Inside the kitchen of Danny McCallum, head chef at Jacob’s and Co. Steakhouse

Danny McCallum has been a chef at Jacob’s and Co. Steakhouse since 2009, but he didn’t come by his culinary prowess naturally. As one of five kids raised by a single mom in Vancouver, he didn’t have much time or money for elaborate meals growing up. “My mother was the single worst cook in history,” says McCallum. “She used to boil rice, mix it with tomato paste and call it Spanish rice. It was awful.” So McCallum got himself a job at a Stanley Park concession stand. “My family needed the money, but more importantly they needed someone who could cook,” he says. “I learned a lot there.”

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In 1996, McCallum moved to Montreal, where he worked in restaurants while playing bass in a punk band. They had some success, even opening for Rufus Wainwright, who introduced McCallum to a girl from Toronto. McCallum relocated once again to be with her and eventually got more serious about his cooking. He did stints at Citron and Brassaii before finally landing a job as the sous-chef at Jacob’s. “It was a huge learning curve for me,” he says. “But, like any project I undertake, I got deep into it.” Eventually, he was promoted to head chef. “I used to be vegan, which actually makes me the perfect person for this job. Understanding the treatment of animals—their habitat, their place on the food chain—helps with sourcing, aging and preparing meat properly.”

At home, McCallum keeps an eclectic fridge. “I store my favourite cookbooks and records in there, because it reminds me to go to them for inspiration,” he says. “There’s no place in my house that I visit more often than my fridge. It just makes sense to me.”

McCallum isn’t entirely in charge of what gets stocked, though. “My four-year-old son, Fynn, loves sausage. This particular one is ibérico, made with delicious pata negra from Spain. And the packages it’s leaning on are filled with beautifully oily sliced jamón. We tend to eat it on bread with olive oil.”

The current star of the show is the uncommon bone-in tenderloin. “Tonight I’m going to roast some carrots, onions and squash and serve them as the side,” he says. “For the meat itself, I don’t believe in sauces or crazy rubs. If you’re eating beef, you should be tasting it. I’ll do this one with salt and pepper in a smoking-hot cast iron pan and then finish it in the oven.” He often buys his cuts from Woodward Meats, a restaurant supplier that also does home delivery, and Spanish Pig on Roncesvalles. “The Wagyu we have in the fridge right now goes for $800 in the restaurant. The tenderloins would probably sell for $150 each.”

While Jacob’s is known for its steak, the restaurant’s forthcoming new location in the Financial District will have a heavier seafood focus. Fynn, for one, is thrilled. “Fynn goes crazy for seafood,” says McCallum. “I shucked him a dozen oysters for breakfast just this morning. He washed them down with black anchovies straight from the jar and a yogurt drink.” The family is also stocking lobster, giant prawns, and some trout and halibut that McCallum caught himself in BC.

McCallum gets his groceries from all over town. “Our eggs are from Summerhill Market. I have a pork loin in the freezer that my wife, Katherine, who is great at finding a sale, got from Loblaws. There’s a huge hunk of parmigiana from Costco, and then a lot of the produce is from small local shops.” Some of the veggies get used for meal prep. “Kat and I batch-cook a soup once a week. At the moment, we have a carrot, lentil and turmeric soup and another with charred tomatoes. Super simple and delicious.”

“I love the fresh pasta from Tiny Market in the Annex,” says McCallum. “They supply the restaurant with cavatelli, so I bring it home and cook it up with olive oil, lemon and garlic. We love to eat it with seafood. Fynn and I also make mac and cheese with some of their short pastas.” When McCallum opts to eat out, he hits up Alo, Dailo, Shoushin, Gia and Dreyfus. And like many Toronto chefs, he occasionally takes his team to Short Turn after service.

The freezer is stocked with frozen dumplings from Nations, more batched soups, chilies, stews, fruit for smoothies, frozen pancakes, ice cream, cookies and cans of fruit punch. “Finn loves ‘making juice,’ as he calls it, so I always have frozen juice on hand,” says McCallum. “Kat is a trained and excellent baker, so we usually have some of her cookies in there as well.”

The pantry is mostly full of the usual suspects—flour, sugar—but there are some more interesting items as well. “I love fancy tinned fish, and so does Fynn,” says McCallum. “I stock up on the stuff and hide it in here.”

McCallum has a knife for every task: one for filleting and skinning salmon, one for butchering a whole rib-eye and so on. His oyster-shucking knife is of his own creation—he co-designed it with a knife company called Nora. “I also have a few knives that I purchased during a beef tour of Japan,” says McCallum. “We travelled through Kobe, Iwate, Hokkaido and all through the north.”

When they’re done cooking for the day, the couple unwinds with a glass of wine or a cocktail. “I don’t hide my special bottles,” says McCallum. He keeps his favourites—Raveneau, fine sherry, burgundy and champagne—in the fridge door for easy access. “The champagne I have right now is worth about $3,000, and the sherry goes for $800. I’ll wait to open them until there’s a real reason to do so, like a birthday or anniversary. The wine on the bottom is open because it’s a $60 dollar bottle. We’ll have that sort of thing with dinner.”

One of the produce drawers is home to a small mountain of cider from Prince Edward County. “I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I swear by the County Cider Company,” says McCallum.

There’s also a huge collection of liquor and liqueurs. Standouts include the bottles of mezcal McCallum grabs on his yearly trips to Oaxaca and a bottle of whiskey that a friend labelled in McCallum’s honour. “We have all these different bottles because we started a tradition of making a cocktail Advent calendar,” says McCallum. “Clearly we get super into it.”