Toronto’s award-winning Chef Devan Rajkumar talks about his influences, the tensions early in his career of being a second-generation Canadian committed to making a living in the world of food, and the joys of pepper pot, the national dish of Guyana.
CJ S6 Ep1 RAJKUMAR 20250301 MASTER
(Introductory music)
Devan Rajkumar: Sharing is caring, and I mean, it's a beautiful thing. It's a very nurturing--it's a very unconditional, loving thing to do is to is, is to put a meal on somebody, make them feel warm, loved, and like nourish their belly.
Tina Pittaway: Chef Devan Raj Kumar travels the world to bring innovative, fresh ideas to the table. Born in Toronto to Guyanese parents. Chef Dev's love of his Indo Caribbean roots infuse his creations and are evident in the recipes featured in his recently published bestselling cookbook, Mad Love. From His beloved Pepperpot, the national dish of Guyana to Caribbean risotto with crispy salmon, his dishes are steeped in the flavors of his heritage with a modern twist.
More with chef Dev up next.
(Introductory music fades)
Welcome to a brand new season of Countless Journeys from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax. I'm Tina Pittaway, and this season we are all about food. We're featuring these stories to coincide with a new exhibition at the museum that's all about connections between immigration and food.
Up first, my conversation with Chef Dev. His approach to his career has been as unconventional as his approach to cooking. It wasn't until his mid-twenties that he thought seriously about a career in food. Within his circle of friends, he was the go-to source for recommendations on where to eat in Toronto.
But when he attended culinary school with an eye towards maybe becoming a food critic, he realized he had a real knack for creating great food.
(Chef Dev is in his restaurant)
DR: And um, so you just want me to go like this and then this…
TP: I spoke with Chef Dev from the Yueh Tung[AB1]Restaurant in downtown Toronto where he was setting up to film a segment with their chefs for a social media promotion.
And I began by asking him what he wants people to experience when they sit down for a meal that he's prepared.
DR: When I'm preparing my food or with the cookbook or whatever it is, it's—it’s really about bringing people together at the table. It's about connecting families, uh, bringing loved ones together and enjoying beautiful meals.
That's really what it's all about. I want to, I want to do—like, when I first started doing my series, Chef Dev at Home during the pandemic, a big part of that was, um, utilizing pantry staples.
That was really important because the last thing I wanted was for someone to have to go run out to the grocery store to pick up one ingredient that they needed, which is why I always tell people, even with my cookbook, do not be handcuffed to the recipes. Use them as a guideline—as a framework—and if you don't have a scotch bonnet pepper, you can use a Thai red chili pepper, like don't be handcuffed, you know. With baking, it's a little bit less forgiving sometimes, but, you know, ultimately I want to release recipes and I want to teach life skills and I want to put food out that's gonna get people really excited.
A lot of the food that I put out connects people back to their roots, you know, 'cause I've been doing a lot of deep diving into Caribbean and South Asian food, which is both, you know, my influences in both my heritages. But, I just wanna make bright, exciting, colorful food that gets people really excited.
TP: Your Guyanese background, uh, as you, refer to it plays a big role in what you prepare. Now, for those who aren't familiar with those flavors, can you describe Guyanese Cuisine?
DR: Yes, of course. Guyanese cuisine is a—is a melting pot. Um, it's really interesting because, you know, when slave—like I can explain the Indo Guyanese part of it—but when slavery was abolished in the early 1800s, essentially the first boat from India showed up in Guyana in 1838, through indentured labourers—indentured labour ship. And basically what happened was is, you know, in India and impoverished places, the British offered these impoverished people plots of land abroad in places where they would earn lots of money, they could come back home, they could send it back home, they'd get plots of land, blah-blah-blah. And it was essentially, unfortunately, slavery continued.
But the reason why I'm telling you this story is to explain to you how Indians ended up in Guyana. Guyana's a melting pot. You know, you had Europeans, Dutch, you have Blacks there, you have Amerindians—the Indigenous people of the land are there as well.
You know, you have Portuguese, you have Chinese, you have, it's a big melting pot. But the, the Indo Guyanese representation is actually quite strong. And that's what I grew up with. I grew up in an Indo Guyanese household with that type of food. So a lot of the food has come from India.
One of the staples in Guyana is daal, and everybody eats daal, which is a split yellow pea or lentil soup that we have just in a cup or it's a part of a larger meal with curry, rice or other vegetarian items as well. So daal and rice is staple, curry is staple, and that definitely comes from India. The use of garam masala and curry powder and cumin powder is very, very prominent. That came from over there.
