In the Kitchen With “Top Chef Canada” Winner Coulson Armstrong

There’s a twinkle to Prime Seafood Palace. Sunlight streams in through generous windows, filling the space with a soft and airy sentiment. Recessed lighting casts a warm glow over natural materials like white maple and brass. Then, of course, there’s the Christmas tree: a glittering pine that matches the festive spirit of the winter menu.

“At Prime Seafood Palace, we really cook in the season,” says chef Coulson Armstrong. Fresh off a win on Top Chef Canada, the chef returned to Prime Seafood Palace with renewed vigour. Guests of the Queen West restaurant are treated to an innovative, wintery arrangement. Cellar root vegetables and heavier sauces have a prominent position on the holiday menu. “There’s no more herbs or flowers or green veggies coming off the farm,” he explains. “So, there’s a lot of prep that goes into the dishes.”

As the Culinary Director for Our House Hospitality Company (Our House H.C.) and Executive Chef of both Toronto’s Prime Seafood Palace and Hamilton’s The Iron Cow, Armstrong is no rookie. Yet Top Chef still proved a formidable challenge. “Every competitor brought their own cooking style and personality. Watching them on the show, from episode to episode, each one of them grew, as did I,” Armstrong shares.

While late-December dinner parties don’t quite compare to Top Chef‘s cutthroat culinary scene, the pressure of hosting warrants professional advice. To prepare for the season, SHARP spoke to Armstrong about his favourite hosting tips, traditional holiday meals, and the lessons he learned on Top Chef. Read excerpts from our conversation below — along with a recipe for the meal we shared.

How does it feel to be crowned the winner of Top Chef Canada? 

It’s a big title. I wanted to go on to that show, knowing that I had a chance to be Canada’s top chef. I just didn’t know how tough it was gonna be to make it all the way to the end. To make it to the end, you had to do 16 different cooks. So, to get through every cooking challenge — from a quick fire to an elimination challenge — it was really rewarding.

“That’s something that I’m really passionate about, in the last 15 years of cooking at a very high level: telling the stories of the farmers. […] If we don’t have farmers, we’re not going to be able to be amazing chefs.”Coulson Armstrong

That was our next question, actually. What did you learn from your fellow competitors? 

Every competitor brought their own cooking style and personality. Watching them on the show from episode to episode, each one of them grew — as did I. I was really learning and seeing stuff, like “Hey, I’d never seen that before.” So, it’s really interesting and fun to learn from the other contestants, especially the top four: Alex, Katie, and Chris, all are amazing chefs. 

How did the experience shape or clarify your culinary philosophy? 

You’ve gotta trust who you are, especially as a chef and [in] cooking. I wanted to tell my story of growing up on a farm and being around vegetables and animals. That’s something that I’m really passionate about, in the last 15 years of cooking at a very high level: telling the stories of the farmers and making sure that their stories are told — that the work that they’re doing is not going unnoticed so that that work continues. If we don’t have farmers, we’re not going to be able to be amazing chefs. We’re not going to have the produce that we want. 

You’ve cooked under pressure on national TV and at the helm of a top restaurant. What kind of pressure do you actually enjoy in the kitchen, especially during the holiday rush or the holiday season? 

I think the best thing about being a chef is the adrenaline that you get while cooking. It could be a family member, it could be a friend or a VIP guest or just having a busy service; having these interactions with the guests that’s what keeps me going. You leave at the end of service and you just feel this high. You don’t feel it every night, maybe once a week if you’re lucky, but that’s what keeps you coming back. 

What is the restaurant’s take on festive/holiday cooking? Do you want to go into how you prep for that?

At Prime Seafood Palace, we really cook in the season. So right now, we’re coming into the first couple of weeks of winter, so we really cherish the cellar root vegetables and that style of cooking. [We’re] focusing more on braising, heavier sauces, and ferments now that we have limited fresh ingredients from Blue Goose Farm. There’s no more like herbs or flowers or green veggies coming off the farm, so we have to take this moment in time and cherish it. So, there’s a lot of prep that goes into the dishes now. During service [we have] a little bit quicker pickups, but there’s been a lot of thought and effort put into the dishes. 

What is the first thing you start with when crafting a dish? 

Ingredients. Having that conversation with the supplier when it comes in, ‘What do we have that we’ve already preserved?’ In the summer, we take a lot of vegetables and we put them away: like 50% get preserved — to pickle to ferment — and the other stuff gets put on the menu right away. So now, we have this inventory of ingredients that we’re sitting on that we’re trying to utilize and trying to pair them with what is currently available.

