(Photo courtesy/Mabel Hill Farm & Marketplace, Facebook)

By Ben Tompkins

Great Canadian Kitchen Party

Nipawin chef wins bronze medal in provincial competition

Nov 25, 2023 | 2:14 PM

A local chef recently won bronze in a provincial cooking competition down in Saskatoon.

Michael Brownlee of Mabel Hill Farm Kitchen and Marketplace was one of eight Saskatchewan chefs who participated in the Great Canadian Kitchen Party competition on Thursday.

Brownlee, a Carrot River native, is the owner and chef of the Nipawin restaurant and had the chance to advance to the national competition in Ottawa if the judges chose his dish.

The judges instead chose the dish of ‘Rusty’ of Harvest Eatery from Shaunavon, who ironically enough is quite good friends with Brownlee.

“It was a blast, a lot of fun and just really cool to compete with some of the highest-rated chefs in the province, everybody came with their best dishes and it’s a really good opportunity to showcase what we’re doing here at a high level,” Brownlee told northeastNOW.

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“We had a deal that if either of us won, we would be the other’s sous chef for the competition, so he won and I’ll be going to Ottawa with him helping him represent his restaurant and his company. We’ll be competing on the national level and competing against all the other winners of all the kitchen parties from all the other provinces.”

According to Brownlee, the national competition is scheduled for early February.

“He’s been a really good friend of mine over the last few years and it’s good to see a couple of small-town restaurants making it big on the big stage. It’s usually all the city restaurants that are winning all these competitions, so to have two of us who aren’t in the city be on the podium, that’s a pretty cool moment because I don’t think it happens all that often.”

Mabel Hill has now been around for five years (was created in 2018), so it’s still a fairly new business.

Brownlee explained the provincial competition itself was good exposure for his restaurant, and now going to the national competition is proof that you don’t have to go to the big city to accomplish your dreams.

“We went into competition with the idea that this was gonna be an opportunity to just show people the kind of dishes that maybe they could expect at our restaurant. It was just a really cool opportunity to say that we’re producing something pretty cool out here and it’s a destination zone and hopefully, worth the trip,” he added.

“You’re kind of viewed as an underdog to move out of the city to come and do something like this, a lot of people view small-town restaurants as not the same quality of what you’d find in the city. Seeing that we’re able to compete and are awarded higher than others just shows that it doesn’t really matter where you’re located and there’s a lot of pride in that.”

In total, there were about 300 to 350 invited guests for the competition, as Brownlee brought along five sous chefs with him.

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