Waterfront Legend retools with grilled brie and strawberries on rye

The downtown food firmament is shifting again, as Waterfront Legend overhauls its operations in the former Dock's location.

Legend's Chinese/ Japanese/ Thai buffet closed last week but owner Imee Yuen is planning to bring it back.

For the time being, the big change is Yuen's hiring of local culinarian Rick Atherton to run the new River Cookhouse in the glass-walled riverfront back section of the Legends complex.

"We do very simple, fresh and all house-made stuff." Atherton tells SooToday.

"I've carried that through my career as a chef. I don't like doing store-bought.The thing that's going to make us stand out is fresh taste and good quality product, but it all has to be house-made, right down to the salad dressing and the dips," Atherton says.

"I'm hoping... that we can turn this place around and fill it."

Atherton has been involved with food since his high school days at Sir James Dunn Collegiate and Vocational School in the Sault, and at Northeastern Secondary School in Garson.

His love for gastronomy, he says, sprang out of early exposure to the precise rigour of kosher cooking

"Every summer I would go to Jewish kids' camps," Atherton says.

All through his high school years, he worked the three summer months cooking according to strict kashrut dietary law for Yogi's (J&D) Catering.

"Each summer I would progress, I started as a prep cook. Then I was first cook, then second cook, then sous chef." 

By his final year of secondary school, Atherton had risen to chef at Yogi's Montreal operation.

"In kosher kitchens, everything is done so specifically - the way that they store the foods and how they prep the foods. I picked up on it and I loved it. I went to college for business administration, financial management. But I was still working in kitchens the whole time. By the time I was done my program, I just wanted to be a chef."

At age 19, Atherton ran the kitchen for Swiss Chalet when it opened on Great Northern Road.

"I wanted more," he says. "So I went to Toronto."

There, Atherton completed his culinary apprenticeship at Liberty Entertainment Group, working under future celebrity chefs Marc Thuet and Richard Andino.

Atherton eventually became tournant at Liberty, trained to handle any cooking task at any of Liberty's 16 venues.  

"They would send me wherever I was needed," he says. "As a salary-paid chef, you worked six days a week, 12 hours a day."

Sault Ste. Marie is a decidely different culinary market than Toronto and Atherton learned he had to dial back some of his offerings here.

Working with Chris Lepore at Gran Festa, he found local tastes leaned toward simpler fare.

"The dinner specials I was offering, people were like, this is a little too much."

Atherton left Gran Festa and spent five years with Lepore at Solo Trattoria.

Then, he cooked at The Harp, and at Chicago Cookhouse before it closed earlier this year.

In his latest gig running the kitchen at The River Cookhouse, Atherton has put together what he calls "a nice simple menu."

Appetizers include shrimp- and crab-stuffed portabello mushrooms, and zucchini planks with garlic, chipotle and sriracha aioli. Both items cost $10.95.

There's a peanut-butter-and-bacon burger for $13.95, sauteed with green peppers, onions and cheddar.

Homemade pastas include a gluten-free corn pasta for $17.95.

Oven-roasted beets and spinach in rissoto are $10.95.

A 14-ounce rib steak dinner is $32.95, brick chicken with apricot-mint chimichurri is $20.95 and pan-seared shrimps and scallops are $23.95.

A brie-and-strawberry sandwich, grilled on rye, is available between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. for $9.95.

Shane Kokis, who used to work the grill at Chicago Cookhouse and currently presides over Sault College's Odeno Bar and Grill, works three nights a week at The River. 

"What we have been doing is three daily specials," Atherton tells SooToday. "One appetizer, two entrees. I'm trying to introduce lunch specials once I have the rest of the kitchen trained."

With CIty Hall and the OLG offices within a stone's throw, he wants to try "power lunch" specials - three items guaranteed to be at your table within 20 minutes or they're free,

The idea would be to get downtown office retail workers in and out within 45 minutes.

"If I could get a hundred people there every day for lunch, that would be wonderful."

The front part of the Waterfront Legends complex, where the buffet was until last week, is currently closed because of an air conditioning failure.

The new air conditioner is expected to be installed later this month, and owner Yuen wants to bring back the Asian buffet with live cooking, as a totally different establishment from The River Cookhouse.

The buffet will be offered only on weekends, she says.

The side area where the Club 89 dance club used to be will eventually be used for catering, banquets, weddings, showers and parties, Yuen says.

The River Cookhouse is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

(PHOTO: Chef Rick Atherton and Sous-chef Matt Thibert with The River Cookhouse servers Amy Izydorczyk and Sarah Black. David Helwig/SooToday.)