Janice Tiefenbach: Culinary Activist and Executive Chef at Gia

In 1998, Janice left the family nest and moved to Montreal to attend Concordia University. She enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts. It was there that her culinary activism truly took on a new dimension. Along with a group of friends, she co-founded the “People’s Potato,” a vegan community kitchen that ran on donations.
“I realized it was incredibly creative, and I loved the experience. I loved the team spirit and the adrenaline. I got so excited about it!”

The “People’s Potato” project grew quickly. Back then, there weren’t many healthy food options on campus or in the main building’s kitchen. There, they created a vegetarian menu where people could pay whatever they could afford through donations.
“We’d go to Jean-Talon Market to pick up second-hand vegetables, rice, and more. Our whole menu was vegan, which was really uncommon at the time.”

The following summer, Janice landed a job at Méchant Bœuf, the restaurant at Hôtel Nelligan.
“It was pretty disorganized. We made three kinds of tartare, a beet salad, and some artichokes. I had a manager who wasn’t very kind, and he was always yelling at me to taste the tartare — but I was vegetarian. He insisted so much that I finally gave in and tried it, and I thought… Wow! This is so good! (Laughs.) So I started eating meat again.”

Very quickly, Janice realized that her beliefs often clashed with the realities of the business world.
“With People’s Potato, I came from an environment where everything was natural — we were progressive, decisions were made as a group, and we tried to educate ourselves to be better. But once I entered the world of large, more industrial restaurants, it was a whole different story.”

She learned a lot from the people she worked with, but one thing really bothered her: the restaurant didn’t recycle. Determined to make a difference, Janice quietly began contacting recycling companies, arranging for them to come collect the restaurant’s waste. Eventually, her boss found out — and he was far from pleased with her initiative.

After a year and a half spent in the kitchens of Méchant Bœuf, Janice moved on to Hôtel Opus. She started as a garde-manger but quickly worked her way up to sous-chef. There, the restaurant’s pan-Asian cuisine introduced her to a wide range of techniques, and she loved the experience.
“But the vibe was more of a nightclub crowd, so the clientele wasn’t really interested in the food. I was mostly preparing fruit platters. The only cool thing was that one night, Snoop Dogg sent back a platter made by one of my coworkers. I made him an extra-baller one — and that one he didn’t send back!” (laughs)

Janice decided to leave Montréal’s Hôtel Opus just before the 2010 Olympics to take a position in Vancouver. Opus had a hotel there too, and they offered her a job.

She later found herself working in a small Italian restaurant — and that’s where she fell in love with pasta.
“I started out as garde-manger, but I quickly became fascinated by pasta! I wanted to learn how to make it. There were just four of us in the kitchen, and I would always rush through my prep so I could go help the guy who made the pasta.”

However, the kitchen environment was highly competitive and sexist.
“The three other cooks were men, and they weren’t exactly open-minded or respectful. The chef would shake hands with everyone, and when it came to me, he’d just give me a pat on the shoulder.”

Back in Montreal, a friend of hers who was working at Les Enfants Terribles invited her to join the team. To convince her, he talked up the creativity of the chef — a certain S’Arto Chartier Otis. This would mark the start of a unique adventure for the duo. Janice loved her experience working with S’Arto. She found the restaurant — a mix of brasserie and snack bar with super modern and fancy specials — both motivating and inspiring.
“It was so much fun. S’Arto never said no, and he pushed us to constantly improve and stretch our creativity.”

After two years working side by side with S’Arto, the two of them moved to L’Île-des-Sœurs to help open the second location of Les Enfants Terribles.

When S’Arto left for Japan, Janice worked for a while with Simon Mathys before ending up at Nora Gray, where she stayed for a year.

At Nora Gray, her love for pasta fully blossomed: “I fell into pasta like down a rabbit hole. It just went Bam! and it completely changed my life. I was making the pasta for everything — the pasta station, the entremetier, all the sides for the main courses. There were vegan dishes and pasta. They used really great products. It was tough. I had no formal training, there was so much work, and no time to learn. The head chef at the time, Tony Rinaldo, was also super cool. (He’s now opened a pizzeria in Halifax.) We were a big team — front and back of house. It left a strong impression on me. I realized that it was possible to work really hard and still have a great time. I learned that I was really good at adapting to strong personalities. I understood what they needed and I made sure it worked.”

She was extremely grateful to have had the chance to learn from Emma Cardarelli.
“When I started at Nora, I threw away everything I thought I knew and tried to learn her way. When you work for a chef, the last thing they want to hear is that the chef you worked with before didn’t do it like that. Nobody cares — you have to be able to adapt to different ways of working. You shut up and you say yes, chef.” (Laughs).

Janice also loved being surrounded by so many women in the kitchen. “It was a really cool new experience, I loved it.”

She later reconnected with S’Arto at the Balnéa spa. “That was really cool. It was a great example of learning to adapt to anything. We had a microwave and an induction burner — that was it. Eventually, we got a circulator and mostly built a cold station menu. We adapted and improved the situation: we got a smoker, a Green Egg, and so on.”
However, after a year, Janice started to feel too far from the city and decided to leave — S’Arto followed her.

Together, they went on to work at Soubois and Grinder, before launching the restaurant Hvor, which has since closed. Although the project was exciting at first, it quickly strayed from its original mission, and Janice was deeply disappointed.

Ever since she left Nora Gray, Ryan Gray had been asking Janice to come back and work with him — or at least to promise that if they opened another project, she would join. “In 2017, they told me they were opening a new place, and I went! All summer before the opening, I worked with friends, at La Récolte and at Les Enfants Terribles’ catering service, and finally, I joined Elena.”

At Elena, Janice reunited with Emma. “Emma always supports me. She always has my back. When you work for someone for that long, you really grow to love the day-to-day, and it stops being stressful at all. I’m a stress maniac. Over the years, I’ve learned that some people make stress management way more stressful than others. Being a sous-chef is actually the most stressful position — more stressful than being head chef — because you’re always trying to please someone above you.”

Janice helped open Elena. “There are different types of chefs. It’s not like it used to be — we’re at a turning point. Being a chef is hard, managing staff and all the baggage each person brings is hard, but the way we do it now is more educational than before. You have to do it with more tact: you’re a bit of a psychologist; you have to understand what motivates each employee in order to guide them properly.”

After more than two years of planning, one year of construction, and a pandemic, Gia Vin & Grill, the newest addition to the Elena family, officially opened its doors on December 8, 2021 — with Janice Tiefenbach as executive chef and co-owner.

What’s your favorite part of being a chef?
“Everything is the way you want it. Everything is to your taste. You have an idea of a menu, and then people are ordering it. It’s like a drug. I’m like: wow! It’s the most satisfying feeling. It makes me extremely happy.”

She also co-authored the cookbook Salad Pizza Wine.

Though Janice tends to stay out of the spotlight, her cooking leaves no one indifferent. Her talent for Italian cuisine is undeniable, and her incredible kindness makes her all the more charming. People have been saying it for years — but this is only the beginning of her journey. Forza Janice!