EDIFY's Best Restaurants of 2024

In January, we had the chance to shoot the entire issue of Best Restaurants for Edify Magazine. This has been a feature that we have enjoyed shooting parts of for a couple of years, but this would be our first time attempting to shoot the full project. We covered 15 restuarants in 6 days, shooting the process, the food, and the faces of the amazing chefs responsible for it all. In the end, we were able to create a collection of imagery that we were really proud of.

Pre-Production

Coordinating everyone's schedules for a production like this is no simple task. Luckily for us, our Art director, Kim Larson, did all of the scheduling and coordinating for this project, which allowed us to focus on the creative. We knew our time at each restaurant would be fairly short, and our wish list of shots would be fairly long. We decided that creating a few backdrops would allow us to tie the different locations to a single theme which we felt was essential since the restaurants were so different from each other. I mean, how else do you connect a casual pick-up-and-go fried chicken shop with an elevated, fine dining, prairie inspired restaurant? This would also allow us to walk into places and not have to waste time trying to find a background that fit our vision.

Backgrounds

For this shoot, we wanted to have backgrounds that we could bring to the different restaurants to tie the project together. We decided on creating two backgrounds from scratch. Something simple enough that it kept the focus on the food, but also interesting enough to keep the project elevated. This meant painting and texturing a light and a dark version of the canvas background to allow us to have options when we got to each location. We also purchased a few pre-textured pieces of hardboard from our local Home Depot.

Production

Once the production started, it became a fast paced few days. We would arrive to a location and discuss with the chef what food they would be making for us. Then my favourite part would begin where we all put our heads together to start building a photo from scratch. This meant deciding on the background, creating the lighting that best reflected the food, and finally adding a little additional element to elevate the work. Most of the time this meant trying to include a human in the food shot, often times a hand interacting with the food. While we were setting up the food shot, one of us would often run into the kitchen to document the cooking and food prep. I think it is my love of the television show "The Bear," but I always like to spend some time documenting the cooking process. Once the cooking and food shots were completed we would spend an additional 5 - 20 minutes with the head chef creating a portrait of them.

Post-Production

Once the shoot was done, we sent a proofing gallery to Kim through Pixieset. She was then able to go through and select the images that she would like finalized for the magazine layout and give us any notes on cropping to fulfill her version. Then we finalize the photos using a mix of Lightroom and Photoshop and sent off high resolution imagery for the magazine. The finalization process also usually involves a test print from the magazine to make sure the colours are represented as accurately as possible, so we can do any last revisions before print.

Summary

Shooting a mix of food and people in a fast paced, high stakes environment is one of our favourite ways to work. It forces you to make a plan ahead of time, but be willing to throw it all away when something inevitable changes. I love having to think on my feet and rely on my instincts when you need to make quick decisions. The very best part of a project like this though is always the people you get to collaborate with on these images. All of these chefs are artists in their own right and it is an absolute joy to get to help share their beautiful craft to as many people as we can.

We wanted to do something a little extra for these chefs, owners, and staff that opened their doors to us so we took a Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo camera along with us and snapped a pic of them on our way out. Something that we could print and leave them with after sharing their time with us.

One thing that was new for us this shoot was having a local student, Sophia Yang, join us to see how we work and help get some behind the scenes footage of us (which when you’re running from restaurant to restaurant can be tough to remember to get). We asked her to write about her experience tagging along with us and this is what she had to say:

I don’t remember what I expected to see on an on-site shooting session with team Cooper & O’Hara, but it probably wasn’t Nick carrying a five-foot-long roll of canvas backdrop pivoting his way down through five floors in the parkade staircase. As we powered through the sidewalk in the late January snow, we saw Bryan and Thomas jumping off the truck, ready to unload the 40-pound rolling camera bag, an adjustable stand and two umbrellas. And, of course, another roll of canvas.

Coming from a writer’s perspective, the photographer’s creative vision is somehow beyond my comprehension. When a breakfast rice bowl from Rosewood Foods came to the table, I was mesmerised by its fascinating aroma and how it reminded me of a light-hearted Sunday morning. For Thomas, it was like he had built-in lenses to analyze a dish's colours, shades and unique aura. I remember thinking to myself: He must have seen the world so differently, probably with more colours, even. What appeared on the laptop screen, which would eventually be printed on Edify’s Best Restaurants issue, was an enhanced version of what I saw using my own eyes. Within each shot, he captures the storytelling possibilities behind those dishes in photos – the joy that every food lover deserves to experience and the potential of a fond memory. 

One of my main tasks on-site was to help the team record behind-the-scenes content. I’ve learned that in most cases, one of them is always behind the camera to capture those moments. Therefore, seeing all three of them from C&O in one frame was a relatively rare scene. I was surprised to see how much the team improvised with prompts they could find in the restaurants. Much of the footage I captured for behind-the-scenes was the three of them running around, picking up cutlery or plants from behind the counter, trying to reflect the dishes’ distinguished personalities. It took the team sometime to warm up to me and my camera – from doing awkward peace signs everytime they passed by to Nick lip syncing to Dynamite by BTS.

Before we went on shooting for the Best Restaurants, the team and I talked about how memory is ever-changing and only selective scenes can be remembered afterwards. To me, my memory of the amazing dishes from all the restaurants may eventually be replaced by the final shots in the magazine. What remains in my mind when I recall the hours we spent on this trip are the pop songs that we blasted on the road, the proud smiles on every restaurant owner’s face and the lunch rush where we panicly hid behind the flash umbrellas while a hundred school kids stormed into Ralph’s Fried Chicken.