"My first memory of working in a kitchen, takes me back to the age of 6; on one particular evening I walked into my mom's kitchen and asked if I could help. My mother turned around and looked at me with a big smile and said 'of course you can help'." She brought me a stool to stand on and placed it in front of the sink. (Guess who got to wash the dishes for the rest of his childhood?) As I got older she taught me more and more. From grade six to graduation I was taking every cooking course possible; by the time I was in grade 10, I was helping teach the grade 12 class.

"After graduation, I took a job as a dishwasher in a busy little café called Mary's Blue Moon Café, in Sidney, on Vancouver Island. After only two months of washing dishes, the café promoted me to prep cook, and soon after that I was sweating it out on-line. After two years it was time to move on, so off to Victoria I went. I spent the next five years working for a company called Angel Foods. During this time, I worked for two of their four Italian restaurants. Both were very popular. In fact, there used to be a piano player who played every once in awhile at Pescatore's -- I believe her name was Diana Krall!

"As any chef knows, you can only learn so much in one kitchen, so I decided it was time to move on. In the Grand Cayman Islands I worked for two of the best restaurants: Smugglers Cove and Deckers 269. I was able to learn a lot about Caribbean cooking, and after a year I decided it was to time to move closer to my roots in Vancouver, BC.

"Vancouver was where my love for food took a big turn. It felt like I went from just cooking to creating. My adventures in Vancouver started at the Listel Hotel where I worked under Chef Ray Evans. It was then on to the famous Bin 941, which to this day is my favourite dining spot in Vancouver. (Except Capones, of course!)

"Perhaps the place I learned the most and had to work my butt off to get noticed (by European chefs Frank Dodd and Michel Knowlson) was Bacchus Lounge located in the Wedgewood Hotel, which was rated the number-one hotel in Canada, while I was there. In two years, I learned more about cooking then I did in all those previous years. It was like I was getting ready for something, but did not know what, until one day the phone rang and just like that I was running my own kitchen."

Chef Burnham was formerly executive chef at Capones.