In Conversation with Chef Alex Kim of Five Sails

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Chef Alex Kim, winner of the 2025 Canadian Culinary Challenge. Chef Alex Kim of Vancouver’s Five Sails Restaurant impressed the judges with his dish at the finale, “Taste of Pacific Northwest,”

Chef Alex was a pleasure to speak with for our interview. He is very modest but at the same time justifiably proud of his accomplishments.

In conversation with Chef Alex Kim

Did you pursue any other fields before going into culinary?

No, I always wanted to be a chef since I was 12.

Was there one, or more, person(s) who influenced you before you started.

I was influenced heavily by my Grandmother in Korea, she was a farmer and she showed me many different traditional ways of cooking in Korea.

Often times I spent my summer and winter breaks in the countryside where my grandparents lived and so I was exposed to lots of traditional cooking in Korea, also farming, fermenting, nutritional ingredients in Korea, sun dried chili and all kinds of special things.

They had this old school stove top where they had to burn wood and dry branches of this and that and then they would boil water and cook rice in this gigantic kettle pot. I was sitting beside my grandparents and seeing all these things. There was no waste. The stove top they were using was right beside and under the floor of their bedroom so in winter time there was always a hot room. The would ask me to come and share the heat but I always found it too hot for me.

I got to learn to respect this planting and farming and harvesting and cooking. That was my childhood memories.

What one person, or persons, influenced you once you began your journey.

When I was young I think Chef Jamie Oliver, Naked Chef, had his first show and I would find his show on the tv all the time on the educational channel so my parents would love me being on that channel so I used to watch a lot of Jamie Oliver’s show and I would enjoy watching him have so much fun cooking for his friends and family, going shopping. Talking passionately about how things are processed. That was also a big influence for me.

It started in 1999 and I think that was the first show I watched when I was 9 or 10.

The show was more like him inviting his friends and he was cooking different things every afternoon. His concept was more like him being a home chef, going shopping at the butcher shop, local markets.

Unlike shows like Hell’s Kitchen? 

No there was no yelling or screaming it was more like him having fun cooking.

Do you see yourself as more the type of chef like Jamie Oliver as opposed to one who reacts to things at any given moment or are you more calm, stable?

Right now the culture has changed so much that I think the old school ways that when the chef comes and everybody was more disciplined, and my way the highway style.

It doesn’t work that way any more, I think the new generation of cooks they are expecting different things. More sharing, our expectations, visions and goals. We put in time for our development, coaching, one on one teaching.

Chefs are trying to stay calm, be positive and come be more of a leader than a manager.

No unnecessary intense vibe, you don’t need to yell anymore. I know that in the food service we feel the same pressure but how we approach each and every situation by being more calm, being more organized, being more quiet and serene. 

Tell me about your culinary education.

I did a short cooking class in Korea based on French cuisine. Also I did a two year diploma course at NAT, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. They had a culinary program of two years so I did that while I was working in a kitchen.

I started in Edmonton and while I was in school I worked at multiple places; one was at a luxury boutique hotel called Union Bank and I worked at a mocca bar eatery, and worked in a Korean kitchen.

How many years have you been a chef.

About seventeen years. Most of the time I have spent in International hotels. I have worked at two Fairmont properties and the ShangriLa Hotel in Vancouver. That’s just about over ten years in the hotel industry.

I got the job at Glowbal Group beginning of 2021.

Have there been any challenges?

I think everybody felt the same way during Covid. I felt like the hospitality industry was very vulnerable. We were relying on tourism or local people, their economies. During that time it was the only time that I thought about going from what I was doing to something else but I also realized what I love to do and that what I was passionate about was cooking. I was able to just be more patient until things were settling down and got better.

Was the Canadian Culinary Challenge your first competition?

Right after my cooking school I entered some smaller, local competitions but for the major competition it was my first one.

How many hours would you normally put in on a regular day?

On a regular day I am going to say 9 or 10 hours. That’s better. There are still chefs putting in longer hours. One of the nice things about working at Glowbal is we are trying to go along with the movement so that people who are talking about a work life balance, even for chefs too, to maintain a happy  family and our health. I think the mindset is, when you’re healthy physically and mentally you produce quality service and food.

