Radical Bakeology
Fungi, flour and local flavours inspire the menu and business evolution at a Timmins bakery and restaurant
Brianna Humphrey, owner of Radical Gardens bakery and restaurant in Timmins has just finished a batch of Old Fashioned-inspired cupcakes, made with honey and whiskey and a cherry filling, then smoked and topped with Grand Marnier buttercream. With 12 years as an organic mushroom farmer, and nine years evolving as a restaurateur, chef and operator of one of the largest food trucks in the province, she has earned a unique and multi-faceted perspective on the food system in Ontario’s north.
“I run a farm-to-table restaurant—the first of its kind in northeastern Ontario,” Brianna says. “We started out as a farm, and I bought this building because, to be honest, I needed a big fridge. I had no intentions of cooking—I went to art school, actually—but somebody convinced me to cook, and it snowballed out of control. Now I’m a Red Seal Chef with a full-service bakery that does specialty cakes.”
Brianna’s cakes are a little punk-rock and often favour a bold, Betsey-Johnson-style colour palette, but all are delicious and resolutely local, which is a difficult balance to maintain given the relative scarcity of local producers and distributers in the region. Her food, bakes and confections are constantly evolving based in part on her artistic whim, but also on seasonal availability and the ever-rising price of ingredients that has recently forced her to plan her food program from a spreadsheet.
Regardless of the pressures she has faced, Brianna is committed to running businesses that align with her ethics and standards. Radical Gardens has been open for nine years, through rain and shine. The staff are well paid, and the food is incredible and made with local ingredients. “I like to know where my food comes from. I want good quality food, and if I’m going out to eat, I want something I can’t make at home. In turn, I produce high-quality product for the restaurants that use my mushrooms, but currently, there’s only one other restaurant in the city that makes farm-to-table food, a pizzeria.”
Brianna is working with various other northern producers, including a family-run farm producing pasture-raised bison, Bison du Nord, to help new local producers understand and meet the quality, pricing and distribution needs of local foodservice and restaurant clients. “When I call up established suppliers like Bison du Nord, they know what I’m looking for. They know I want consistency. They know that I need my order every Tuesday. We need to promote local food and if we don’t promote our Northern Boreal Greenbelt, then no one will. Up here, we’re known for our mineral resources, but not our food, yet we have such a wonderful bounty and a very interesting flavour profile because we’re in the Greater Cochrane Clay Belt. Our meat tastes different, our produce tastes different—everything tastes different because it’s living and growing in the thickest, coldest. tightest clay belt and, because everything has to fight so hard to live, it produces carrots with a sugar content so high they taste like candy. It deserves to be promoted and it deserves to be made into food that shines.”
With the region seeing growth in agricultural production, and ever-rising food costs, food waste and unsustainable consumer buying habits are another front in Brianna’s fight for community and common sense. “People think it’s okay to buy avocados in January and expect them to be ripe. Or that off-season berries look or taste bad. They’re not in season. Not here and not anywhere. Everything gets picked raw and unripe, then it’s gassed and packed in a truck to ripen as it jiggles along the way. Just last night I was thinking about having an “Uglies Farmers Market” to sell off discount food and ‘ugly’ produce. As a farmer, I know I’m going to have B, C and D-grade product and none of that goes to market. But I want to buy all the ugly stuff. That’s my bread and butter. That’s what I want to buy.”
Radical Gardens is only now looking at renovating to reopen their dining room, which was taken over by the pandemic-era pivot to delivery and takeout. Yet, as tough as the past few years have been, Brianna is not standing in place. She continues to create and innovate, riffing on new ideas, or entirely new and whimsical commercial projects to add to her growing portfolio. “We’ve been raising and breeding peacocks,” she says. “I’ve been working on an Angry Bird Sanctuary Airbnb thing I want to do.”
Regardless of where her entrepreneurial muse takes her, local food and community will remain central to her vision. “The food and flavours our boreal forest produces is 100% worth the time and effort, and the blood, sweat and tears I’ve put into it. I just need more people hopping on the bandwagon with me.”
