Just 90 kilometres north of the GTA, a small-town restaurant competes with the best Toronto has to offer. The Pine in Creemore has maintained its Michelin star and building upon its success, the same owners opened a sister restaurant – LORE in Collingwood. That restaurant has also attained a Michelin recognition for the Recommended status. The only other non-Toronto restaurant with stars is Pearl Morissette in Lincoln and it holds two Michelin Stars. Inspired by Chinese food, The Pine has been running for six years by married couple Jeremy Austin and his wife Cassie. The Pine is a contemporary Chinese restaurant that reimagines traditional Chinese dishes, while LORE serves contemporary Canadian cuisine where the entire menu draws inspiration from a Canadian dish. The restaurant has maintained its one-star status for the third year in a row, which they learned at a special ceremony on Tuesday. “We go one step further than anyone else is ever going to do to be as unique and creative as we possibly can,” Austin tells CTV News. “That’s definitely not as far as a lot of restaurants will go.” Working together as a married couple can have its challenges. “Sometimes you just want to sit down and have breakfast but there’s 50 things that have to be dealt with before noon,” says Austin. But they each bring a set of skills to the table that, combined, make for a solid team. “Her attention to detail is beyond a lot of people I’ve ever met and my drive for creativity makes a really great combination for excellence,” says Austin. Austin says it’s important for them to always be on their best behaviour as anyone who attends the restaurant could be an inspector. He says key things to look out for are single diners and anyone travelling from another city. “You can’t slip,” Austin says. “They barely let you know that anyone has even been here to inspect you,” Austin says. “You’re kind of in the dark for the whole year.” A spokesperson for Michelin tells CTV News the “starred” restaurants are visited several times by different inspectors throughout the year to ensure consistent quality and satisfaction in five different criteria. Those are quality products, harmony of flavours, mastery of cooking techniques, voice and personality of the chef as reflected in the cuisine, and consistency between each visit. “Every day you have to come in and do your best every single day,” says Austin. While he says the pressure is a lot, he and his wife don’t know how to do it any other way. “We obsess over every single detail,” he says. One of those details is each dish on the menu has its own cutlery to match at The Pine. For example, one of their dishes that is arranged in such a way to resemble a fish comes in a brass-like fish holder with a brass spoon. It’s clear the dinnerware and cutlery are just as important as the food itself. Austin says they work with five different potters who make them custom plates. Their success comes alongside constant chaos, Austin says. From a burst pipe in the wall to floods to damage from Creemore’s hardwater, there’s always something to be done or fixed. “You don’t get to call in sick when a pipe bursts in the wall,” says Austin, which he was currently dealing with while speaking with CTV News. If there’s so much to do at The Pine, why did they decide to open LORE? Austin says it was supposed to be the casual counterpart to The Pine and relieve some of the pressure of having to “be excellent all the time.” As it would turn out, the public’s expectations of LORE were high, and understandably so. They wanted it to be at the same level as The Pine and that’s how it’s been shaping up to be. Austin says the idea for LORE came from the desire to create a truly Canadian restaurant. While there’s Italian, French, Greek, what qualifies as Canadian? As it turns out, there’s a lot more to Canadian cuisine than just poutine. “I always dreamt of doing that for Canada and creating a restaurant – this is a Canadian restaurant and what did that even mean?” For example, one dish on the menu is “Walter’s Albacore,” based off the quintessential Canadian cocktail – the Caesar. It’s reimagined through a tuna tartar dish in tomato and clam broth with pickled clams. You can’t get much more Canadian than that. Michelin shared the inspector’s notes about LORE with CTV News: “Arrive at LORE and you’ll be immediately brought to the bar where an easel displays the chef’s grandmother’s dog-eared cookbooks. It’s charming but don’t make any assumptions, as this is the same husband-and-wife team behind The Pine. Chef Jeremy Austin and his wife, Cassie Austin, impress with fine dining tweaks on nostalgic favorites. Canadian and North American comfort food is leveled up with modern techniques here, where creative reinterpretations include the holiday shrimp ring, French onion cigarette and steak “frites” tartare (a hashbrown topped with tartare). Frog’s legs in a sticky honey glaze with black garlic ranch dressing are a fun take, as is the classic beaver tail pastry reimagined with foie gras.” So what’s next for the couple? The goal, Austin says, was once they opened the restaurant (The Pine), it would allow them to travel, something that’s always been a passion for the couple. But instead, it tied them down for six years as they worked hard to get their restaurant on its feet. Only now are they in a position where they can start travelling again.
