A chef from Chatham is taking his talents to the top-ranked restaurant in Canada.
Patrick Lanigan-Fegan will start his new job at Restaurant Pearl Morissette on Thursday.
Located on a farm outside St. Catharines, the restaurant was ranked the best in the country by Canada’s 100 Best magazine and the third-best in North America through media company William Reed's ranking of the 50 Best Restaurants. The William Reed ranking doesn't include Mexico, which had multiple entries on the top 100 restaurants in the world list.
Restaurant Pearl Morissette is also one of two two-star Michelin restaurants in Canada. These stars are given to restaurants that excel in cooking, with the maximum one can receive being three.
Lanigan-Fegan had been staging, which is a kind of internship, at Restaurant Pearl Morissette over the past two years, but told CK News Today that he's still on cloud nine.
"It still kind of doesn't feel real," he laughed.
When he wasn't working at Restaurant Pearl Morissette, Lanigan-Fegan could be found in the kitchen at Casa Bella on the Thames in Chatham.
His determination helped him get noticed by one of Restaurant Pearl Morissette's head chefs. In an attempt to gain experience, Lanigan-Fegan reached out to some of the country's best restaurants.
"It came down to finding emails of the head chefs, finding the Instagram pages of the head chefs, and just sending out the message that I would love to come and work at the restaurants, that I loved what the restaurant was doing," explained Lanigan-Fegan.
When Restaurant Pearl Morissette reached out about a potential staging position, it wasn't the top-ranked restaurant in Canada. That didn't matter to Lanigan-Fegan, as he was intrigued by the fact that the restaurant produces much of its own food.
"I grew up on a farm for the first 10 years of my life, and to be at a restaurant that was located on a farm... it's something I'm familiar with," he said.
Moving forward, Lanigan-Fegan hopes he can help Restaurant Pearl Morissette earn its third Michelin Star.
