By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Joseph Brant Museum hosted its fourth Speaker Series event last week as part of its hosting of the “eat make share” exhibition, which is being held at the museum until September 5.
This month’s instalment featured Len Senater, author of The Depanneur Cookbook, as well as Emily Zimmerman, whose recipes are included in the book.
Today, The Depanneur operates out of the Centre for Social Innovation and hosts supper clubs, cooking classes, and DIY dinners, among other events.
Senater told attendees about The Depanneur’s humble beginnings and how it was probably for the best that he had no prior experience in the restaurant industry.
“If I had come from the industry, I’d be like, ‘This is a terrible, terrible idea. This is never going to work,’” Senater said.
Senater launched The Depanneur as a one-man operation, beginning as a coffee shop, although he always had “loftier ambitions.”
“It was going to be a little cafe corner store during the day,” Senater said. “And then we would do brunch on the weekends, and run these pop-up events with a drink menu at night.”
After struggling financially, Senater reconfigured The Depanneur into an “informal community space.”
Early on, Senater hosted a kitchen drive to connect with people in the neighbourhood.
“We asked for things like pots, pans, bowls, and spoons,” Senater said. “We kind of had a reverse garage sale. People had so much stuff sitting in their closets and basements, so why would I want to buy all of that stuff from scratch? And it was a nice way to get to know the neighbours as well.”
Senater said that it was soon after this that he discovered the extent of the bureaucracy surrounding municipal and federal food regulations. He shared an anecdote to illustrate the loopholes he’d use to get around the rules.
“I was going to use the leftover butter and put it in a little thing and sell it in our little store,” Senater said. “But no, because then you’re a dairy [seller], and you have to be licensed by the Canadian food inspection agencies and blah, blah, blah. So we started doing this kind of loophole-hunting to navigate through all. I thought, ‘Oh, okay. Well, here, how about this? I’ll put a butter sandwich on the menu,’ which is a slice of toast with a quarter pound of butter on the side to go.”
Senater also spoke about starting the project which eventually evolved into the non-profit organization Newcomer Kitchen.
“There was a huge influx of Syrian refugees into Toronto at that time,” Senater said. “So much so that it overwhelmed the settlement machinery. You had all these families stuck for months with no hotels and no kitchens, so they had no way to prepare their own food. Everyone was wondering what they could do. I thought, ‘Well, I have a kitchen, and I have this weird restaurant that already invites total strangers to do all the cooking. So it doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch to just extend that invitation.’”
The three-year pilot program ended up raising more than $150,000 for over 80 newly arrived Syrian refugee women.
Senater said that it was during the COVID-19 pandemic when he first had the idea to write a cookbook.
“I have this community of hundreds of different cooks that I’ve worked with, and they’re all also stuck at home,” Senater said. “I thought, maybe I could gather up stories and recipes, and we can make it into a cookbook. So I started researching, and I quickly discovered that the only business model worse than the one I already had was the Canadian cookbook publishing business model.”
Senater decided to crowdfund the book, becoming the most successful Canadian cookbook Kickstarter project ever. Eventually, Simon and Schuster picked it up as a publisher.
The Depanneur Cookbook features 100 different recipes, each from a different chef, one of whom is Zimmerman, who specializes in Jewish Romanian cuisine.
“I love exploring that cuisine,” Zimmerman said. “It’s such an interesting sort of farmer or peasant subsistence with some very strong cultural taboos against what you can and cannot eat at the same meal. But then it gets urbanized in these large cities, and I love the way that the recipes change over the years.”
The dip she prepared at the event included roasted eggplants, onions caramelized in olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice.
“Some versions of this are much closer to a puree, and some are closer to a salad,” Zimmerman said. “Mine’s kind of in between.”
After the talk, attendees were free to help themselves to Zimmerman’s cooking and purchase Senater’s book.
Joseph Brant Museum’s next “eat make share” Speaker Series event will feature Amina Al-Saigh, food blogger and author of Souk to Table, where she’ll showcase her Middle Eastern recipes.
Tickets for that event, which will be on Aug. 18, 2026, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., can be purchased here.
