Tobey Nemeth and Michael Caballo are the wife-and-husband owners of One Star Edulis and the MICHELIN Guide Toronto 2022 Service Award winners, presented in partnership with Air Canada. They and their small team run an inviting and charming dining room with enthusiasm and genuine hospitality which is a rare commodity these days. As part of the inaugural MICHELIN Guide Toronto launch, we chatted with Nemeth about taking work home, how she and Michael met, and the hot tip that led to Edulis.
What are you eating right now in late summer? Vegetables!!!! We are so lucky to live in a region with such exquisite summer produce. We have a community garden plot down the street from the restaurant where we grow lots of gorgeous things, and of course we are also extra lucky to work with such amazing growers who really bring us the best most delicious vegetables possible. You’d be out of your mind not to be gorging on Ontario fruits and vegetables right now!
How did you two meet? Well, in a kitchen, of course! At the now-shuttered Avalon Restaurant in Toronto many many moons ago. It was one of the best fine dining restaurants in the city at the time, a really special place. Michael came for a working interview after moving to Toronto from Edmonton; he worked with me for the day on my station, and the rest is history. Working at Avalon changed our lives as cooks and as people!
Talk to us about working with your partner. The two of us have worked together in some truly wild places - in remote Haida Gwaii; on contract in Vancouver during the Olympics; we were part of a team opening a restaurant and hotel in Panama; and in Italy in the paradise of the Chianti countryside. We have so many memories over the years. The most poignant might have been sitting together at a small worktable in Panama having a heavy conversation about whether it was time to consider returning to Toronto after 4 years. As we were sitting there, we received a message from a friend who'd heard the owner of Niagara Street Café (now Edulis, and also the restaurant where Michael had worked before we moved away) was considering selling. I broke out in goosebumps, looked at Michael, and said, “This is it. We’re going back”. And we did! We arrived during a particularly icy week in February, with only sundresses and shorts and not a jacket or sweater between us. It still feels like a dream.
Do you cook together at home, or are you done with cooking by the time you have a day off? We love eating out in restaurants; it's our favourite thing in the universe really. [It's] also so important for the sense of connection with others chef and ideas. This continually pushes us to be better ourselves and refines our ideas of what is important to us in terms of service culture. We consider it a great privilege to be diners in someone else's restaurant—feeling the buzz and hustle, knowing there is nothing to clean up at the end of the night! But we do also genuinely love cooking at home; the pandemic really brought us back to that pleasure. The luxury of having our small restaurant as our personal supermarket is not lost on us! Sometimes our favorite dinner is a feast of different vegetables, a few precious cans of Spanish conservas, and a great bottle of wine. Heaven.
“So far, after more than 20 years sharing a kitchen, we are still in love.”
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How do you avoid bringing work home with you? We are pretty practiced at enjoying ourselves away from work, but work is also what we love. We have a sign in our kitchen that says, “Smile - you are doing what you love”. And that’s true! So for us talking about work isn’t really talking about work—it’s about talking about food, other chefs and restaurants, where we want to travel next, and remembering meals we have had. It’s our life.
We sometimes have a rule: no talking about work when we travel. But then of course you have a great meal somewhere, and then you start getting excited about an idea for an ingredient, or some other wild idea, or some amazing feature of [the restaurant's] kitchen or bathroom.
Best and worst parts of working with your partner? The absolute best is having someone that always has your back, no matter what. We are both workhorses—and very tough—and we know we can always count on each other in any situation. That trust is just an amazing feeling. We also have very strong personalities and are very stubborn; we have strong opinions on almost everything and on occasion this can produce some light drama. But it usually doesn’t take long before one of us sends the other a look and we just start laughing our heads off. So far, after more than 20 years (more or less) sharing a kitchen, we are still in love.
Presented in partnership with Air Canada
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Hero image: Edulis' Tobey Nemeth and Michael Caballo © Jenna Wakani/Edulis
