While he had never entirely disappeared from view, 2024 has been a comeback year for Rob Feenie. The veteran chef kept a low profile for a number of years, working behind the scenes at various restaurants and not drawing too much attention to himself. But it didn’t really make a difference to his reputation. His name has remained one of the most revered in culinary circles – both in his professional stomping grounds of Vancouver and far beyond – for more than two and a half decades. From helming the kitchen at the trailblazing Lumière and its next-door neighbour, Feenie’s, to authoring bestselling cookbooks, hosting the Food Network Canada show New Classics with Rob Feenie, and becoming the first Canadian chef to defeat “Iron Chef” Masaharu Morimoto on Iron Chef America, his resumé is bursting with triumphs.

But it was earlier this year that he started making headlines for the first time in ages, when it was announced that he would be taking over one of the most storied and timeless restaurants in Vancouver’s history: Le Crocodile, a temple of classical French cuisine that’s been open since 1983. And by all accounts, Feenie has been knocking it out of the park. My own dinner there, this past summer, exceeded my loftiest expectations.

But despite his incredible achievements, Chef Feenie’s gastronomic journey didn’t start on an auspicious note. “When I was a teenager, I was going to soccer practice and tried to make some hash browns for breakfast. I ended up almost burning down the entire kitchen,” he ruefully admits. Adding insult to injury, Feenie’s father was a firefighter, and the family lived two doors down from the captain of Feenie Sr.’s stationhouse. “I had to call the captain to come put the fire out.”

At that time, in the early 1980s, cooking wasn’t part of his career plans at all. “I was playing hockey. That was the dream,” he says.

Then, an opportunity arose through the local Rotary Club for students to study abroad for an entire school year. When determining his top three destination choices, Feenie ranked Sweden first, thinking of the hockey opportunities there. His second choice was France, followed closely by Japan, thanks to an early neighbourhood influence. “As a kid in Burnaby, our next-door neighbours were from Osaka. I used to go with them to Fujiya [a Japanese supermarket in Vancouver]. The owners still remember me,” he says, laughing.

Feenie got his top choice and, at age 16, was off to Sweden, where his passion for hockey was gradually eclipsed by a passion for food. “I’d never really been outside of Burnaby, and suddenly we were harvesting chanterelles in the fall, we were ice fishing in the winter, and I got the chance to travel.” Feenie explored Holland, Denmark and Belgium, as well as France, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Once back home, he started hosting dinners for his friends. He also discovered the massive Public Market at Vancouver’s Granville Island, its merchant stalls filled with locally produced meats, vegetables, fruit and more. “All of a sudden, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he recalls. Then, a chance meeting with legendary French chef Pierre Dubrulle led to Feenie’s enrollment at the Dubrulle International Culinary and Hotel Institute of Canada.

This story has been edited and condensed for clarity. Read the original version in the Fall/Winter 2024 edition of driver magazine.

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