Canadian Celebrity Chef Chuck Hughes Visits Bagel Shop Café

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Chuck Hughes, the Canadian celebrity chief who has an entire collection of series on Canada’s Food Network cable channel and the owner of two renowned restaurants in Montréal, visited the Bagel Shop Café last week.

Best known for his show Chuck’s Day Off, now carried by the Cooking Network on cable networks in the United States as well, Hughes has a special place in his heart and his kitchen for seafood.

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The LJC’s Ilona Rūkienė caught up with Chuck last week and asked him a few questions.

Chuck Hughes – garsus Kanados televizijos kulinarinių kelionių šou režisierius ir vedėjas filmavimui pasirinko LŽB Vilniaus „Beigelių krautuvėlę“

Asked where he had heard of the Bagel Shop in Vilnius, Hughes said he and his team are always on the look out for new places to film, and his wife and children are Jewish, so the Jerusalem of the North was a natural choice.

He said each episode lasts 22 minutes, and one future episode would feature the Bagel Shop.

His team filmed in Jordan, Turkey and the Netherlands just before arriving in Lithuania. The globetrotting is part of a new show he’s calling Chuck’s World.

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Chuck spoke about his experiences in Vilnius, and said he made food for skateboarders living in the hotel where he stayed. He also visited Sweet Root Restaurant and the Šnekutis Bar in Vilnius, where he sampled authentic Lithuanian cepelinai. Besides making and trying food, he also found time to jam with a klezmer band in Vilnius.

“I’ve seen so many beautiful places. Most of all the architecture stuck out, it’s wonderful, very European. It reminds me of the streets of Montréal’s 400-year-old Old Town,” Chuck commented.

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How does Montréal stack up in terms of bagels? Many Litvaks live there.

Chuck said many think Montréal’s bagels are even better than New York’s. He found Bagel Shop bagels slightly larger but in essence very similar. The secret of Montréal bagels, Chuck revealed, is a little bit of honey in the water and salt, and they’re cooked in an oven.

Chuck Hughes’s producer Adriana Canellas spoke about the groundwork that goes into each trip, and how locations are selected for shooting.

“We don’t want the culinary travel program to be from the same old, known places around the world. I have worked on this show for many years. I’ve been to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin. These cities are often mentioned and featured on different programs, not just in cooking trips and articles, so I said, we need to go to the lesser-known places which could surprise us. We live in the internet age so we have access to all sorts of information. You can travel by internet, learn about everything and see it all. It really is difficult to surprise people anymore, even with food. I consulted with a television colleague who had done some investigative journalism before the trip and she said she’d like to visit Eastern European countries. I immediately agreed and began looking for information. I had heard something about Lithuania before, but before travelling I wasn’t sure what to expect at all. I found information about unique food. I contacted a travel agent and heard that it would be very interesting, and that we could do a good episode in Vilnius. I told our series’ creator and director Chuck Hughes and the whole team. In preparation for the journey I learned Vilnius was once called the Jerusalem of the North. Now in Vilnius, we realized Jewish culture, which had flourished before the Holocaust, is very important, and we were concerned with connecting it with food, because our culinary travel show is about food. My colleague who was making preparations for the trip found an article about the Bagel Shop, and I thought, oh, what a good idea! And Chuck Hughes immediately became interested in the Jewish sweets made here, teiglakh and imberlekh, made of carrots and ginger,” Canellas commented.

Chuck’s episode on making imberlekh at the Bagel Shop in Vilnius is to air in spring of 2017 in Canada.

Chuck’s television work includes Man Fire Food, Today, Chuck’s Eat the Street, Chopped Canada, Chopped, Unique Sweets, The Hour, Unique Eats, Chuck’s Week Off, Perfect 3, Next Iron Chef, Chuck’s Day Off, Chefography, Secrets of Montréal: Cultural Gems, Top Chef Canada, French Feast, Iron Chef America: The Series, Best Thing I Ever Ate, Ace of Cakes and others.

More photos here.