We don’t do ridiculously long hours. Often time in the middle of December sometimes we would put in 11, 12 hours. I come to the chefs, sous chefs and managers and say it’s time to go home. We help each other, let’s wrap it up and call it a day. That’s the mentality in the kitchen.

I think a lot of people envision that you spend hours doing the prep and cooking in the kitchen, is that always true? Is that your role?

My official title is Culinary Director. I am the Culinary Director for both Five Sails and Glowbal Restaurant on West Georgia Street. I have a full management team where I have head chefs at both locations and we have sous chefs, junior level cooks and dishwashers. My role will be more on developing the team, supporting in all kitchen aspects.

Often times supporting means, it can be chopping onions, it can be sitting down with a chef and talking about new menus, or it can be talking to my sous chefs one on one regarding their development plan in the next six months or one year or it could possibly be connecting with the general manager talking about budgeting for the coming years or sitting down with owners about our plans, visions and concepts. That is more overall my role.

You like to be very hands on in your role?

That’s only a part of it. I think in a way the planning stage where I am supposed to spend time myself and plan properly for next few months and I would like to focus to do that so that my team wouldn’t be suffering executing something that is poorly planned. I understand the consequences of when things are not planned properly. Even though I like to be hands on cooking with my chefs and cooks and during that time tasting together, however, I also recognize the importance of planning and sitting down for a meeting.

That’s what I like about my role currently, the very diverse time spent during my ten hours a day. 

How big is the kitchen team at Five Sails?

At Five Sails we have about 25 kitchen staff, that includes dishwasher, cooks, chef de parti, sous chefs, my pastry team and then myself.

The team at Glowbal is about 55 kitchen staff, it’s a larger team because of the size of the restaurant and then the concept. 

I work with about 80 kitchen staff. Also I directly work with front of the house team at the planning level. A lot of meetings, training it’s part of my responsibility too.

It’s about 220 staff overall.

Is choosing the menus exclusively your responsibility or is that a group effort?

It is solely my responsibility but I like to work with the chefs and sous chefs. What I have realized in the past couple of years is that when I involve them more in the menu development project I get more of their ownerships. My sous chefs will play with his dish, or her dish, and sometimes we run that as a daily feature or weekly feature at the restaurants. Then we like to develop more and more so that at times they end up on the tasting menu or al a carte menus. When that happens my sous chefs would actually put in a lot more effort and time to coach and develop our cooks to execute the same level as to our standards. 

I like to work with everyone and also like cooking. I don’t think at the sous chefs level we’re not really teaching someone, we are sharing our knowledge. One of my sous chefs can be better in a different type of cooking than I am. They have pedigrees in other areas, say there is Japanese cuisine or Taiwanese cuisine French cuisine, we are sharing our knowledge.

We focus very much on developing as a team.

Where do you source from?

When it comes to developing menus the first thing we do is think about what is local and seasonal. When I see sweet peas, asparagus and artichokes in springtime or root vegetables, squash in the fall and winter time. We start looking into our local farmers who produce or provide the quantity that we need.

Once we have the idea then we start developing the textures and flavours and presentation style so how we are moving step by step. With both restaurants it can be hard to work with the smaller farmers we sometimes need to have a large quantity of produce delivered every day or week. Mostly we work with medium and large size farms, we talk about what’s available and what their plans are.

Not only producers but also with fishers or local suppliers that have the better knowledge about what’s coming and what’s fresh. We have relationships ongoing.

With a big push towards Canadian do you see you changing suppliers?

We have already been utilizing Canadian products at Five Sails. There are a few items coming from overseas in Japan, that’s only 10% of our menu items, the rest of it is from local level farmers. For example our ducks from the Fraser Valley, lamb from Peace River between British Columbia and Alberta. Our mushrooms are locally grown in BC. Halibut and Sablefish which will be on the menu for spring, that comes in from Haida Gwai, Dungeons crab from Vancouver Island, oysters from Vancouver Island. We are following our Canadian food program. 

