It takes most people many years of practice and patience to get so good at something that they end up doing it as a career. However, for up-and-coming chef Petina Haja, 22, her venture into the kitchen was almost accidental. "I was a waitress at Fresh Start Bistro, and I was friends with the head chef there. He pulled me back into the kitchen [to work] one day." In a brief four years since that moment, she's had a meteoric rise to the top of her own kitchen.
Now the head chef at The Dish & The Runaway Spoon, Haja devises delicious dining experiences for people living, playing and working around 124th Street. The Dish is a warm and familiar bistro with a fresh menu, which is perfect for Haja, who relies often on Greens, Eggs and Ham, a farm near Leduc, for atypical foods such as boar, bison and duck eggs.
"I like to get everybody's input and get their ideas. Then I make the final call," says Haja, who gets her inspiration for ingredients from the cookbooks and food articles she devours, and from dining out elsewhere.
She compares The Dish's offerings to her mom's spaghetti - home-style comfort food. For example, her favourite thing on the menu is the gourmet mac and cheese, which she calls "an obsession." Haja bakes classic macaroni with fontina, asiago and cheddar cheeses and then sprinkles it with a butter-crumb topping. It's almost impossible to put your fork down once you sink it into the first noodle.
It's that old-fashioned familiarity and "homey feel" that makes Haja determined to stay in bistro-style restaurants instead of entering the realm of fine dining.
Although the young chef repeatedly remarks about her own shyness, in the kitchen, she stands out as cool-headed and confident. "She is so open and a fast learner," says Carole Amerongen, owner and operator of The Dish. "She has a natural confidence and it makes the other cooks look up to her."
Although she is at the head of the kitchen, sitting comfortably near the top, Haja basks in the fact that she has plenty of time to grow. "I'm young. I could go back to school. I really want to go to Italy for six months, to spruce up my Italian cooking." And if she could really wish upon a dish: "I want to have my own bistro."
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