Jurriën timber Stofa chef Jason Sawision won a bronze medal last weekend at the Canadian Culinary Championship in Ottawa. Photo by JEAN LEVAC /POSTMEDIAArticle content
At this point, there should be a trophy showcase at Stofa Restaurant.
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Jason Sawison, chef-owner of the Wellington Street West fine-dining destination, won bronze at the Canadian Culinary Championship held Jan. 30-31 in Ottawa. But Sawision, 43, has other culinary medals in his collection as well.
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There’s the gold medal he won at the September 2025 regional qualifier for the national event, which Sawision earned by prevailing over four other Ottawa chefs. In past years, Sawision took home silver and bronze at the local level.
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And, while he didn’t win the medals himself, Sawision was Marc Lepine’s sous-chef when the chef-owner of Atelier on Rochester won the Canadian Culinary Championship in 2012 and again in 2016, becoming the only two-time winner of the national competition.
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All that is to say Sawision has plenty of positive experiences in culinary contests, even if he seems more low-key than alpha predator when it comes to taking part.
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“They’ve asked me, so I do it,” Sawision says. “It’s a fun switch to the daily routine of what we’re doing here.”
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In the edited conversation below, Sawision discusses the dish that helped him reach the podium, the intensity and atmosphere of this year’s competition, and the recently raised possibility that Ottawa restaurants might welcome Michelin Guide inspectors.
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Q: How different is competition food from restaurant food?
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A: That’s a good question. I would say our competition food is not tremendously different. It could vary, depending on the type of chef. In this competition, I think the food really speaks to who the chef is. In a more traditional culinary competition, there might be a very French style that they have to follow. But this one is designed so that the chefs get to show what they want to show. They get to decide whether it’s going to be that very technical style. There were some very homey dishes (too).
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Q: There was braised meat on a purée.
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A: The variety shows what this competition allows for.
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Q: It did strike me that your dish wouldn’t be out of place on Stofa’s menu.
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A: We pulled this one from a couple of menu items. We thought about dishes that were really well-liked by people, that had really good comments. We thought about dishes that had interesting flavours and textures, and then we expanded on the dish. It started off as a scallop dish and kind of morphed into a scallop and shrimp dish. We noticed after trying it that the shrimp component stood out as something that people really enjoyed. It morphed into a more cohesive dish, versus just a scallop with a bunch of stuff, into something where everything played really well together.
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The most important part of the dish was the mango salsa. That component we tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until we found that it offered the right balance for all the other elements. That was the element on the dish that really bound everything together.
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Q: Will this dish be on Stofa’s menu one day?
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A: It would be a nice feature on the menu to have it in a bit of a larger version. I think it could definitely work.