From Kraków to Vancouver, pâtissier Chris Janik makes art out of panna cotta and petits fours
The Bacchus Restaurant pastry chef learned about attention to detail in European kitchens
Pastry chef Chris Janik draws from his European training for the new Afternoon Tea Service at Bacchus Restaurant. Photo by Nora Hamade
HAVING GROWN UP in Kraków, Poland, Vancouver pastry chef Chris Janik was often surrounded by the aromas of freshly baked goods. His mother and grandmother also instilled in him a fondness for rituals rooted in food. He recalls a tradition that took place between six and seven o’clock every evening in his childhood home and in those all around him.
“Every day before supper, there was a form of high tea,” Janik tells Stir. “It was tea, and it came with small sandwiches and pastries. In the summer, we’d have our tea in the garden under my mother’s lilac trees. This is a very fond memory.
“My grandma was a great cook, and my mother was a great baker,” he says. “Growing up watching my mom bake definitely influenced my skills today—but I was only watching as she was the boss of the kitchen. The best thing about my city was that there was a very rich café culture. Even when I was walking my dog in the morning, the air was filled with the smell of donuts baking.”
Chris Janik. Photo by Nora Hamade
Janik followed his nose. He learned to create viennoiseries and petit fours and worked in restaurants throughout Europe before heading for Canada’s west coast in 1990, expanding on his training at Vancouver Community College. From there, he worked at several local establishments, including Miku, where he created desserts that blended European and Japanese influences for over a decade. He’s the newly appointed pastry chef at Bacchus Restaurant at the Wedgewood Hotel & Spa, where he has launched his first pastry desserts menu, with items like a dark chocolate Japanese soufflé cake with orange vanilla essences and espresso ice cream. He has also designed the menu for the restaurant’s Afternoon Tea Service, recently reintroduced after a pandemic hiatus, back by popular demand.
Alongside finger sandwiches like classic English cucumber with cream cheese, free-range egg salad with watercress on dark rye, and applewood smoked salmon mousse profiterole are savoury fresh scones and warmed toasted crumpets with clotted cream, preserves, and creamery butter, all served on a multi-tiered tower over the course of two hours and paired with tea blends such as organic pear green tea or Thunderbolt Darjeeling from Tealeaves, a Vancouver-based master blender.
Then there are Janik’s pastries and sweets: a diminutive cinnamon panna cotta with orange caramel sauce topped with edible petals, for instance, lemon passionfruit-curd tartlet, opera cake with almond Genoise and coffee butter cream, and Earl Grey-scented milk chocolate crémeux, each one a small work of art built on techniques that date back centuries.
“One of the places I worked was in Hanover, Germany, where there was a lot of old-school, home-style baking, and they were passionate about using natural ingredients with no flavourings,” Janik says. “In Europe, attention to detail is a must.
“I always loved the industry, but what triggered my passion is when I moved to Canada, I really missed the European hospitality style; it was the missing link, as my pastry style had and still has a serious European influence,” he says. “These are my memories of my childhood; this is what connects me to Europe.”
While he sees himself as a craftsman, building something original through meticulous planning, it’s the artistic side of culinary arts that excites Janik the most about his work.
“I always put light and rich desserts together to complement each other,” he says. “I enjoy re-creating my favourite desserts in my mind, stripping it down to the layers, creating the first prototype, and working back from that. My wife is a painter, and she inspires a lot of my creativeness. The creative process is my favourite part of what I do.”
Afternoon Tea Service at Bacchus Restaurant features pastry chef Chris Janik’s sweet and savoury items. Photo by Nora Hamade
For more information, see Bacchus Restaurant.
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