It’s quite something when you’ve interned at the ITHQ, trained with Gordon Ramsay and led Montreal’s top kitchens. Say hello to Marco Barone, Chef at FreshMint, a delicious spot in Old Montreal that delivers wholesome meals to your work and home.
FreshMint has been creating quite a buzz with their high quality ingredients, affordable meals ($9-12 including delivery) and inventive menu – every day they feature a meal from a different part of the world. We wanted to dig deeper into the life of a busy chef and entrepreneur, so we caught up with Marco to get the notable scoop on his daily routine, FreshMint and creating recipes.
“The secret to good cooking is heart, intellect, palate. In that order. The rest will follow. And respect the ingredients.”
Where were you working before FreshMint?
I was Head Chef at Hostaria, where we got 5 stars from the Guide Resto-Voir and were called one of Montreal’s best restaurants by The Gazette. Our specialty was Italian cuisine, but contemporary Italian. Not the food that our grandparents brought over 50 years ago.
What attracted you to FreshMint?
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, to go into business for myself, so when I met Cherif Habib and was presented with an opportunity to do just that, and in the food industry to boot, I was intrigued. Once we went over the concept and realized the endless opportunities that FreshMint would present me with, I simply couldn’t refuse.
Walk us through a normal day…
I’m usually out of the house by 7am, heading for either our butcher, the market or somewhere else to pick up the day’s menu items. By 8am I’m cooking, and that goes on to about 10:45, when I sit down with Cherif to go over the day’s game plan and we brief our delivery team. Plating and packing starts at 11:05 sharp, and then we keep our delivery team supplied with hot meals through to 1.00pm, when our last wave of orders goes out. By 1:30 we’re all back at FreshMint, the delivery team has a bite to eat, and Cherif and I go over the day’s events and see how things went, where we can improve for the next day’s service, and take care of any other business that we didn’t get to in the morning. I clean up the kitchen and leave FreshMint by 3:00pm, when I run errands, maybe make it home for a quick shower, and then I’m back for 4.30pm to prepare for the evening service, which goes from 5:15 to 7:30pm. At 8:00 I clean the entire kitchen top to bottom, and then we have a last sit-down to plan for the next day and discuss some long-term strategy. I’m usually home by 10.30pm.
Which cuts of meat do you choose and why?
I like shoulders, shanks, briskets, butts, guts and any offal or other questionable cuts. They are, without fail, the tastiest, most fun cuts of meat to work with, and getting people to realize that a brisket that’s been slow-cooked in Guinness is so much better than filet mignon is what makes my work so much fun.
Do you use organics ingredients?
Often we find vegetables from a small grower in the Eastern Townships who doesn’t have a government certification for organic, but grows his products without any chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc. So I’m wary of the term ‘organic’. But yes, we do aim to use certified organic or equivalent products as much as possible.
What do you love to cook, and is it on the menu at FreshMint?
The menu at FreshMint changes every single day, so I get to cook something new every day. As such, I get to experiment with exciting new ideas, revisit old classics and just have fun. I love to cook fish, and we use it at FreshMint fairly regularly. I also love to experiment with Middle-Eastern flavours, and that too is something we do a lot of.
Have you made any interesting contacts through working at FreshMint?
It’s been nothing but! Since I started working on FreshMint, I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many people from the business world, from Montreal’s vibrant startup community, and have made many contacts and quite a few friends. I wasn’t close to that community before so it’s definitely a whole new world for me.
What’s your favourite part of working at the FreshMint kitchen?
The future. While the space itself is gorgeous, and I love working with Cherif and our team, what I love most is the sense of unbridled optimism that infuses our days. Every day we grow, we develop something new, we have a minor or major breakthrough, and we watch FreshMint slowly become the company we know it can and will be.
How do you create recipes? With help? With a notebook? With a lot of trial and error at home?
I love cookbooks, so I’m always reading them and getting ideas. Cooking (as opposed to pastries and baking) isn’t an exact science, so with a little knowledge, ability and a good understanding of how ingredients will behave under different circumstances, I can generally create what I envision fairly accurately on the first try. I do have several notebooks with ideas, recipes and thoughts in them which I refer to often, but most of the trial and error gets done on the fly, at work, because even the “errors” are usually quite delicious and are only errors in that they didn’t come out as I originally envisioned them… but are still very good to serve and eat. It’s rare than an error is a complete write-off.
What’s your cooking philosophy in 20 words or less?
The secret to good cooking is heart, intellect, palate. In that order. The rest will follow. And respect the ingredients.
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