Derek Perry

Growing up in rural Prince Edward Island I had absolutely no knowledge or interest in fine dining, food was just fuel for your body. Until one summer evening when I received a phone call from a cousin who was washing dishes at the Inn at Bay Fortune asking me if I wanted a job. That one phone call was to change my life, even though I was only 13. It was one of the busiest nights of the season and a dishwasher had not shown up for work and on that night my career in the culinary world began.

At first it was not the food that piqued my interest but the atmosphere, the rush you feel from a busy kitchen in full stride is unlike any other feeling I‘ve experienced in my life, from

that first night I was hooked. I knew I did not want to be a dishwasher for the rest of my life and I realized I wante

d to learn how to cook. During slow times in the kitchen the cooks would teach me how to dice an onion and how to wash lettuce properly. These seem like boring tasks now but at the time it gave me such a feeling of accomplishment that I wanted to learn everything that anyone could teach me. And that is a mentality that I still carry with me today.

From my humble beginnings as a dishwasher, I gradually worked my way up the kitchen ladder. By then I was finishing high school so I enrolled in the Culinary Institute of Canada, graduating in 2004. During my years of school I was able to build upon what I was taught from chefs in a much more formal setting. Then it was time for summer internships and I was picked to go to the St. Charles Country Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba to work for Chef Takashi Murikami. This was a big eye opener for me, along with moving away from P.E.I for the first time, it was the first time I worked for a chef who really pushed me, both mentally, and physically. That was definitely the toughest summer of my life but on the plane ride home I realized that Chef Murakami had not so much taught me how to cook, but he taught me how to BE a cook.

Since then I've lived all over Canada trying to learn as many different things from as many different chefs as I can. I have had the opportunity to work with Chefs Michael Smith, Jeff McCourt, Gordon Bailey, Stephen Treadwell, Brad Richard and Henri Vultier. In 2007 I returned to PEI as over the years I‘ve come to realize that we really are spoiled on the Island with the amount of quality ingredients that can be found virtually next to our back door, which is really all any good chef wants, fresh ingredients from a person you trust.

I look forward to welcoming you to my kitchen this summer.