Presentations
We are happy to announce our lineup of Chefs for 2025. See their profiles below.
Presentations/Demonstrations are held on Sunday only.
Check out the great lineup of presentations...no excuse for anyone to not know how to incorporate garlic into their daily cooking!
Presentation Room
11:00 am - 11:45 am
Andrew Mavor, SDSS Culinary Arts Instructor
What to do with all those zucchini in your garden? Come see Chef Andrew prepare Korean Zucchini Fritters along with chili crunch and garlic scape ribeye steak.
12:00 pm - 12:45 pm
Jasjit Kaur, Host/Producer of "In the Kitchen with Chef Jasjit" and "Kitchen Punjabi"
Jasjit will wow us with her "fusion" cuisine when she marries up Punjabi cuisine with Canadian Cuisine.
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Eli Silverthorne, Core Instructor at The Stratford Chef's School
We are delighted to announce that this year, Chef Eli will do an extended presentation including a variety of dishes. His menu will include preparation of falafel, garlic naan, garlic toum, pickled cabbage, full sour pickles and roasted garlic hummus.
In addition, there will be a supervised KID's Garlic Station, where kids can do garlic word searches, a garlic word scramble, garlic connect the dots, garlic colouring contest, Giant Garlic tic-tac-toe and many other games and activities for families to enjoy.
Be sure to plan for this 2 hour presentation.
Andrew Mavor
Teacher of Culinary Arts at Stratford District Secondary School (The Avocado)
Originally from Stratford, Andrew Mavor's culinary style is one that playfully presents the best ingredients without pretension. Informed by a life spent travelling, his food is best thought of as what you'd love to cook at home if you had the time (plus a pretty big pantry and an encyclopedic knowledge of strange ingredients).
His resumé is long and bizarre, including 10 years in the music industry, running a guerrilla sushi stand at a music festival in the desert, making hot sauce for a chicken wing chain in Las Vegas and cooking 30 pig heads in a football field.
In Victoria, B.C., Mavor opened two restaurants. He turned an oddly experimental BBQ joint in a tiny powerhouse - his first restaurant, named Hanks *A Restaurant. Known for its aggressively rustic charm and tongue-in-cheek tone, the restaurant built a strong cult following on Vancouver island. A heavy emphasis on locally sourced whole animals, creative preparations and unapologetically strong flavours gave the food at Hanks a particular charm, cementing it as a destination restaurant.
His second restaurant, Nowhere *A Restaurant, opened in early 2019. A slightly more refined version of the style of Hanks and with more of an emphasis on plants and seafood, Nowhere found its stride immediately and was subsequently nominated for Best New Restaurant in En Route magazine in 2019. It placed 5th in the country.
Andrew was nominated for "Foodie of the Year" by Western Living for 2020. He re-settled in Stratford in late 2019 to pursue a career teaching Culinary Arts and is currently sharing his knowledge with the students of Stratford District Secondary School at the School's Avocado Café.
We're delighted to have Andrew back again this year. He's a huge hit with our Stratford garlic lovers!
Jasjit Kaur
Chef Jasjit currently lives in the City of Cambridge, but she hails from the beautiful city of Chandigarh in Northern India which serves as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Her culinary passions are well known through her appearances on CBC Radio, Rogers TV and other Ontario media. She is an enthusiastic celebrity educator and is considered an inspirational expert on North Indian cuisine. She specializes in fusion with Indian dishes and the cuisine of many other cultures as with her "butter chicken poutine". Could it be any more Indo-Canadian than that!
Chef Jasjit is a classically-trained Chef and has been a culinary instructor and freelancer for over 20 years. Formerly an independent caterer as well as being a Culinary Instructor at Niagara College, Chef Jasjit has a passion for educating others by sharing her vast knowledge of North Indian culture and heritage. Her life story is featured in "Weaving Dreams" as well as Sikh History published by the University of Waterloo. Her Sikh wedding story can be found on YouTube.
She is active in her community participating in many events and she champions causes close to her heart on TV, radio and social media. Those causes include traditions, culture and heritage, organic food, culinary education, food security and sustainability. Her pairings of food dishes with tastes of chai earned her the winning title at the Chai Competition at Harbourfront Centre in 2023. Chef Jasjit was Master Chef Toronto judge in 2023 and has worked as Project Outreach Manager for Canadian Artistic Food Expos from 2021 until now.
She is Executive Producer and Host of a television series entitled "In the Kitchen With Chef Jasjit" on Rogers Community TV which can be found on YouTube and she currently has another series in production for Rogers' 2025 season. In addition to teaching via the airwaves, she also does one-on-one private culinary classes.
But all this isn't enough for Chef Jasjit! As she moves forward in her culinary career, she is authoring a book on what is closest to her heart...preserving the culture, heritage, history and traditions of long-lost recipes of her Punjabi region. She tests each and every recipe in her test kitchen in her quest to make this dream come true...one step and one recipe at a time!
To quote Chef Jasjit..."The key ingredient is Love!"
Editor's Note: Chef Jasjit is sweet and funny and talented.
Eli Silverthorne
A distinction level graduate from, and now core instructor with, the Stratford Chefs School, Eli Silverthorne is a wine afficionado and strong advocate for local and Canadian cuisine; that is to say he is regional preferred but not restrictive: "If it tastes great, enjoy it". Having staged at various restaurants across the country, from Araxi in Whistler to Scaramouche in Toronto and Maison Publique in Montreal, Eli has returned to his Southwestern Ontario roots settling into bountiful Perth County.
When asked what drew him to cooking he explains "It certainly wasn't the hours or the pay! Cooking, especially at an elite level, pushes you to utilize yourself in a very demanding, comprehensive, and time-sensitive way. As a professional, it draws people that otherwise may be outsiders, who may feel as if they have something to prove. Personally, I wanted a profession that would require me applying myself to the fullest. I always seek a challenge and cooking certainly provides that. Especially when teaching, I'm forced to use my body and mind in an optimized way. I'm constantly using all five senses: watching, smelling, listening, tasting, and touching; all while I'm anticipating, reacting, calling on experience, working with intuition, communicating and being completely in the moment."
A champion of traditional cooking methods, Eli enjoys slow food cooking techniques (cures, braise, smoking, fermentation, sous vide). Chef Eli is a promoter of accurate and comprehensive understandings regarding the what and the why of food science, as well as the historical background and cultural influences that produce particular recipes or cooking methods.
Eli teaches full-time, year-round with the Stratford Chef School: with apprentice students during regular Chef School programming and also designing and leading the schools OPEN KITCHEN program; a now year-round engagement where the school offers public cooking classes and instruction on a class by class sign up basis.
Eli is a born instructor and we're so thrilled to have him each and every year as one of our presenters. There is so much to be learned from Eli in so many areas of food presentation.