So it's a big mashup. You have a lot of different cuisines from all over the world, and it's very exciting. Me personally, I focus mostly on the Indo Guyanese because it's exactly what I was raised with. Um, but yeah, a lot of it, a lot of it traces back right to South Asia.
TP Now the pepper pot holds a special place in your heart.
What, what do you love about the pepper pot?
DR: Yo. Yo. So, when I was young—when I was young, I would go travel to Guyana and I'd go to other family members' homes here and abroad, and I would eat pepperpot. And anytime you eat pepperpot, anytime someone has pepperpot for the first time, their eyes roll into the back of their heads.
And the reason why is because there's such a unique flavor in it. It's unlike anything you've had before. And I'm gonna get to what that ingredient is in just a second.
So as a kid growing up, pepper pot would come, come out around Christmas time and it was just so mysterious to me. It was thick, dark, viscous. It was festive. I could tell that there was cinnamon and sugar and it was, it was just very unusual.
I had nothing like it from January to November, and then Christmas time comes around and then you have this unreal dish that you're eating with really fluffy bread from Guyana. And then, many years later I started to research what is it, what makes it what it is?
Um, and this—of course, pepperpot is Guyana's national dish. the Amerindians and Guyana discovered that by taking bitter cassava, peeling it, grating it, straining out that liquid, that starchy milky liquid, and then reducing that over time with sugar and spices, it gives you a very thick, viscous, molasses-looking burnt-caramel-looking substance that is quite bitter, but it also acts as a preservative and it never goes bad, and it, it lends a really earthy, really deep caramelized flavor and dark color to whatever you use it in.
So that's the key ingredient in Guyana's national dish. Typically, it's made with different types of beef, including the cow heel. Gelatinous parts of the animal are really important to give you that lip-smacking unctuousness that you find in pepperpot.
You have cinnamon, clove, you have dried orange peel, which is a very unique ingredient. A lot of thyme. Hot peppers, hopefully wiri wiri peppers will make it in there. But you know, wherever you are in the world, or even if you're over there and you can't get 'em, hot peppers are really important.
One thing I wanna make clear is that whenever I talk about pepperpot, which is quite often, a lot of times people just think it's like a, a blazing cauldron of chili and heat, but that's not the case.
Typically, the pepperpots that you eat might have a little bit of heat to it, but it's not standard. Uh, most people don't eat very spicy and they certainly don't eat as spicy as me. So we always make it so that you can enjoy your pepperpot, but you can also burst in peppers. We serve it with peppers on the side such that you can adjust the heat accordingly.
Yeah. Whenever I say pepperpot and people don't know about it, oftentimes they think that it's like a, like a—
TP: An inferno.
DR: —fire eating competition. Correct. But that's not the case. But that's a little bit about pepperpot.
TP: I understand your mom, uh, is a big part of your cooking inspiration and that she, she's kind of—I know she's vegetarian, but she, she can prepare you—I saw her an interview with you. She prepares all sorts of different types of pepperpots without necessarily having to even taste them (laughs) if they have meat in them. Do, do you get your inspiration from her?
DR: My mom is a massive inspiration. Growing up my mother was very experimental in the kitchen and she tried a lot of things that she would see on TV or read in books or saw in magazines or things that she saw at other people's homes.
So my brother and I grew up with a lot of fun things in our home. The things outside, you know, what the traditional Guyanese boys would grow up with. So we had a lot of world cuisine going on in our house and uh, I've learned a lot from her.
Um, she's helped me so much over the years with a lot of the work that I've had to get done too. You know, being like a little sous chef or just like—man, the amount of events that I would do. Back to back to back events. And, uh, my mom was always there to support me.
And we just spent one month together in Southeast Asia. We just got back less than a month ago.
TP:Oh!
DR: So that, yeah. Yeah. We traveled to 12 cities, eight countries together.
It was a, it was good to bring us even closer together. But she's a huge influence.
And what's really exciting with my mom and her impact on me is that some of her impact on me comes from her mother. So when I share like the roti recipe or when I share like the daal or the okra recipe in my cookbook, I'm actually sharing it from my grandmother who you know passed away in ‘94.
And then you have, like, kids making the roti recipe right now, and it's just incredible that they are connected to a woman, uh, who passed away so long ago. It's like the legacy goes through my mother to my grandmother and it's, it's continuing on and on and it's really a magical thing I never saw happening.
