Top Ottawa chef Kat Ferries trades grueling kitchen hours for sustainable work at butcher shop

Kat Ferries has won major culinary competitions and run kitchens at Ottawa's finest restaurants. She's also burned out twice in six months — a pattern that drove her to step back from the high-end restaurant world entirely.

Ferries, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, built her reputation at Stofa, where she worked for nearly seven years and eventually became chef de cuisine. She'd won the 2018 Chaine des Rotisseurs Young Chef National Competition in Edmonton and the 2019 S. Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition in New York. In 2024, she became the opening chef at Elise, the new French restaurant in Westboro. After six months, she left. "I was coming home so drained and my priorities just weren't right anymore," Ferries says.

"If you're giving 100 per cent to your job and you have nothing when you go home, that's not a good balance. It's taken me a really long time in this career to understand that that's not sustainable. You can still give 80 per cent, and have just a creative a job, and at least have something in the tank when you go home."

Now, at 34, married with a young daughter, Ferries works as resident chef at Around the Block and Market on Centrepointe Drive — a butcher shop where she oversees Cubano sandwiches, smoked meat sandwiches, and almond croissants. The work is more regular, spread across more days, but it gave her the flexibility to film Top Chef Canada in Toronto this summer. The show begins airing on Flavour Network Oct. 20 at 10 p.m. Ferries describes the experience as "a mind-blowing and eye-opening experience" — one that was "nerve-wracking."

Ferries is far from alone. Yannick La Salle, who won the 2019 Canadian Culinary Championship representing Les Fougères in Chelsea, left that restaurant in 2022 to become the Supreme Court of Canada's chef. Family was the deciding factor. "I thought, 'What will happen in the future if I don't accept this position? Will I regret my decision?'" La Salle says. Les Fougères' owners have indicated they would rehire him if he wanted to return.

On Oct. 19, Ferries will serve smoked meat at the 2026 Ottawa Citizen Best Restaurants event at the National Arts Centre, among 15 chefs and food businesses featured.