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Smoke billows and the scent of a summer campfire
fills the room as the waiter lifts a glass cloche,
revealing a plate of mussels smoked in pine needles
with pine ash butter. The taste is pure north-of-
Superior heaven.
We are in Boralia, on Toronto’s Ossington Avenue.
Founded in 2014 by Class of 1998 graduate Evelyn
Wu, the restaurant celebrates the historic origins of
Canadian cuisine, drawing inspiration from traditional
Aboriginal dishes and the recipes of early settlers and
immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries.
After Havergal, Evelyn went to the Wharton School
of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with
a degree in marketing and management just as the
tech bubble burst. Her day job was unsatisfying, but
a weekend cooking class in New York sparked her
interest in food. She soon found work doing marketing
and special events for a chef in Washington D.C., who
allowed her to volunteer in the kitchen during her
time off.
There, she discovered a talent for cooking that
would take her to San Francisco (culinary school
followed by a stint at the Michelin-starred Coi
restaurant), Toronto (working with David Lee at
Nota Bene), Berkshire, England (in the experimental
kitchen of the famed restaurant The Fat Duck,
which has three Michelin stars), Kelowna, B.C. and
eventually back to Toronto.
By the time she met her husband, Acadian chef
Wayne Morris, she yearned to open a restaurant. But,
despite having considerable talent in the kitchen,
she viewed herself as the “ideas person.” Wayne’s
cooking was transcendent. Together, the two devised
the concept: a restaurant that would draw upon their
cultural backgrounds and honour Canada’s heritage
by “resurrecting and reimagining recipes of the
people who built this country.”
Starting the restaurant wasn’t easy. The pair
lived with Evelyn’s parents while they searched for
the right space, and they developed recipes out of
the family kitchen using historical resources and
antique cookbooks. They faced skepticism about
their unusual menu items (whelk, elk, venison heart).
A trademark challenge forced them to change their
name. But the critics raved, and the seats filled, and
the hard work paid off.
With Wayne running the kitchen, Evelyn leads the
business side of the restaurant, managing financials,
marketing, staffing and reservations. She works in
the restaurant every Friday and Saturday, but does
much of the rest remotely while caring for baby Teddy,
whose due date was on Boralia’s first anniversary.
“I worked until I couldn’t fit behind the bar,” recalls
Evelyn with a laugh, “and took maybe a week off
before I started taking the reservations again.”
Evelyn didn’t start cooking until university
(eggplant parmesan was her first dish), but she
credits family dinners with kick-starting her love of
food. Havergal, she says, gave her the confidence to
create something from nothing.
“I knew I could do it,” she says. “That’s what
Havergal taught us.”
A culinary calling
EVELYN WU 1998
Profile by Catharine Heddle 1989
PROFILES