Godfather of Pacific Cuisine
John Bishop was an indifferent 15-year-old student, dreaming of an adventurous life outside his small hometown in Wales when he spied a Royal Navy recruitment poster. There was an enticing promise about seeing the world. Bishop went home and told his mother that was for him.
Aghast, his mother worked to convince him going to cooking school a few hours north was a better plan. She promised it would be different from regular school. Working in a kitchen, she said, had benefits.
“My mother said you’ll always be in the warm and you’ll always have something to eat,” Bishop says, recalling his mother’s long-ago advice over cups of mint tea at a white linen-covered corner table in Bishop’s Restaurant, the Kitsilano fine dining establishment he opened in 1985.
With a bar at the front, the two-level dining room is small and elegant, the walls filled with impressive art, much of it by West Coast artists.
On this overcast March morning, the topic was his pending — and reluctant — retirement.
The chef, award-winning restaurateur and cookbook author, considered to be the first in Vancouver to champion seasonal, farm-to-table dining centred on Pacific foods, was planning to close Aug. 1.
It wasn’t the first time he’d floated the idea. But this time, he meant it. But Bishop didn’t seem entirely happy about shutting up shop. His customers certainly weren’t. One regular, also Bishop’s accountant, even offered to bankroll him if he’d relent on retirement plans.
Famous for 35 years of consistent quality, locally based cuisine and seemingly effortless hospitality, the 45-seat restaurant defines Bishop’s culinary legacy. But worries about skyrocketing rent and taxes were making for sleepless nights for the 75-yearold. His wife, Theresa, and adult children, Gemma and David, said it was time to make a change.
Bishop seemed resigned as he talked about his philosophy of local-is-best food, the notable chefs who had worked in his kitchen and the prime ministers, movie stars and VIPs (including Julia Child — she ordered steamed whole crab, hold the spice) who dined at his tables.
Also discussed was the then-newly declared global pandemic and its possible impact on the restaurant industry. In fact, Bishop’s would close the next day when the province told people to stay home.
What COVID-19 meant for Bishop was the opposite of what happened to many restaurateurs hobbled by the lockdown. He’s not getting rich, but he’s surviving. His previously immovable landlord stopped charging rent. To his delight, he’s keeping his doors open without needing his generous patron’s support.
And in the end, John Bishop is not retiring. He’s staying open until the end of the year.
“Retirement plans have gone out the window,” Bishop says in late spring, sounding almost giddy to be sticking around. “
I had a taste of retirement,” he says of lockdown. “And I honestly really like running my restaurant.”
Things are different with the pandemic, of course. Bishop’s started selling take-out meals in mid-May. Typical of John Bishop, each bag included a small something extra to say thank you: fruit, Theresa’s homemade focaccia, a complimentary dessert. He even did some of the dinner deliveries himself.
When he reopened Bishop’s dining room in early June under Phase 2 of British Columbia’s restart plan, half the tables were removed to accommodate social distancing. Theresa created dramatic floral arrangements to fill the empty areas. Bishop thinks it’s actually cosier, with each table in its own corner of the dining room.
Bishop’s has been full ever since the reopening, with two nightly seatings of 40 patrons each. It looks as though that will be the case for the rest of 2020.
“People are responding incredibly and being extremely generous,” Bishop says. “Now I have another life that’s emerging and I’ve been enjoying it immensely.”
Regulars often well up when they thank Bishop for what may be their last meal in their favourite neighbourhood restaurant.
“I’m always very social and with my customers, but since announcing the closure, I mean, it’s almost like I’m running for political office or something,” Bishop says. He’s clearly touched by the response and “the outpouring of love.”
Bishop says he’s even more engaged in the running of the dining room now. As always, he’s at his tiny station in the kitchen, shucking oysters. But he’s happiest in the dining room, chatting with guests. He also has a new chef, Spanish-born Macia Bagur.
Bishop does the daily shopping for the restaurant and sets the menu, ideal tasks for someone who gets excited about finding perfect heirloom carrots, the beauty of ratatouille or the multitude ways to prepare leeks.
Bishop came to Canada in 1973 after a career as a chef thatincluded stints in England and Ireland. He fell in love with Vancouver — it’s where he met Theresa — and after 10 years as chef at Umberto Menghi’s Yellow House, he decided to open his own place.
Bishop’s only plans for his new endeavour was that he wanted to cook something other than Italian food. And he wanted to shake things up. “
When I first opened, people were still relying on imported ingredients to paint that thing of fine dining, or once-in-a-year experience for romantic dinners and so on,” he says. “Diners expected to have food that came from anywhere but local.”
Bishop wanted to follow the same path as new California cuisine movement pioneers Alice Waters and Jonathan Waxman, chefs who inspired him from the pages of magazines such as Gourmet.
“That style of food they had, you know, using local ingredients, meeting local farmers and cheese-makers, some of the European background was there, but it was forging a new cuisine,” Bishop says.
He hired Kim Boyson, now owner of Citrus Catering, to be his restaurant’s first chef. This was the only local restaurant she knew of at the time to support farm-to-table dining. The emphasis was on best-quality seasonal ingredients that were simply prepared.
