Inside the kitchen of Andres Jaramillo, chef de cuisine at Abrielle

At 18 years old, Andres Jaramillo, now the chef de cuisine at Abrielle, was on MasterChef Colombia. He’d been working at his uncle’s restaurant in Bogota since he was 15, and out of over 36,000 applicants, he made it to the final 50 and appeared on the first two episodes. “I was so nervous with the cameras and lights and everything,” he says. “In the end, I tried to make something too complex, and that’s when I messed up. My dad was with me that day, and he said, ‘Less is more.’ That’s something I always have in my mind now.”

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Despite his elimination, the experience jump started Jaramillo’s career. Afterward, he worked at several restaurants in Bogota, including Ciengramos at the Click Clack Hotel, before moving to Canada in early 2018 in pursuit of a higher salary. “At the time, I didn’t know anyone here, and I didn’t speak any English,” he says. But he landed a gig as a line cook at Alobar and worked his way up to senior sous-chef—a role he later assumed at Alobar’s sister restaurant, Alder. Now, he’s leading the kitchen at Abrielle, a Mediterranean restaurant in the Sutton Place Hotel.

Jaramillo admits that he’s often slipped into stereotypical chef habits: coming home late and opting for takeout because he’s too tired to cook. Recently, however, he’s been making a conscious effort to cook at home more, batch-prepping simple meals like stir-fries or comforting staples like rice, beans, lentils and potatoes. “That’s the food I grew up with, so it brings me back home,” he says. He does most of his shopping at the No Frills right outside his Liberty Village condo (the easy access and low prices are tough to beat), but he’ll head to smaller, local shops for specialty items. He picks up meat at Nosso Talho for hosting and stops by Forno Cultura for fresh bread.

His fridge is stocked with milk (“I drink almost a litre every day”), leftover fried rice, tonic water and yogurt. There’s also a sourdough loaf he grabbed from Brodflour.

He keeps cheese on hand for late-night snacking, including a few vegan varieties to balance out his dairy consumption (on top of milk, he loves ice cream). He also has packages of deli meat for sandwiches.

These beers are from Black Lab Brewing. “I was shucking oysters during happy hour at Abrielle’s bar one night when this couple sat down,” he says. “It turns out one of them was the owner of Black Lab.” They got to chatting, and Jaramillo went to visit the brewery soon afterward.

Jaramillo mainly uses his fresh veggies for no-fuss stir-fries and poke bowls. The avocados, though, are for guacamole. “The secret is to keep the juice from the tomatoes—otherwise you’re leaving all the flavour on the cutting board,” he says. He often serves his guac over a baked potato, just the way he enjoyed it when he was growing up.

In his freezer, Jaramillo has a rib-eye steak, octopus and some ground pork. While his solo meals are usually quick and easy, he keeps these premium proteins on hand for when he has people over for dinner.

There are also several tubs of Good Behaviour ice cream. “I eat ice cream pretty much every day,” he says. “When I was growing up, my parents knew I was really mad if they offered me ice cream and I said no. Usually, I never say no to ice cream.”

In his pantry, Jaramillo has a colourful box of Monty Bojangles chocolate from a recent trip to the UK. There are also crackers (for pairing with late-night cheese) and instant coffee. “That’s how I had it growing up,” he says. “We never had a coffee machine.”

Jaramillo uses this truffle oil as a finishing touch in pasta dishes, and he adds the walnut oil to salad dressings. The olive oil is a souvenir from a trip to Italy.

The KitchenAid stand mixer is for making bread (including a Colombian cheese bread called pandebono) and pie doughs. When Jaramillo first moved to Canada, he studied pastry and baking at Niagara College, and he strives to keep his skills sharp. “Baking isn’t my strength, but I think it’s important as a chef to know how to do a little bit of everything,” he says.

Jaramillo is happy to invest in quality knives, mostly buying from Knife Toronto or Tosho Knife Arts.

The chef’s bar cart includes Nordés gin, which he picked up in Europe, and Casamigos mezcal. He treasures his two bottles of aguardiente, a Colombian liquor he hasn’t found a local source for yet. Friends brought these ones back from a visit to Colombia. “It’s something you drink every time you go out with your friends or your family,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a special occasion or not.”

His cookbooks are mainly gifts from chefs who have mentored him. This one, from the French restaurant group Septime, is the one he turns to most frequently. He appreciates its emphasis on simple, sustainable ingredients.

The knick-knacks on his range hood are mostly souvenirs from his travels. The colourful bear is from Medellin, and the chocolatera—a traditional vessel used for making hot chocolate—on the right is a gift from his mom.