What is your most challenging dish to prepare?

For our tasting or al a carte regular menu items they are well planned and thought out menus. Something I’ve been sharing with my sous chef is that even though you have the best recipe in the world if your cooks cannot execute or prepare it is pointless to have it on the menu. We like to develop dishes that we can produce very consistently.

On the regular menu items I don’t find anything that is particularly difficult or challenging however the menus for my signature dish and doing that for a tasting menu from February 9th to March 19th and during this month it requires a lot more steps. There is a lot more technique to prepare and execute because this is like a kind of competition style dish. Also I think there is a pride in this for me, I like to produce at the same level of dishes for this tasting menu. I think I take extra, I put in extra effort and time although I don’t find it stressful or challenging. 

What is your “go to” dish?

Whatever items end up on the al a carte menu they are all the dishes that I like to cook for my guests, it’s hard to pick one. I love scallops and searing scallops perfectly. It takes a while for my cooks to practice and get trained so that is one thing that I work with our junior level cooks is how to sear scallops properly. When it’s properly cooked and seasoned properly then it feels great to serve to our guests.

Last fall and winter we started getting really good sun chokes from Pemberton, BC we were doing different textures with the sun chokes and some nice local pears and we added some pickling liquid to it, we garnished with the pears for the brightness. I really like this dish and the feedback from our guests are always great. 

What is the worst kitchen disaster you’ve ever experienced?

When I was in Lake Louise at the Fairmont hotel in the middle of a dinner service, at that time I was the chef for two restaurants, one was a German Swiss and the other was French fine dining. It was 7:30 in the middle of service and a fire alarm went off and everybody had to evacuate. I think that was about ten years ago. It was in the middle of winter as well and we had to be outside until they figured out what happened. 

It was good how the hotel responded to the situation. They were handing out warm blankets and hot chocolate so the guest wouldn’t have to suffer the cold. Then they found out it was false alarm and we all got back into the kitchen. The guests came back into the dining room but it was almost two or three hundred guests re-ordering all this food all at once. Obviously once the alarm had gone off all the equipment had to be shut off so we were turning on all the stove tops and ovens and fryers. We started cooking for two or three hundred people within an hour and a half. Everything was basically the hotel had to buy for the tables. The guests were getting the complimentary food because of what happened. We didn’t want to make it worse by taking hours and hours preparing their food. That one was a nightmare.

Is there a stress reliever for you in a kitchen duty?

I like processing fish, whole fish, and when I am doing that for hours and hours at a time it really helps me to de-stress, it relieves me from the stress of other duties. Sometimes I stay in one corner and stay quiet processing fish.

Do you cook at home?

I cook for my wife, sometimes my parents-in-law, I cook for them, but mostly I cook for myself and my wife.  

Do you have a favourite dish to cook at home?

My wife loves seafood but recently she was showing some allergyic reactions. When I cook at home she likes my pasta dishes; ragu, simple to prepare. Her mom has three restaurants, she is a chef as well so my wife grew up eating well prepared and seasoned food and she has an exceptional palate so when I’m cooking at home it’s even more challenging for me to surprise her. She likes to eat my food but then I have to put a lot of time into it for her palate. She loves my pasta, some brunch items.  

Is there anything about you that would surprise people?

I sometimes get this question “what would you be doing if you weren’t cooking?” and when I say this to either my co-workers or friends they kind of get surprised:

If I wasn’t cooking I would be a musician. When I was little I was playing guitar and I used to sing when my parents were not around. I was kind of a shy boy, I didn’t want them to hear my voice. I used to play guitar and sing. I think I had really good passion for it but I wasn’t super talented.

I love singing, guitar, piano. If you know more about me, I don’t really sing in the kitchen. There are some talented people they come to work and they sing and they kind of amuse people, I’m not really that type of person that’s why I think the workers around me they get surprised.

Read the article about the 2025 Canadian Culinary Challenge here. Next year’s Canadian Culinary Championship is already scheduled for January 29th—31st, 2026, in Ottawa.