TP: That's wonderful. Why is travel so important to you and, and understanding the role of food in different countries?
DR: Oh my God! Tra- Travel is everything to me. I mean, last year I traveled every single month. Oh my God. Like, where do I even start? I constantly need a good humbling in my life, and many of us do, right?
And by traveling, like—I’ll give you a great example. In 2016, I left for six months to stage and work and intern anywhere that I could across India, Dubai, Europe, Peru and beyond. And when I came back from that trip after six months in 2016, 8 years ago, I was asked, Devan, what did you learn while you were gone?
And you know what I say?
TP: No idea.
DR: I say, What I learned is that I didn't know as much about cooking as I thought I did.
TP: (laughs) Right.
DR: You know, I left there like a bit, oh, you know, I'm six, seven years into my career and I've done so much and this and that, and then you go and travel to another part of the world with the intention of learning specifically about food.
And hospitality. You know? And the cultures and the ingredients and everything surrounding food. And then I came back, and I was like, I'm an idiot. (laughs) You know, like in India, you travel like a hundred kilometers, the menus change.
TP: Mm-hmm.
DR: I thought I had a good grasp on Indian food until I went there, and it's like I'm seeing menus where I don't recognize anything except for like naan.
It's embarrassing, you know? But it's also humbling, and I need it to be humbled, right? We all need a little bit of humbling, I think, sometimes. So for me, trav—traveling teaches me so much. It's also really important to see how other people are, how they behave, what the way of life is, how the cultures are, how religions affect the way of life.
I just want to keep learning as much as possible and stay curious. You just learn so much more about the world and you learn a lot more about yourself. If I stopped everything I was doing today and traveled for the rest of my life, all day, every day, for the rest of my life. And I live till like 300 years old, I still wouldn't, I still wouldn't see the entire world. Right? So it's like, it's a constant lust that I have for learning and experiencing other cultures.
TP: That's awesome. Uh, in, in terms of the eaters in Toronto, the people that you cook for are, are you finding people are pretty adventurous?
DR: Toronto's very eclectic. I mean, Toronto's a melting pot, very similar to New York. I lov—I love Toronto so much. I mean, we have A to Z. Like where I'm at right now, uh, at Bay and Edward, there is artisanal noodles down the road from here. I'm sure there's like, I mean this is basically Chinatown. You know, Chinatown is just west of us. But there's like probably like 40 different types of food in like a two block radius, maybe even more, I'm just guessing right now.
Toronto's always looking for the new exciting thing. Just like other cities around the world, you know, cosmopolitan cities and stuff like that. Cities that are very diverse. Looking for the new things that are trending.
I mean, one thing I'd love to see a little bit more popular is offal. And that's essentially like organ meats. That's always been something that I've been very into, whether it's like liver, tongue, lung, anything like that. I'm a big nose-to-tail kind of guy.
And I feel like in Canada, America, western parts of the world, we've been so spoiled by chicken breast and chicken thigh and chicken wings that, you know, when you, when you grow up in another part of the world, you don't have the option to throw anything out, right? You must use everything that you have, you know, and sometimes you can only afford, you know, bones, right? And you have to know how to make an amazing stew out of it with barley that you have in, in, on the shelf and whatever vegetable scraps you have. So I've always been a big nose-to-tail guy. I wish that became a little bit more popular here.
But overall, I think Toronto is, is very, very diverse. I mean, you can get—you can, you can go every day of the year and get, get a different style of cuisine, in my opinion.
TP: There was the film that you produced that, that featured a journey home to Guyana
DR: Chef Dev Tastes Guyana. Yeah.
(a clip from the film)
DR: Here we are at Sweetie and Sunny's. We have the pine and the Watermelon.
We have the sorel. I was just holding this at Mon Repos Market, which is just across the street. This is a typical lunch that I would have here. Rice, cucumber. Cucumber is always around. A little bit of salad. Coconut choka, one of my favorite. Of things grated coconut with different spices. Very spicy. A Char.
Here we have Alu Choa with some bajji. So this is a typical vegetarian staple food here. And next we have my absolute favorite. Sweetie and Sunny's is known for duck curry. Let's not forget the cup of daal. So I'm gonna take a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit of daal. I can't forget the famous pepper sauce. Time to eat.
(clip ends)
TP: And I recall you eating tripe and preparing tripe.
DR: Pachowni, yeah. (laughs) So I went to my Uncle Dashrath's house in Mahika. Mahika is an area of Guyana. It's up the east coast there. And my dad was born in this region and Uncle Dashrath was a very close friend of his, and he looked after my grandmother, my dad's mom. We love that guy.
