Meet Chef Couillard

Chef Greg Couillard has forged a life-long reputation as a fearless culinary innovator, a kind of supercollider of food ideas, smashing them together with incredible force, producing novel and exotic new dishes for a few lucky diners to marvel at.

In the 80s and 90s Greg blazed a trail through Toronto’s restaurant scene. He was one of a handful of revolutionary chefs that transformed fine dining in Toronto from a provincial enclave of old French fare and stuffy steakhouses into an explosion of colours, flavours and spices that reflected the energy and diversity of a rapidly changing city.

After more than 5 decades in the kitchen, it would not be hyperbole to suggest that he is one of the most influential chefs in Toronto’s culinary history. Having cooked for the likes of Robert DeNiro, Jane Fonda, Michael Keaton, Susan Sarandon & Madonna, and quoted as being one of the most important things to happen to the Toronto restaurant industry through ground-breaking restaurants like The Parrot, Stelle, Avec, Sarkis, The Spice Room and many others, his prescient embrace of this city’s multicultural flavours and ingredients revolutionized fine dining in Toronto and foreshadowed the eclectic, international menus many now take for granted.

Chef Greg’s culinary curiosity never rests; he has spent the last decade or so wintering on the Pacific coast of Mexico, deepening his understanding of the regional cuisines there, and currently at the helm of our own kitchen as Chemong Lodge's Executive Chef.