ARTICLE • COMMUNITY SOUP: CHEF JACQUELINE JOLLIFFE // FOOD, COMMUNITY, NON-PROFIT
Chef Jacqueline Jolliffe and a guest in the kitchen at The West End Well, 2014. Photo by Urszula Muntean.
Jacqueline Jolliffe is a music lover, a teacher, a world traveler, an activist, a gardener, and a volunteer. She’s also a self-taught chef, a self-described “learning sponge,” and a driven entrepreneur. Although, you may know her best simply as the “Soup Lady.”
Maybe you’ve run into her dining at the Fraser Cafe or in years past working with, and learning from, the staff at The Red Apron. Wherever you may have crossed paths, chances are you probably know Jacqueline because she handed you a steaming hot bowl of delicious soup out of a tiny window in a bright green food truck. Sweetpea, the vehicle that housed Stone Soup Foodworks, was Chef Jacqueline’s daily kitchen in recent years, where she spent most of her days dishing out “slow food, fast,” in the form of soups, chili, and tacos to students, local residents, and tourists alike. Now, Jacqueline hangs her apron at the West End Well, bringing her local, seasonal comfort food out of the truck and into the open kitchen.
With heroes like Julia Child, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Dan Barber, it is no surprise that Jacqueline continues to champion slow food, sustainable farming, and communal dining, especially when you learn of her deep-abiding passion for connecting through food and knowing its origins.
A multi-stakeholder, for-profit co-operative located where Somerset meets Wellington, The West End Well is a restaurant, a gathering place, a learning centre, a music venue, and a grocery store. It is a place where you can eat and shop for local, sustainable food at accessible prices; where you can meet like-minded people who are concerned about conscious living and doing what’s best for the environment; where you can grab a beer and listen to some great indie music; and where you can pull up a chair and meet someone entirely new to you in this small-town city.
I asked Jacqueline what brought her to cooking and soups in the first place, to which she simply replied that she discovered that it was “her life mission to cook and create, and to enjoy the pleasure of food.” She has been interested in learning, teaching, and discovering how things grow from a young age, and she has a strong desire to learn how to cook food that “tastes like the sun and the earth.” Jacqueline has taken that same inspiration she drew upon for her mobile kitchen and is now dishing it out to patrons and members of The West End Well. Just as the truck provided a direct connection with people, so does her new gig, with its open kitchen and spirit of community. Walk in anytime and you might see a local farmer sitting at a table. A customer, three feet away, may be shopping for groceries harvested from that same farm earlier that day. This community vibe inspires Jacqueline, “the whole idea is really about that connection—we know our farmers and producers, and we know where our food comes from.” She recounts a conversation she had with one of the West End Well’s farmer-members. “I asked him, do you have any more beet greens? To which he replied, ‘It’s over.’” Because of a frost that came too soon, the beet salad had to come off the menu. “There is something about that that is so visceral and neat because we can’t eat it anymore—it’s not growing anymore.” It is this passion for seasonal cooking and using what is locally available that drives Jacqueline and her team at the West End Well to be constantly inspired by local food when creating their menus.
If you ask Jacqueline what’s cooking at the West End Well, she might say butternut squash soup, okonomiyaki (a Japanese cabbage pancake), or a classic grilled cheese sandwich. The delicious food sourced from local farmers isn’t the only thing simmering on the stove at the West End Well, however. Together with a host of volunteers, employees, members, and patrons, a big pot of community connection is bubbling over. You could call it nourishment for a change, which also happens to be the West End Well’s mantra. When you walk in and peer just past the kitchen, you will see a large pegboard on the back wall, carefully adorned with cooking tools. After sitting with Jacqueline for only a short time, it becomes immediately apparent that the pegboard is only one visual manifestation of her respect for, and similarity to, the one and only Julia Child. Both are warm, down-to-earth cooks who started their culinary careers later in life; both share a passion for teaching, and they even share a birthday. With heroes like Julia Child, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Dan Barber, it is no surprise that Jacqueline continues to champion slow food, sustainable farming, and communal dining, especially when you learn of her deep-abiding passion for connecting through food and knowing its origins.
With the truck, “I wanted to create accessible and sustainable local food. To create a culture of delicious sustainable food that is affordable for all, including people who work in the industry. I always felt it was my personal mission to connect people with the land through the food they ate and through community—through that sense of connection.”
When Jaqueline first launched her soup truck, longtime friend and SLOWest (Sustainable Living Ottawa West) member Bill Shields took notice and approached her about a new project he was spearheading. Bill and Jacqueline had worked together on several initiatives within SLOWest, a community group in the west end of Ottawa focused on an environmentally conscious way of life starting on a local scale. Based on her past work with SLOWest in its food and gardening groups, Bill identified Jaqueline as the local chef who would be a perfect fit with the West End Well, which at the time was just in its idea stage. “Jacqueline’s approach to food—tasty, nutritious comfort food—her knowledge of local farmers and her interest in applying the principles of permaculture, created a wonderful fit with the vision of the West End Well,” says Bill. “After our first discussion, she responded with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ and we began the detailed planning for this new social enterprise.”
Jacqueline’s involvement with SLOWest was due to her interest in food systems. “I saw it as a way to transform our community through food action,” she says. When SLOWest transformed into the bricks-and-mortar West End Well, she was even more inspired to get involved. “It was especially that building of community and that sense of co-ownership and connection that always felt so great. People connecting around food, eating, and sitting together—that’s something that this place is really about.”
The food philosophy at the West End Well stems largely from the Stone Soup story, written in 1808 by Robert Moser (and readily available online), that tells a story of a peddler bringing out a spirit of community from a divided and famished populace through what he calls a ‘stone soup,’ and from which Jacqueline drew her inspiration for the soup truck. At the West End Well, Jacqueline looks forward to the many events and opportunities to come, as she envisions it as a place where people can continue to learn. “It becomes a place of co-creation. With CSA dropoffs, learning opportunities, the cafe, and the grocery, all in one space,” she says. “There’s also that bigger picture of education and people learning about their food.” Speaking of learning about food, you can expect Jacqueline and her team to offer cooking classes: basic introductory lessons, preservation workshops, soup workshops, and how to cook with less expensive cuts of high-quality meats. As part of the inclusive mission of the West End Well, the cooking classes aim to be accessible to all and allow people who are on a limited budget to create quality meals.
So, what is her vision for the West End Well? I asked Jacqueline how she would like to see the co-op develop: “one of the things we’d like to see is people in here gathering and talking and connecting with each other over the food. We’re planning on doing theme-focused dinners with beer and wine, centred around food but also centred around ideas. That will be really neat because people will be able to gather together and learn together.”
Jacqueline seems quite content in her new digs, where she continues to stay passionate about how food connects people. “Those little moments,” she says, “where you see people sitting and eating and talking and changing things,” these are the moments that inspire her every day to continue stirring the soup. “There are things going on in the food scene in Ottawa that are pretty amazing—and this seems like one of those things.” She humbly promotes her soul-satisfying food, by answering my question as to her signature dish: “I'd say my signature is my soups. We have one every day and there are also jars for sale in the grocery.” As we take a sip from our locally brewed craft beers, Jacqueline says proudly, “We’re putting out high quality, delicious, and well-sourced food at a pretty reasonable price in a cozy environment. I think it’s a nice place to be.”
Herd Magazine, 2014.
Update: The West End Well food co-op closed its doors in 2016.