(clip from the film)
DR: Where did this style of cooking come from? How did it make its way to Guyana.
Uncle Dashrath: India. From the fore parents that bring it here.
DR: The fore parents.
UR: so they call it chuhla.
DR: Chulha.
UR: Yeah. What we call Fireside now.
DR: Right. So Chulha is the Indian word, I believe, for stove. Yeah. So the indentured slavery, the British brought the Indians here to Guyana.
UR: Yeah.
DR: And this is a tradition that the Indians brought with them. And many years later, we're still using it today.
UR: Yeah.
(music)
DR: Today my uncle and aunt are cooking up cassareep chicken, pachowni, fresh coconut milk, hassa curry. And a chana and aloo curry, which is chickpeas and potato. My favorite dish here, no doubt, is the pachowni, which is sheep's intestines.
(sounds of frying)
So this is the sheep guts going in. We saw this at the market yesterday. This is the tripe, the intestines, liver as well.
UR: Yeah liver.
DR: And this all has to get cleaned very, very properly because it's obviously the innards of the animal. So we need to clean very well. Uncle and I cleaned it.
Cuts like these are usually tough, so you have to cook them low and slow until tender.
(end of clip)
TP: So, so how did you, how did you discover, uh, cooking and food would be like your path?
DR: It's basically when I went to culinary school. So my entire life I was obsessed with food. I would sit on the floor of my grandmother's apartment as a kid and, and she would grate toasted coconut on a brick with another brick called a lorha and sil.
It's one of my oldest food memories, and she would make coconut choka, which is one of my favourite condiments in the world. It's like a spicy, umami bomb of grated flavored coconut that, you know, it goes with daal and rice and, and different, different curries and vegetables in our cuisine. Definitely came from India as well.
I was always in the kitchen. You know, the, the banging of pots and, and, and, and hearing things bubbling away and meat and vegetables searing. The aromatic sight and sounds of the kitchen were always, always appealing to me. Anytime I watched tv I was watching Pasquale sing, I was watching Emeril, I was, I was watching Wok with Yan. This is all I wanted to do
But I never knew that I could pursue a career like that when I was growing up. My parents really wanted me to get into medicine, engineering, law, business, you know, all the things that didn't interest me.
And I bummed around to go doing business classes at Ryerson and I got kicked outta Laurier my first year. I was there at 18 and I was just partying it up and, I mean, I wasn't interested in what I was doing there right? And, I hadn't grown up yet.
So at 24, after bumming around doing like bilingual sales jobs, ('cause I speak French), I, I don't know if it was someone in specific, but a lot of people are like, “but you should go to culinary school” because I was writing for Yelp and I, I'm just the guy that you call when you want to know where to go eat.
And, and to be honest with you, I went to cul—, I went to culinary thinking like maybe I could be a food critic. You know, something like that.
TP: Oh, okay. Yeah.
DR: Yeah. Not a lot of people know this. And then in the first couple weeks there, I realized like I had a knack for cooking. I really felt that way. I was performing really well. And, you know, I was, I was doing really well in the labs and, and I saw a lot of people struggling where I didn't struggle.
And one thing led to the next. And like, here we are today. And now, now I travel all year, cooking abroad. It's pretty, it's a pretty wild journey.
TP: How important is sharing a meal? Uh, it's such a fundamental part of being human. What, what do you love about it?
DR: So, on my wrist is tattooed some Sanskrit letters. And those letters are Seva. And Seva means selfless service without praise or recognition. So like, what I'm trying to get at here is my whole purpose in life is to do for others. And that's really my ethos. That's what gets me outta bed.
And I always use this example 'cause it's facts. Like let's say you and I were eating and I was cooking. And what I would do is once all my food's ready, I would spend like 3, 4, 5 minutes plating yours. And then when it's my turn to eat, I'm literally slapping it in a bowl. It's all about your experience.
And this is how I've always been for my friends, my mates, I'll take my time, I'll plate their dishes, and then I just kinda slap my together and I just join them and I start eating. But sharing is caring and I mean, it's a beautiful thing. It's a very nurturing—it's a very unconditional, loving thing to do is to, is, is to put a meal on somebody, make them feel warm, loved, and like nourish their belly.
You know? And when you sit around the table, like I talked at the beginning of, of our chat, it's like, it's a beautiful thing to bring people around the table where you don't talk about your worries, you don't talk about your workday, but sometimes nothing has to even be said, you know, you're just enjoying a hearty bowl of whatever it is or something cooked with love. And, uh, it takes you away from, from all the problems for, for that time being.