What is your favourite holiday recipe to cook at home? 

I tried to start a tradition of a beef tenderloin at home. I did it two years in a row, and my wife was like, “It’s way too much work, I don’t need you doing this — I’m shutting this down.’ This year, we’re doing a roasted chicken.

Still sounds really good!

Yeah! Roasted chicken is a top, all-time death row meal for us — having like a potato, celery gratin — stuff that can be done ahead of time, so that when we’re having family and guests over, you can actually spend time with them and you’re not stressing about the puff pastry being the right temperature and not talking to anybody for 4 hours. So, that’s the change that I’ve accepted: that I need to be more social with my family. 

“The best thing about being a chef is the adrenaline that you get while cooking. […] You leave at the end of service and you just feel this high. Coulson Armstrong

Prime Seafood has a very defined point of view. How does your work here influence the way you approach your home cooking? 

Home cooking for me is more of a one-pot-wonder: you have a sausage, bean, kale soup. Recently, we just made this potato tart and we meal-prepped it and I ate that potato tart for 7 days in a row for breakfast. If I didn’t have that, then I’d just be eating eggs. At home, me and my wife love to share that duty. She does a lot, but she also loves to bake. Our kitchen right now is just full of cookie boxes — she sold 36 cookie boxes this Christmas season — so I literally just clean and do the dishes and take the garbage out. I would say that is my biggest duty in the kitchen, at the moment, at home. 

If you could redesign the traditional Canadian holiday dinner from scratch, what would your version look like? 

I do like to be traditional. I do like a ham, and I think ham roasted up, glazed up is really nice, so I try to do something like that. But I think it’s a meal that you can put on the table, family style. Everybody comes up, grabs the portion that they want. A lot of people eat with their eyes and have too much on the plate, then get too full. I think we save turkey for Thanksgiving and we lean into the ham — but my mom’s also pescatarian, so she doesn’t eat ham — so there’s always a side fish or a chicken dish available as well. 

Lastly, what’s one dish at Prime Seafood that you think everyone should try at least once during the holidays? 

Yeah, I would say it’s our rutabaga dish. It’s this turned, braised rutabaga that’s dressed with like a rutabaga butter, and there’s a red wine reduction and Comté cheese on each individual rutabaga. The colour of the sauce is this kind of crazy yellow texture. The dish literally looks like it’s little pastas, but it is rutabagas, so it kind of messes with you as you’re eating it. The texture of the rutabaga is just so soft and tender and we’ve added so much umami into the braising liquid. It really takes you. I think it’s a beautiful side dish this time of year at Prime Seafood Palace.

For first-time hosts, what are 3 non-negotiables that you have or your hosting tips that you would impart on first-time hosters? 

 Ice! You always have to have so much ice. I think like multiple coolers in different zones so that different zones don’t get so clogged up. We have 2 fridges, so one fridge is downstairs in the garage. You need a drink area, then you need like a punch area. Like, my wife wants a communal drink so that everybody can have a cheers. I think it is a nice time to bring everybody together, if there’s something that we’re celebrating. We can take that moment to recognize that person and celebrate them and have a cheers, so that’s one tip: multiple drink zones with ice. You need a crushed ice and a cubed ice too, so that’s a little bit of a flex. If you can do that at home and pull that off, you’ve already levelled up.

We’re big on that first snack. It could be oysters, it could be a little bit of raw bar, it could be something that you serve to get everybody going. My mother-in-law, she loves having a soup. Every time we go to her house, there’s always this cup of soup going around before we start our meal, which I think is really nice.

Last: you gotta finish strong with a dessert. Dessert’s so key. Every meal I have now — I’ve been very fortunate at Prime, we have a dessert for staff meal every day — so I have that sugar kick at, like, four o’clock. So whenever I eat now, I need to finish it with sugar. 

I love that. Last question: if you’re not hosting a dinner, what is your go-to gift as a guest? 

I do love recycling cookbooks. Like, I have a whole library. I have so many books that I’ve read — that maybe I’m not utilizing or I’ve outgrown — but someone who’s invited me over for a party, maybe they can cook one or two things out of there. I think that it’s really special to have that shared-ness. 

And What Was Armstrong Cooking?
Here’s the Recipe:

FEATURE PHOTO BY TAYLOR RENEE WHYTE, COURTESY OF PRIME SEAFOOD PALACE.

VIDEO BY JUNAS ARNAIZ.