From Total Access, Winter 2004
Chef and restaurateur Pascal Ribreau is savouring a triumphant return to the kitchen, made possible by tenacity and ingenious technology after his SCI.

That’s certainly the case with Pascal Ribreau, a 34-year-old T8 incomplete paraplegic. Last New Year’s eve, Pascal opened Célestin, in the heart of Toronto’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. Since then, visitors have been raving about their gastronomic encounters with Pascal’s nouveau French cookery. Consider this excerpt from a review by Alan A. Vernon & Don Douloff, published at www.toronto.com:

“As the chef and co-owner of the gorgeous Célestin, which opened New Year's Eve, (Ribreau) is now free to cook exactly the type of food he wants, with results that are tantamount to poetry on a plate. His food is grounded in French tradition using top-notch ingredients, but his creative twists will awe even the most serious of foodies…Every dish has a logic; flavours are earthy, yet refined, and always with harmony, reflecting his rock-solid technique. His sauces are skilful -- miles ahead of any clumsy, and all-too-often seen balsamic drizzle.”

More accolades come from Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, enRoute, which recently rated Célestin among its top ten new restaurants in Canada: “The spirit of Célestin lies within chef and owner Pascal Ribreau…executing French (but not too) dishes in an uptown Toronto neighbourhood that loves the bistro’s creamy decor and easygoing atmosphere, but mostly its food.”

Pascal’s culinary career began in his native Paris, where he apprenticed in prominent restaurants such as the Palais de Luxembourg and Relais de Sevres (which now boasts a Michelin star).

In the late 1980s, Pascal met Laurie Anderson, a Canadian who would become his wife. And that’s how he ended up in Toronto in 1988, working as a hotel chef, first at the Royal York and then at Sutton Place. In 1995, he opened his own restaurant, Allumette, on Rue St. Denis in downtown Montreal. It was an overnight success, and only a dip in the economy due to talk of Quebec separation forced him to sell the restaurant and move to Toronto. There, he continued to make a name for himself as the executive chef at Provence in Cabbagetown.

In 1999, life came to a crashing halt when Pascal was injured in a car collision.

Like anyone who’s sustained such an injury, Pascal experienced the highs and lows of rehabilitation. But he persevered, pushing himself to regain the ability to walk, aided by braces and crutches (although he now uses mainly uses a wheelchair for mobility). And never did he doubt that he would return to his profession.

“I think my first day in rehab I watched a paraplegic with the same injury as me walking with leg braces,” says Pascal. “This was after two weeks of ICU. And said, ‘This guy can stand, so I just have to find a way to stand that works for me, and I should be able to get back into the kitchen.’”

Not everyone was so optimistic. “My first doctor wasn't too keen on me getting back to work,” he says. “She didn't quite understand that it's not just a job for me, it's my career and it's my passion. I didn't argue with her. What I did is, on my own, try to put everything together. Basically, I didn't want to fight with her--I just said, ‘You know, I'm going to just do the things I need to do to get back into shape.’”

Immediately following six months of rehab, Pascal went back to Provence, the restaurant where he worked when he was injured. There, over the course of a year and a half and using a manual standing chair, he did everything he could to build up his strength and endurance until he reached the point where he could stand for eight hours.

That’s not all Pascal did during that time. He worked on a unique prototype power standing wheelchair with engineers at Motion Specialties in Toronto. The chair, along with a special chest harness bracing system, promised extreme stability and manoeuvrability—both necessary for working in a busy kitchen. “Two days after I got that chair from Motion Specialties, I drove all the way to Montreal and I was a guest chef at a festival for a week,” says Pascal. “And I tried that chair up to 14 hours a day that week. My legs were so swollen! But I knew that I could do it after that week. It took a big sacrifice, and I was exhausted, but I knew that I could do it.”

During the same period, Pascal had also been hard at work formulating a plan to open his own restaurant. “For a year and half, I learned to work with my disability. But I realized that if I was going to adapt a place, I was going to be better off starting off from scratch; from nothing on the floor--build a space that's totally for me.” Thus was born Célestin (the restaurant was named, incidentally, after Pascal’s grandfather), a former CIBC bank built in the 1920 which is only two blocks from Pascal’s house. He oversaw the construction of the restaurant, which naturally has a number of accessibility features—the tables are well-spaced, and the kitchen has an open, level design. But it’s far from clinical—since opening, the room’s décor has won as many rave reviews as Pascal’s cookery.

“I want people to know that this place is completely accessible,” says Pascal. “But there's nothing worse than going someplace and being reminded that you need special accommodation. Well, when I built the restaurant, it was simply a question of making it easier for everyone.”

Pascal concedes that the year that’s passed since opening has been a whirlwind. “I wanted to go slowly, but we never had the chance. We had so much media coverage for the first three months, some of it perhaps too focused on my using a wheelchair. It settled down over the summer. But we’re so busy, and so many things are happening. We’re getting more and more press.”

His most celebrated guest has been none other than U2’s Bono, who arrived for dinner on a Friday night in November. If anyone in Toronto still hasn’t heard of Célestin, they must be living in a vacuum.

While Pascal welcomes the commercial success that comes from good press and celebrity visits, it’s equally important for him to have Célestin recognized as a place where everyone is welcome—particularly fellow wheelchair users. In fact, among his favourite clients is a family with a 13-year-old daughter with spina bifida. “This family comes in every Saturday night,” he says. “The parents brought in their daughter when they read my story. She is incredible. Her parents say that after coming in and seeing me work, she wants to do so much with her life.”

Pascal points out that, while rewards like this are sweet, the business of running a successful restaurant takes an incredible amount of energy and time. “It takes a lot out of you. It's long hours. But unfortunately for me, I do it because I love it.”

And, he says, such a labour of love is vitally important to anyone who has sustained a spinal cord injury.

“In rehab, you start to get better physically. But you begin to realize that you will never do things the same. So I tell people that you have to fight hard and try to find something that gives you a sense of normalcy. Whether we’re high quads or low paras, we all have our struggles. So it’s important to find something you love and hang on to it. Hang on to the things you love doing, no matter what they are.”

Célestin
HOURS: 6:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Major Credit Cards Accepted
Phone: (416) 544-9035
623 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto, ON M4S 2M9
416.485.9278