TP: What did you hope to achieve with the cookbook? With Mad Love? It's your first cookbook. And, uh, uh, it, it's, it's a beautiful book.
DR: What I hoped to achieve and what occurred as a result of the cookbook are two very different things.
TP: Okay.
DR: It performed in a way that I never thought possible, you know, like we released it in May. It went to reprint the same month, you know?
TP: Amazing.
DR: It is ridiculous. Like, I never, I never ever thought this would happen. All I wanted to do was create a legacy for myself and my family and my community, you know? I was telling you about my grandmother before, like things like that. And then putting Guyanese food on the map in print. There's not a lot of Guyanese cookbooks. There are some, I'm not saying that there aren't any, but there's not a lot of them.
I also have a very unique lens on food because I don't –see a lot of people in my position who are like— Like let's say you take a young Guyanese boy, for example, you take Devan. Right? I just found out recently my great-grandfather was born in Kashmir, India, but even before that, I was raised around Indians and I was raised in the culture. So I dabbled back and forth. You know, I can gracefully and seamlessly go back and forth between both cultures, which is unbelievable for me because not only can I do Guyanese and Caribbean recipes, but south Asian food has opened up to me as well.
That's how I honestly feel. My great-grandfather I just learned recently was born in Kashmir. You know, Kashmir, India, and I've been there and I didn't even know that. So my dad just told me recently, and you know, my dad told me that recently, and he's like, “I thought I told you”. And I'm like, you know how important this information is for me and the kind of work that I'm doing?
TP: That's, yeah.
DR: But yeah, I wanted to just have a place where I could share my thoughts and my recipes and my fusion and, you know, the way I perceive food. Because in that cookbook, there's really unique takes on both west Indian food and East Indian food. There's things in there that have never been done before.
And it's exciting to share that with the world. Also we were talking a little bit about how it's difficult for some people from my community to learn from their parents. You know? Well, now they have, now they have recipes that are, that are in that book, that are there forever and they're never gonna go anywhere.
And now, and now they can make those recipes. Yeah. So it's a huge blessing and it just makes me honestly wanna, wanna work even harder and release another one. Of course. At least one.
TP You mentioned that, uh, uh, initially your parents were hoping that you would go into medicine or law or—
DR: Oh God,
TP: –you know, uh, did that create tension when you decided not to do that and instead go towards a career in food?
DR: Very good question. And the reason why is 'cause, at the time, I don't really remember my parents' reactions to it. I know that my parents were supportive, especially my mom.
But I had to go back and ask my dad how he felt, because in the introduction of my cookbook that I wrote a few years ago, I talk about my dad's reaction when I told him that I wanted to go to culinary school. And he told me he was disappointed. You know, he thought that, he thought I would be just stuck in restaurants and I'd be working my ass off and I would never really earn a good income. My dad's all about saving, and my dad's all about like making money. You know, he was working for a very, very big bank as part of their executive team for a long time, so that, that's what my dad was doing back then.
And he thought that, you know, I would just kind of get caught up in the system and maybe if I—maybe I would open a restaurant one day and then I would just be a slave or, or chained to the restaurant. He never really knew. I mean, my path in this culinary industry is extremely unconventional, you know?
TP: Mm-hmm.
DR: Um, I went completely against the grain and—Even before all this social media stuff where like anybody can go on and cook and do their thing, like I was going against the grain, building a name for myself. And, um, and yeah, my dad was pretty disappointed, but he doesn't feel that way anymore, thank God.
TP: Right. Good. Good.
Now talk a little bit about your unusual kind of career path in terms of, it's, it's a real buffet, pardon the pun, but like, you are not your typical restaurant chef. Can you describe for the listeners, basically what a typical week would entail?
DR: Oh my God. Like now, or back then when I was started cooking?
TP: Whichever you wanna jump off from.
DR I'll give you a little bit of both. I went to culinary school in ‘09 at George Brown College here in Toronto. Graduated with honors and in my third or fourth semester, I think it was my third, we had to intern and I started working with the food dudes who now are like one of the biggest catering companies in all of, I would say North America, to be honest with you.
So I started working with them, getting a lot of knowledge, learning as much as I could.
