Bishop’s established itself as the model of how a restaurant can thrive by stressing hospitality, cultivating local sources and paying close attention to what’s freshly available and when. Its proprietor was one of the pioneers of an ingredient sourcing and menu development doctrine that has become conventional wisdom. The inspiration came from the regionally focussed cooking of Alice Waters’ famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and the means came from the steady stream of local suppliers dropping by the back door of his kitchen with local mushrooms, pheasant and fresh vegetables. Credit for our now internationally recognized, locally focussed cuisine is, however, more diffuse still. Without farmers like Gary and Natty King, and visionaries like FarmFolk/CityFolk founders Herb Barbolet and Janice Lotzkar, fine dining in Vancouver would not be what it is today.

Like matter emanating from the Big Bang, Bishop’s employees, themselves preaching the gospel according to John, have gone on to shape B.C.’s restaurant industry. His influence can be seen from the nightly line-up at Vij’s to the cool shade of the patio at Parkside: Vikram Vij, Andrey Durbach and Chris Stewart are all alumni, and each came away from the experience the wiser. Stewart recalls that Bishop treated his staff “like family” and looked after his restaurant like a doting father. “If you needed something to do your job better or more efficiently,” he recalls, “it would be there the next day.”

Jeff Van Geest, a sous chef at Bishop’s before he opened Aurora Bistro on Main Street, says Bishop taught him “to go the extra mile” in taking care of guests. Bishop, he recalls, would “send meals to the hospital if someone was sick.” (In Bishop’s house there’s a hand-written letter from the late artist Toni Onley, a long-time friend and customer, thanking him for the “meals on wheels” while Onley was ill.)

Bishop’s was more culinary university than the soggy boot camps most industry lifers call home. The farthest-flung of his disciples must be Bradlie Goian, who worked the front of the house from 1987 to 1995 and is now food and beverage manager of an exclusive hotel in Borneo. He recalled via email Bishop’s talent for identifying and nurturing creativity and how pleased Bishop was at “helping [his staff members] blossom.”

Goian’s exotic location might show how far Bishop’s influence has spread, but it doesn’t reveal its depth. Michael Allemeier, who runs the food and beverage program at the Mission Hill Family Estate in the Okanagan, was executive chef at Bishop’s from 1993 to 1997. That experience, he says, remains “the foundation of all we do” at the winery’s Terrace Restaurant, where most ingredients are sourced from within a 20-km radius.

Adam Busby, now Director of Continuing Studies at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, California, honed his craft at Bishop’s until 1993, when he opened his own room, Star Anise on West 12th, to critical acclaim. Like Allemeier, Busby considers his tenure at Bishop’s a defining chapter in his career. The boss “always kept his cool,” he recalls, even on the night they accidentally “set a whole spit-roast lamb on fire in the back parking lot, just before a Chaine de Rotisseurs dinner.”

In 1987, Bishop hired Carol Chow (lately of Gusto di Quattro) fresh out of Vancouver’s Dubrulle culinary school. Her climb to executive chef, remarkably, took only three years. Carol Wallace apprenticed there, too, working all the stations from 1993 to 1999. She and her husband Stephen now run Blue-Eyed Mary’s Bistro on Bowen Island. She remembers Bishop’s humour, relating that he once “delivered a plastic rat under a cloche to a regular customer.” Anne Milne worked for Bishop before she went on to run the kitchen at Yaletown’s Urban Fare, and Judith Knight left Bishop’s in 1992 and later went on to elevate the food program at the Okanagan’s Quails’ Gate Winery. (“Now there is a wonderful cook!” Bishop beams.) In the days when women were scarce at the executive level, his restaurant was a meritocracy, with gender marked only on the bathroom door.

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