.JPG) |
| Chef Matthew Kershaw |
I first met Chef Matthew Kershaw during the Hamilton Food and Drink Fest earlier this year. If you’ve been following this column, you may remember I mentioned Kershaw - who together with his girlfriend and partner, Erin Dunham, owns Burlington’s “The Alex” and Hamilton’s “Rapscallion” - was part of a “culinary nexus that bears watching.”
I finally had the opportunity to eat at the Alex recently. It was during the Burlington Sound of Music Festival. My wife and I joined another couple (let’s do it again soon, Chris and Anne) for dinner at the “small plates” restaurant on Brant Street before going to enjoy Matt Anderson. (The great Maritime blues man was singing in soaring counterpoint to the Hamilton Symphony.) More on the interesting food we enjoyed will await a future column, once we have a chance to get to Rapscallion too.
After dinner we were able to sit and chat at length with the Chef about how he had come to be running the two establishments and what distinguished them. Bespectacled and with a ginger beard, he’s a big guy who at first take appears a bit diffident. Once he gets going, however, the words tumble out and his passion becomes evident. Good thing I recorded the interview so I could catch the plethora of rapid-fire thoughts and opinions, one atop of another.
Though he grew up in Ancaster, his formative time was in Hamilton where he was Chef at the Hamilton Golf and Country Club. He always wanted to open up his own place, and once he had the time and money and felt comfortable doing it, he looked “for the longest time” for a place in Hamilton.
