Savio Volpe, another restaurant with a muscular wood-fired grill.

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At Cin Cin, the legendary fire-cooking Argentine chef Francis Mallman once visited as a guest chef.

“He taught me to have patience with fire,” she says. “A lot of younger cooks want a roaring hot fire, right away. You have to let it burn and do its thing so you get better flavour. Not everything has to be cooked on high heat. There’s low, subtle heat, different grate levels, and cooking on coals. There’s a bar over top to hang meats or veg to slowly smoke and cook. When I have a halibut, I let it hang to smoke and build flavour. I think at this point, I can’t live without fire,” Alridge says.

Janevca is in a 1906 residence designed by Samuel Maclure and had operated as the Old English Inn for decades. Developer Lenny Moy, of Aragon Properties, restored the property and its original name, Rosemead, to create a luxury boutique hotel with 28 unique rooms. He spent “much, much more on the project than planned” on items like $40,000 mattresses, dishes pre-loved by the Savoy Hotel, furnishings from The Dorchester Hotel in London, and auctioned items from the set of the TV series The Crown, including drapes and a four-metre replica of the Buckingham Palace gate. The project, on an almost two-hectare property, includes 178 condos.

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The name of the restaurant, Janevca, is a mash-up of Moy’s children’s names (Janelle, Evan, Cailee). The dining room bursts with autumnal colours from a gigantic faux maple tree spreading its branches.

“Lenny was adamant on his vision for the look of the dining room,” Alridge says. The tree concept was inspired by a restaurant he visited in Europe with a tree in the centre. “He loved the feel and look and warmth it brought.” The room and Alridge’s friendly on-point cooking certainly livens up the quiet Esquimalt restaurant scene.

Her fire cooking produces rustic dishes with refinement, preferably eaten family style to “bring people closer,” says Alridge. A private tattoo on her chest declares her motto. “It’s of a head, hands, and heart,” she says. “It’s something a culinary teacher once said. We have to cook with them all. It resonated.”

Almost every dish is touched by smoke or fire. Her formula for the best balance of heat and smoke is apple wood, alder and a bit of cherry wood. Even the salad of gem lettuce, pickled red onions, anchovy buttermilk dressing and pangrattato ($19) has hit the grill. The lettuce is slightly charred and the anchovy has been smoked, giving the dish more depth and flavour.

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“I first experienced it at Raincity Grill (working under chef Jen Peters who forever instilled a local sourcing ethic in her,” she says. “I loved the char and had to have it here but you definitely need to pay attention to get a sear without overcooking.”

She has an in with a Salt Spring Island lamb producer for his very tender, succulent product, receiving a whole lamb every month. “It’s a bit of dogfight,” she says regarding the demand. She knows the farmer and that the lambs are ethically and even lovingly raised. “He’s adamant about sleeping in the field with them,” she says. I choose to believe her on that.

I didn’t try the lamb but the braised Primrose Farm pork cheeks ($28) was a gorgeous dish. It was braised, not fire-cooked, but served with grilled honey peaches but as the season’s moved on, she’s serving it with pears.

For produce, she relies on Saanich Organics, North Star Farms and Square Root Farm. Seafood is from Finest at Sea and Organic Ocean, and meats are from Legends Haul and Cioffi’s. “I’m slowly building up the list of farms. My bookkeeper will hate me soon,” she says.

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Pizzas ($22 to $32) cooked in an oven next to the grill, reach infernal temperatures for Neapolitan-style crusts. The farmers market topping with zucchini, house-made ricotta, lemon and tarragon was light and bright. That pizza will change with the seasons.

I wanted to hoard a sharing dish of risotto ($32). It’s a creamy, delectable comfort dish with ash-roasted corn (roasted in the embers overnight), chanterelles and good Parmesan Reggiano.

A half chicken from Rossdown Farms ($36) was brined for six hours, air-dried, then marinated in a Chinese barbecue sauce and cooked in the wood-fired pizza oven.

“It’s a nod to the Chinese barbecue I ate growing up,” says Alridge. Her background is actually Filipino and Jamaican and both her grandmothers influenced her cooking, she says. “My Filipino lola taught me discipline and precision and Vie, my Jamaican grandmother, taught me how to have fun in the kitchen,” she says. “She taught me butchering, too — how to break down rabbits, chickens, goats. We’d make a huge Sunday meal of curry goat,” she says.

On the dessert menu, the peach melba isn’t going anywhere. Peaches seem to have been her one detour from local sourcing. It’s served on dishes from the Savoy Hotel where the dessert was created by chef Auguste Escoffier for Australian coloratura soprano Dame Nellie Melba in the 1890s.

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Wines are global, and food and beverage director Rob Scales says there are three sommeliers on the floor. The mixologists in the lounge, next to the kitchen, “incorporate must-have classics and new creations,” he says. “We have a full range of treats and treasures on the back bar and a good selection of fresh local beers on tap.”

The hotel is set to open in the spring of 2025 and the condos are in the finishing stages.

“Once the hotel is operational with our breakfast offerings and we navigate through that, we’ll dabble in offering brunches,” Alridge says.

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