“Small trucks would pull up behind the restaurant with fresh herbs, seafood, meats and it was usually the actual farmer selling their bounty,” Boyson says. “I remember the passion and excitement they would have when showing a particular herb, vegetable or edible flower.”
“It just seemed so logical to me,” Bishop says. “My father had a good backyard garden. Not that we as kids truly appreciated it.” Eggs from the family’s chickens were on his plate as a lad. Locally grown and raised food was part of his early kitchen-helper jobs.
Bishop says his watershed moment was meeting Surrey farmer Gary King of Hazelmere Organic Farm, who told him: “We’d love to grow for you. Let’s get the seed catalogue out.”
King, who died in 2011, was a contributor to Bishop’s 2007 award-winning cookbook Fresh, one of four cookbooks he put out, including Bishop’s, Cooking at My House and Simply Bishop’s. Bishop’s fifth cookbook, a comfort food collection tentatively titled Winter, was supposed to be a retirement project. That’s on the back-burner for now.
Chefs who have worked at Bishop’s include Michael Allemeier, now culinary instructor at SAIT Polytechnic; Adam Busby, general manager of the Culinary Institute of America; Andrey Durbach, of Il Falcone Restaurant in Courtney, and Iron Chef America winner Rob Feenie, who is now an iron chef himself on Iron Chef Canada and also helms culinary product development for Cactus Club Café.
Angus An, chef-owner of multi award-winning modern Thai restaurant Maenam (located a couple of blocks from Bishop’s), never worked for Bishop, but he did learn from him. When he was 19, An was a regular at the Wednesday morning cooking classes Bishop taught in the restaurant in the 1990s. The youngest in the class and the only male, he’d often stick around after the lesson to talk about food. One of the first cookbooks he bought was Bishop’s Cooking at My House, An says.
Bishop encouraged him to go to culinary school in New York, and it was the right decision.
An celebrated his 20th birthday at Bishop’s and recently returned to mark his 40th. He’s amazed at the restaurant’s longevity in a changeable industry.
“Restaurants go through trends and he’s obviously adapted to that,” An says. “I think for the most part people go there for the room and everything and it’s really just him. He’s the host.”
Michael Allemeier is just as complimentary.
[Bishop] is by far the most positive influence on my career,” says Allemeier, who started at Bishop’s in 1990 and stayed for seven years. “I owe a lot of where I am today to my time at Bishop’s.”
Boyson and Allemeier say the key things they learned at Bishop’s relate to service — the unexpected gestures that delight guests.
“John said we need to know what our guest wants before they know what they want,” Allemeier says. He recalled one couple with a fondness for colourful vegetable purées.
Whenever they came in, Allemeier made sure a colourful purée was on their plate, even if it wasn’t on the menu.
These small gifts weren’t always appreciated. Bishop recalls the night he waved Robert De Niro off with a loaf of bread after his dinner. “What’s this?” the puzzled actor asked.
Vikram Vij worked front-of-house at Bishop’s for 18 months during Allemeier’s tenure. He left Bishop’s to open Vij’s Restaurant in late 1994, the start of what became a South Asian culinary empire and led to his stint as an investor on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.
Back then, Bishop tried to talk him out of it and encouraged him to stay, Vij recalled. That wasn’t to say Bishop didn’t support Vij. He did, and even filled Vij’s small restaurant for Bishop’s staff Christmas party.
The first review for Vij’s Restaurant begins minted chef-owner’s declaration: “I want to be the Bishop’s of Indian food.”
Vij says he learned the value of making his cuisine a personal expression from his time at Bishop’s. He also admired the lack of hierarchy among Bishop’s staff. That camaraderie translated into excellent service, he says.
Bishop’s was dedicated to “pure hospitality, that genuine love of the cuisine and the ingredients,” Vij says.
He hopes to host Bishop for a special dinner next year. “I feel John has taken us on this journey and I think he should be respected for what he’s done. He should be loved and given huge accolades.”
Bishop also wants to play host, putting a big farewell dinner together with as many of his former chefs as possible doing the cooking. The room will have to be big because a lot of people will want to be on that guest list. COVID-19 will be the deciding factor in where and when. Many of the chefs say they are in, whenever it happens.
“I am actually quite proud of the fact we’ve managed to get through the difficult time of forced closure,” Theresa Bishop says. “I also think it is the right decision given the situation and the fact that John loves what he does. It also gives people a bit more time to have that one last visit to Bishop’s. It’s sad, really. I don’t think either of us will be able to drive by 2183 West 4th again after. We’ll have to find another route home.”
Turns out his mother was right about what would be the constants in John Bishop’s life. There’s been plenty of food and he’s always in the warm, feeling the genuine affection shown by so many customers over 35 years.
And Bishop, an enthusiastic traveller, did end up seeing the world. All it took was opening a restaurant that gave people in Vancouver a taste of home.
Bishop's
2183 West 4th Ave., Vancouver, B.C.
bishopsonline.com | 604.738.2025 | @bishopsvancouver