Also, while I was in culinary school, we, we, here in Toronto, we have like, in Canada, we have a really popular grocery store chain called Longo's. And while I was going to culinary school, I would go during the day and then I would get the night off work. And then I would go drive to one of five Longo's locations and teach sold-out classes to groups full of people that would come. (laughs)
TP: Awesome
DR: So things, things that I was learning at Food Dudes—not really at school 'cause it's very dated at school. So things that I was learning at Food Dudes, you know, I would go to these classes and then I would do, I would do these live demonstrations and that's—I don't know how I got the inkling to do this, but it gave me a lot of confidence and it also got me comfortable speaking and cooking in front of people. Which is, essentially, you know, a big part of what I do today.
Leaving culinary school, I worked with Food Dudes for a bit and I bounced around doing different jobs. And ultimately in twenty f—I got on television, and I'm still doing television up until today, right? From 2014. I did 10 years on City Line. But, any given day would be a catering, followed by, you know, creating, well I wanna say create content, but that's more, more in recent years.
But like every day was different for me. You know, I would be on TV one day, I'd be traveling one day. Um. I mean, I'd be doing recipe development for Dairy Farmers of Canada one day. Like it was always, always different. Now these days I don't even know what to tell you. I'm here with you Now. I go straight into a shoot at like one of the most iconic restaurants in all of Toronto.
This past year has been crazy. I took the Mad Love book tour, my cookbook tour. We did popups in Turks and Caicos, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Guyana. I've been all over, cooking for weddings in Portugal at the Ritz Carlton. You know, uh, day to day is completely different from me, and you never know what you're gonna get, and I love it that way.
I, I can't be in a box, you know, in that routine and the monotony and—I spend a lot of time in kitchens, you know, but I just want to be free and I wanna learn as much as possible.
TP: That's wonderful. Devan Rajkumar, thank you so much.
DR: Thank you for having me. Let's do it again soon.
TP: As I mentioned at the top of the show, the Canadian Museum of Immigration is featuring a new exhibition called eat make share presented by BMO. Sara England is the curator of temporary and travelling exhibitions with the museum and co-curator of eat make share.
SE: Eat make share is about the way that food in Canada has been shaped by, uh, hundreds of years of immigration.
And that interaction between indigenous people and newcomers. So, throughout the exhibition we look at those stories, not just about immigrants, but the people already here and the significance of their food practices and how those interactions have shaped what we think of when we think of Canadian food.
Food is such a great way to explore immigration history because it's such a relatable topic that can take us to so many places. Food is universal. Everyone has to eat and it's also a way that people can connect to their culture, connect to their family, connect to history, connect to place, and so it has that complexity and that emotion to it that works really well with telling people's stories, which is what the exhibit is all about.
TP: There's so much tied up in our sense of home, our sense of place. Can you talk a little bit about the role of food in helping someone who is new to a place feel at home?
SE: Absolutely. I love that question because often when planning the exhibit, we talk about our comfort food and everyone immediately has that idea of what comfort food is their favorite. So, we know that food holds, holds that comfort and that connection to so many people. And it is a really important part of an experience for, um, immigrants and migrants coming to a new place. In a few ways. So one of that is through connecting to the local food culture and trying new foods and integrating into an existing food culture, so to speak.
But it also, in the stories that we share in the exhibition, is really an important way to take that piece of home with you when you move to a new place. As we often hear, it's one of the easiest ways to recreate a sense of home and like you're back home in your, your kitchen or your country of origin or your mom's home enjoying cuisine from, um, from your, where you're originally from. So, it does hold that comfort and significance.
We have a few stories in the exhibition that sort of speak to that. One amazing section of the exhibition talks about bananas, which you wouldn't think of as being a Canadian food experience, but post-World War II, um, when we see an influx of post-war migration coming to Canada, we have all of these amazing stories of people who, for many years didn't see bananas because they weren't being imported or exported.
So they come to Canada or they hop on the ship and what do they see? That yellow fruit for the first time. And so there's these delightful stories of surprise and excitement at encountering bananas for the first time. And so that idea of, I guess their idea of comfort is there. That, you know, you come from scarcity for so long, and then that comfort of seeing this idea of abundance and, and plenty as being part of that post-war migration experience of food that we tie into the exhibit.
(music starts to fade in)
TP:We'll hear more from Sara throughout the stories we're featuring this season. And we hope you get a chance to visit the museum while eat make share is featured until January, 2026. If you'd like to hear more stories like this and help new listeners discover this podcast, make sure to rate Countless Journeys on your favorite podcast app, or leave us a review.
Countless Journeys comes to you from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, located at the Halifax Seaport.