I spoke with Stephanie O’Brien and Sunshine Chen, the hosts of Make In Tonite, about the early success their locally-made online interactive cooking show has found and what to expect on Episode 3 this Friday at 6 PM.

 

Rob: You’ve done two episodes now. How has it gone?

Stephanie: It’s great. There’s all these little things that we weren’t expecting. For example, a couple went in to Rusticana, which is our grocery partner, to pick up their Make In box. And the feedback they left the rest of Canada staff was “We’ve been married for 32 years. And this show has provided a spark and our relationship, it has given us something new to look forward to each week, and  were going to keep coming back. It gives us something in our week to look forward to.”

Rob: Have you had a lot of attendance at these virtual experiences?

Sunshine: Yes, we have. We’ve been looking at about 50 people for the last two shows, and they’ve joined in from across the country and even international. We even had some  participants from Phoenix, Arizona,

Stephanie: Tell them who’s tuning in from Phoenix.

Sunshine: This is actually a friend of mine, an actual top gun pilot at one of the US military air force bases. And he’s been finding cooking to be with his family real enjoyable, but at the same time he hasn’t been overwhelmed because of the complexity of some of these meals. We’re working with Red Seal super chefs and I’ve been saying  the comparison is like watching an F1 formula team work and being piped into your kitchen. So the guy who can change tires in less than two seconds is showing the regular folk who by the time they’ve changed their tire, the other folk are like, I just got this wrench out. What do I do?

Rob:  Have the end results ended up being pretty good?

Stephanie: Absolutely. We get photos submitted. We have a contest running each show as well for gift certificates at the venue, and the food shots for getting are pretty comparable to what the chefs are actually preparing in the kitchen.

This week coming up our feature chef is going to be cooking in his own kitchen in Dead Man’s Flats. I’ll be really interested to see how that goes, when he doesn’t have the aid of a commercial kitchen behind him.

Rob: So the first couple of episodes you’ve highlighted some of the top chefs from the Malcolm and Murrieta’s in Canmore. You’re going to a Banff-based chef for this one, aren’t you?

Sunshine:  We’re happy to be able to have chef Robert Ash, the executive chef of the Fairmont Banff Springs, joining us to lead us for the night, and it’s pretty exciting. If you go to our website you’ll see the ingredients list. He’s prepared this amazing little document that shows you the tools, the instructions, the ingredients. It’s going to be a stealthy healthy veggie dinner. We’re getting a lot of excitement because a lot of plant-based diet folk have been wanting to join,  so we’re very excited about this and it should be really amazing.

Rob: Any special guests lined up for the next episode as well?

Sunshine:  You’ll have to join us to see  these surprise moments,  but through the other ones we have been able to integrate partners and local businesses in fitness and dance. Our first one, we helped to teach people how to do Drake’s Toosie and, we’re getting stories that grandparents are now shocking their grandkids and being able to do Drake’s Toosie.

We had a swing dance lesson and it’s pretty amazing when you cut to the dining rooms and kitchens of these people, and they are swing dancing and they’re just having a good old time. It’s more than just cooking dinner, I’ve been calling it a online dinner party where it’s full of surprises and guests and interesting moments. And the thing that we hear back again and again that I think is most meaningful is that people are telling us this is an extraordinary opportunity for us to share moments with our families as we’re in isolation. So we have people who are starting to connect with each other across the country to share a meal, have a great moment, engage with one another and also up there cooking game and we couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Filed under: Canmore, cooking