Iqaluit chef reaches ‘Mount Rushmore’ of Canadian cuisine

With an Alaskan-designed sealskin dress, Greenlandic ivory necklace and 50 kilograms of Nunavut fish, an Iqaluit chef has found her way onto American TV screens and Canada’s culinary “Mount Rushmore.”

“I was over the moon excited, and I still am,” Sheila Flaherty said from her home in Iqaluit, on being invited to participate in Top Chef, a long-running American culinary TV reality show.

The program features chefs completing culinary challenges while competing against each other.

Flaherty was one of five Canadian chefs invited to be guest judges for the première of the show’s Canada-themed 22^nd season, along with Nicole Gomes, Dale Mackay, David Zilber and Jeremy Charles.

“If there was a culinary Canadian version of Mount Rushmore, I mean, there are the faces right here,” Tristen Epps, one of the competing chefs, said of the guest judges during the first episode.

Flaherty is a former Iqaluit city councillor and founder of Sijjakkut, a culinary tourism venture in Iqaluit.

“To be included in that company is just mind-blowing,” she said of the other judges.

“And to be referred to as, you know, an amazing chef in Canada, it kind of makes me take a step back and say, ‘Oh really, little me?'” she said.

Flaherty got the invitation in August to be on the show.

“There was somewhat of a dilemma. It was right at the time of our annual caribou hunt,” she said, adding she always joins her husband for the hunt and it’s very important to both of them.

Canadian chefs Nicole Gomes, left, Dale Mackay, David Zilber, Jeremy Charles and Sheila Flaherty take part in the first episode of season 22 of the American TV show “Top Chef.” (Photo courtesy of Sheila Flaherty)

But her husband, Johnny Flaherty, reassured her that she had to go. So within a few days, she had packed a sealskin dress designed by an Alaskan friend and a floral atikluk, or hooded overshirt, she made herself and was heading to Toronto.

The only catch was her ingredients: All chefs were asked to bring some traditional ingredients from their home region so that the 15 contestants could divide into teams of three and try to cook with them.

The show’s producers had suggested the chefs use farmed Arctic char from the south, but Flaherty could not allow it.

“In my good conscience, I cannot present farmed char. That goes against everything I stand for, so I said the fish has to come from Nunavut.”

So she placed an order for around 50 kilograms of frozen char and turbot and had it flown a long and convoluted route from Pangnirtung to Toronto. Flaherty also brought some crowberries from Iqaluit.

She said all of the contestants’ dishes were good, but most of all she loved a traditional Siberian soup made with Arctic char. It was simple but very special, she said.

The episode first aired March 13 on BravoTV and is available for streaming on CityTV+ and Hayu!

This isn’t Flaherty’s first time on television. In 2020 she competed on two episodes of the show Chuck and the First People’s Kitchen that aired on APTN.