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Outperforming in the Vineyard

For over half a century Peller Estates has been producing award-winning wines in the heart of Niagara-on-the- Lake, one of Canada’s premier wine regions. Since taking the reins of the winery’s restaurant fifteen years ago, Chef Jason Parsons and his team have received many awards, including a Golden Plate from Le Clefs d’Or and an ‘extraordinary’ rating from Zagat. In his lengthy career, Chef Parsons has worked in two Michelin restaurants, six Relais & Châteaux properties and many other prestigious international restaurants and hotels. He also regularly appears as a guest on the popular national TV show Cityline.

Whether it’s directing his award winning team in the restaurant at one of Canada’s most prestigious wineries or preparing dishes center stage on national TV, Chef Jason Parsons enjoys the spotlight. Born in England and raised in Canada, he’s worked with culinary superstars such as Charlie Trotter, Albert Roux and Gordon Ramsay in interesting locales like Bermuda, Amsterdam, New York and Chicago. And for the last fifteen years his home has been Ontario. What brought him to Canada?

“I had the opportunity to come to Peller and I think it was the idea of coming back to all this amazing produce. This is a great region for growing grapes but people forget that it’s also a great region for produce. So our menus are just unbelievable here.

Working at a winery means I also have great access to ingredients that other chefs would never have. I can take a nice bottle of icewine and just pour it over a piece of fish because that’s what I want to do. Last year we calculated that I’m going through almost fifty cases of wine a week just in the kitchen and I bet you a good fifteen of those are just icewines.

I’ve always loved grilling. It just gives you a lot more flavour with that little taste of char. Taking ribs, adding a great sauce with a little bit of honey here, a little bit of icewine there and glazing them over a grill. You can’t get that in an oven or any kind of stove.

Crown Verity grills and I go back a long way. It’s just an amazing barbeque, an amazing grill. It’s industry quality–stainless steel, durable, reliable and I just love cooking on it. I find that when you go to the grill and you turn it on, you know exactly what to expect – that it will give you the perfect cooking temperatures you need.

CROWN VERITY GIVES ME THE PERFORMANCE I NEED AS A PROFESSIONAL CHEF.

I know what to expect when I turn the heat on and it gives me real confidence when cooking. In a kitchen we’ve got these powerful stoves that you know have got the intensity of a professional kitchen or professional line. This grill takes that intensity outside.

One of my most challenging moments involved Crown Verity. We were doing a dinner for twenty people out in a vineyard. We’re ready to put beautiful winery-raised lamb on the grills and the skies just opened up. All the guests ran inside the winery, but we’re the chefs, right? So I’m standing there completely soaked while my sous chef holds a baking tray above the grill while I’m cooking. Thanks to the great power of that grill we were able to cook and crisp the lamb, keep it covered and get it inside to the cozy, dry customers who enjoyed a great meal.

Chefs love to entertain. They are not bringing three or four people over to the grill. They’re bringing 10, 12, 15 people. This Crown Verity can handle that. And it’s also got the right power to be able to get the heat in every single part of the grill, not just little hotspots. So this is truly a professional’s dream for the backyard.

Speaking of backyards, Peller Estates is so inspiring. I am in one of the most amazing microclimates in the world with not only world-class wines but also world-class produce. But also my team inspires me. I have some of the best chefs in Canada and I travel a lot. So I tend to draw on all the things around me to just keep me excited every day.”

ABOUT JASON’S ULTIMATE BURGER

Get the Recipe

“I thought I’d share with you a signature burger we do inspired by the fact that I love bacon and I love a little bit of cheese, too. So we’ve made a homemade burger but we’ve actually incorporated the bacon and cheese right into it. And then of course we put a nice little homemade barbeque sauce on top.

The one thing that I really love about this burger is a lot of people take the ground beef and buy some kind of back fat to add to it, and then grill bacon and put that on top. Some people cringe when I say this, but what I do is I cook the bacon and then save that fat and add that into the meat. And I’m not talking streaky side bacon that’s a little bit too much, but a nice good double-smoked bacon. It does add a really great dimension to the flavor and is what really makes this burger a signature for us.

So what’s the perfect wine with this burger? It’s a tough one, because as a chef for the winery I’m always saying, ‘this wine with this or that dish.’ But I was thinking a Gamay Noir would be amazing because it’s got those smoky notes that really work with the grilled meat. But if you like a bigger wine, you can go up through a merlot and it still would work really well because you’ve got that kind of saltiness of the cheese in there. But any of those great reds on a char grill, it’s going to be killer.”

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