Celebrity Chef Roger Mooking is Dedicating His Life to the Arts

Chef Roger Mooking is a driving force, creating experiences through food, music and art with the purpose of connecting people.

We sat down with him to talk about Toronto’s diverse food scene, black history, and his interactive art installation "The Burn" in Nathan Phillip Square.

What do you think is the driving cause for the success in Toronto’s food scene?

What's incredible about the Toronto food scene is it really represents the community at large. I’ve been fortunate to travel to so many corners of the world, and every time I’ve returned back home to Toronto, especially from traveling over the last couple of decades, I really appreciate the fact that Toronto is a special place on the globe. 

When you go to other cities like New York, they have that multiculturalism, but a lot of it is segmented. There's a specific population in Queens, on Park Ave and there's a different population in Brooklyn. Whereas when you come here to Toronto, Scarborough, Etobicoke, Mississauga and Richmond Hill, it’s a mash up. So all of those cultures coming together in such close proximity, it's only natural that the restaurants start to reflect that.

That’s what I think has been the key to Toronto's food success and growth over the last couple of decades.

As a black chef in Toronto, what does Black History Month mean to you?

We have to respect history. But I look at how I look at my birthday. I don't celebrate my birthday because every day I wake up and there's breath in my lungs so every day I celebrate my birthday. With that mindset, every day I celebrate the history that everybody did for me and my community. So, I don't need somebody telling me, we've legislated to allow you to celebrate this month. I don't need legislation to breathe. I don't need legislation to tell me that I need to celebrate something. I do it every day. Every day we focus on black history.

You’re a man of many talents. A chef, music producer, and artist. What inspired you to create your new art installation The Burn?

In January 2021, everybody was deep in COVID.

There are a lot of mental health issues in my family. Both sides of my family have a long history of that and I found myself in not a great place. It's not the first time I've been in a not really great place, but this time was unique in that I didn't feel alone because the whole world was not in a great place.

So that was a unique revelation for me, and I kind of put myself aside and said, “Well, if the whole world is like this, then it's not about me. I need something for the world.” And I went to sleep, and woke up, and had this idea of creating an intention, charging that intention, cleansing it with fire, and then taking the ashes from that fire and repurposing them into community gardens so that in perpetuity that intention that's been cleansed is feeding the community.

How did your initial revelation turn into a massive event in the heart of Toronto?

I've been working with the City of Toronto for a few years now as part of the Awakening Task Force and doing a lot of art installations with them around social justice. So, I called the curator and the lead of the Awakening’s team and explained my idea. She said, “I got it. We got to do this. The world needs this right now.”

So she assembled a team. We brought in a designer and fabricator for the vessels and the fire pits. We brought in a Wyandot elder to make sure that we're honouring all the indigenous traditions around fire keeping and the alchemy that we're creating by creating intentions spiritually, charging them and burning and cleansing them. 

That small team formulated the grandness of this idea. But really it started out from a really dark spot and I needed help. I transferred that onto other people and built this thing. And here we are. Everybody who's come in contact with this, even from the ground level, the moment they heard about it and understood it, they got more intrigued. I think something triggered in them that said, I need to have this kind of healing too. Then they picked it up and started to run with it and then told their communities and then it started to grow.

How did the Canadian government get involved?

Once it started to form, other departments caught wind of this installation happening and they decided they needed this in their lives too. So they took ownership and started to grow it.

Then the Canadian government heard about it through Canadian Heritage and they were like, we need some of this healing too, and began supporting the initiative.

It started like a really small spark from a not a great place. Then it turned into this really beautiful thing. It’s only because we've handed it over to the people.

Now, we're building 312-foot monuments of perforated steel, sound, light and fire sitting in 30-foot pools of water. We have fire keepers, social workers, yoga and meditation programs in City Hall, all night long for 24 hours. There will be indigenous fire keepers, dancing and a ceremony happening all through the night. There's a sound design that's built for each phase of the burn period. So it's a very immersive experience.

You’re creating such a legacy already. Do you have a plan for what’s next?

My only plan is connecting people. 30-something years ago when I started doing music and I was working in restaurants simultaneously. My only plan was dedicating my life to the arts. Because art is where I found the most healing for myself and you could transfer that to other people.

If my trajectory and goal is always just to connect people, art is always the best medium. I've been really fortunate to be able to dabble in music and culinary and have great success. We started doing these awakenings installations and we started winning awards for installations that I've been a part of.

So is there a plan? Yes and no.

The plan is focusing my life on arts. If you live inside the arts, you realize that the mediums may be different, but the overarching concept is the same. You know, we're trying to relay emotions to one another through these various mediums. So once you start learning how to push around the mediums, if you're pushing acrylics on a canvas, light through a lens of a camera, food to somebody on a table, a story to somebody that you've created to relay these emotions and this human experience to understand the conundrums of living in this world, right, the mediums can be very different.

I’ve been working with architects and designers over the years, designing restaurants and building and redrawing and picking up bits and pieces over three decades to communicate with other artists and other builders. Taking all of those skill sets and just driving them out and pushing it because, you know, you don't realize nobody knows what they're doing. This is the revelation that struck me. Nobody knows what they're doing. So just learning all of the different mediums and being curious, I think is what drives any creativity. But bringing it to life is a discipline.

Follow Chef Roger on Instagram @rogermooking to see what he’s up to next!