Made with love When cooking for his family, Thermëa chef Maximus Navarro keeps it simple but creative By: Eva Wasney Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021

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This article was published 17/02/2021 (1408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Maximus Navarro is an accomplished chef. He is trained in classic French cuisine, has worked in dozens of kitchens, opened several restaurants and is now the head chef at Thermëa.

At home, however, his expertise doesn’t carry much weight when cooking for his picky offspring.

“To be honest, it’s more stressful,” he says with a laugh. “The simplest thing (I cook) is bacon, egg and rice. Sometimes they just want the bacon, sometimes they just want the rice and they put all the bacon aside, sometimes it’s just the egg and the rice… it’s always a surprise.”

Navarro, 39, moved to Winnipeg from the Philippines with his wife Sakura in 2015. Feeding their two kids, seven-year-old Titus and five-year-old Lily, requires patience and ample creativity — when bacon, eggs and rice won’t do, hotdogs are transformed into octopuses, rice is rolled into savoury balls and bento boxes are assembled.

Getting them involved in the kitchen also seems to do the trick.

“Oh, yeah,” Navarro says. “Especially Lily, she likes to… do all the mixing or baking, or whenever we’re frying up something she likes to help.”

Simple, one-pot meals are also a staple at home. After a long day of cooking at work, being able to throw dinner in the Instant Pot feels like a small luxury.

“For me, cooking at home or cooking in general should be simple,” he says. “It should be made with lots of love; that’s the main ingredient.”

Beef pares, or beef ligament stew, checks all those boxes and has become a family favourite. Navarro learned to cook the dish, traditionally a Filipino street food, by eating — a lot. Back home in the Philippines, he frequented a vendor that sold big bowls of beef pares, rice and soup for just a dollar. After near daily visits to the food stand, he started picking apart the flavours and trying to recreate the dish at home.

“The Philippines has a big Chinese influence: the base is soy sauce, it’s got the flavour of bay leaf and the aromatics of star anise,” he says. “And it’s sweet, too.”

When he arrived in Winnipeg, he started making big batches of beef pares for staff meals at Thermëa using leftover stock bones — the stew is made from the cheapest cuts of beef, braised for hours until tender. The dish was a hit with co-workers, particularly former head chef Thomas Stuart, who is now director of food and beverage at the Crescent Drive spa.

Growing up, Navarro spent a lot of time in the kitchen with his mom and grandma. He got into the restaurant industry as a coffee shop barista and decided to attend culinary school to pursue his love of cooking. As a chef and kitchen manager, he worked in hotels and helped open a series of small restaurants in the Philippines.

His sister was the first to “gamble” on Winnipeg and Navarro decided to join her in the city after his son was born. Food has continued to create career opportunities.

“Everybody needs to eat, everybody will need a cook one way or another, so it’s worked out for me,” he says.

Even though he’s doing less cooking and more paperwork as a head chef, he hopes to have a positive impact on the next generation of cooks, “We’re trying to make a kitchen that doesn’t need to shout or doesn’t need to cuss out anyone to get a point through,” he says.

Navarro and his family live in the Brooklands neighbourhood, which he likes for its central location and proximity to Polo Park and Route 90 — pre-pandemic, it was always easy to collect visiting family members from the airport.

“They would stay (with us) and we would jam-pack everybody here — and then the best part is the never-ending eating,” he says. “I grew up in a cooking and eating family; we would plan what we would have for dinner while we’re eating lunch.”

Until international travel is allowed again, he’s thankful for technology and chat apps, “We can talk to them every day… so it’s less tough.”

During the first lockdown, Navarro stayed home with the kids while his wife continued working. He was making breakfast, lunch and dinner from scratch every day and cooking Filipino dishes — such as whole fish stuffed with tomatoes and onions — over the fire during family campouts in the yard last summer.

The pandemic has also allowed him to explore other interests, including leatherworking. Navarro has carved out a little corner workshop in the basement where he can get creative and decompress.

“I learned how to make purses and bags. Of course, the kids were the first ones to have that stuff; I made a little purse for Lily and a bigger one for her mom,” he says. “(Now) I’m making knife rolls for cooks and knife guards.”

He’s back at work now, but still makes as much time for his family as possible, whether that’s listening to his kids practise piano or experimenting with new kid-friendly dishes.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney