“My name is Adam Vettorel.
I’m the executive chef and co-owner of North & Navy and Cantina Gia. Both restaurants I own with my business partner Chris Schlesak.
We opened North and Navy on Nepean Street in Centretown almost 11 years ago and just before the pandemic started we signed the lease for Cantina Gia, so it’s getting on six years now for Cantina Gia in the Glebe. We’re just both passionate about owning restaurants and promoting the Ottawa culinary scene. It’s something I’ve always really been passionate about. I got into cooking in high school. I’ve been in kitchens ever since and it was never my intention to end up as a chef. I always thought I was gonna be a lawyer and I went to school to become a lawyer. But along the way, I paid my way through university with jobs in kitchens and I just couldn’t leave them.
So when it came time to really get serious about my career, I had a mentor who gave me the advice to give one final push in the kitchen and see how far I can take that and see if If that would be something I want. The other profession was always gonna be there. So it wasn’t like it was a permanent decision and so I went for it and I haven’t really looked back since.
I grew up eating on my father’s side of the family and since then, I put a lot of research into it and traveled to taste the food in northern Italy. I would definitely call it my specialty.
A great dish we have is Florentine steak because Italy is not really known for its steak period. The Italians don’t eat a lot of steak except for this one random part of Tuscany where they’re known for this giant steak and in that part of Italy, they do eat steak. Italy is not a great place to raise cattle and most of the cattle they do raise, they raise for dairy. But there’s that one exception in Tuscany where they’re the Chianina breed. And so yeah, I think that’s a really special dish.
We don’t have any plans of going anywhere. We always wanted North & Navy to be sort of like an institutional style restaurant in Centretown, you know kind of a classic style and a comforting like homey feel so there’s no reason for it to ever go anywhere.
We were always looking to evolve the menu and we’re always excited to try new techniques. So adding those but making sure they’re always rooted in a traditional northern Italian dish or at least something that would make sense in Italy. So some of the dishes that we do that are a little more contemporary that they typically use Canadian ingredients, which we also feel very strongly about and so you kind of ask the question, Well, if this was available in that region of Italy, what would they do with it?
So in that case it is not exactly like a traditional dish, but it’s always guided by the sensibilities of the cooking in Italy. To cook proper Italian food, you do have to use local ingredients when they’re in season because that’s at the heart of all Italian food. So that you know, just importing a bunch of stuff from Italy is not even what they would do if they moved away.”
Adam Vettorel
Executive Chef & Co-Owner of North & Navy and Cantina Gia
@adamvettorel
@northandnavy
@cantinagia
