Inside CooksCamp: The B.C. Culinary Summer Camp Bringing Chefs Together

“If there’s no wild mushrooms on the menu, it’s not a good restaurant.” That’s the idiom that Chef Paul Moran’s grandmother, an Austrian wild forager, taught him.

Decades later, on a sweltering September day at Pemberton’s North Arm Farm—the first day of the two-day, chef-focused retreat CooksCamp—Chef Moran passed down that knowledge to 30 other chefs (and an undercover journalist, me) as he kicked off his wild foraging workshop at the 53-acre farm.

In rows of vegetable beds and on meandering trails that butt up against fences to keep farm animals at a short distance (it’s not rare to catch a sighting of a goat or sheep while walking the property), we stop to forage wild greenery that I might otherwise pass off as weeds. Chef Moran teaches the group about the three modalities of foraging: medicinal, survival and most importantly—some chefs might argue—culinary.

All the while, chefs from all around B.C.—including Glowbal Group and Five Sails’ culinary director Chef Alex Kim—were carrying the load for each other as they piled herbs and weeds into Yeti coolers. Because that’s just the energy at CooksCamp; you roll up your sleeves, you get your hands dirty, you learn some things from others and you help out.

The two-day event—kind of like a music festival for chefs and those in the culinary industry—is put on by Chef’s Table Society, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for B.C.’s culinary community, creates education and mentorship opportunities for hospitality workers and preserves the region’s food and restaurant heritage through initiatives like the recently opened Culinary Commons.

 

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Past president and marketing co-chair Robert Belcham and executive director Shawna Gardham are quick to point out that—even though I’m “undercover” for a small portion of the 2025 CooksCamp festivities—the event is a safe space for folks working in a high-demand industry. Long hours and nights entirely in service to others can take a toll, but at CooksCamp, there are no customers—just chefs and industry giving back to each other in equal measure.

Butchery demonstrations, family-style dinners and a big lunch hosted by chefs volunteering their time are all part of the program, which has been running in-person since 2022. A 2021 CooksCamp had been planned, but ultimately, ran virtually as a result of the pandemic.

“[CooksCamp] evolved into the first of its kind. It’s really the only hospitality conference that deals specifically with the back of the house and the front of the house in a way [that’s meant] to make their lives better as individuals,” says Belcham, a three-decades-strong chef and former restaurateur behind Vancouver’s Campagnolo, Campagnolo Roma and Fat Dragon. He was also Vanmag’s Chef of the Year in 2009. 

“It became a conference about empowerment for the people within the hospitality industry,” he says.

Where the conference focuses on skills and food, it equally focuses on the mental health of those working in restaurants. Panels in previous years included “How to Launch a Cookbook,” while groups like the Mind the Bar Foundation—an organization dedicated to addressing mental health and substance use—gave presentations to the crowd.

“We always focus on sustainability of food and local products, but [the] focus has shifted to be the sustainability of our industry and how to manage that from within,” says Gardham, who grew up in the hospitality industry, working at her parents’ remote fishing lodge on Vancouver Island. 

“The format of the event is always to have activations or educational experiences throughout the day, and a cultural dinner on the first night,” she says. In years previous, cultural dinners have been Indigenous, Chinese and Filipino, led by our Restaurant Awards’ first ever Chef with Heart awardee, TJ Conwi. 

On my visit to the 2025 iteration of CooksCamp, the cultural dinner is Italian, and I watch as chefs have a snack, wash their hands and join the line to pinch raviolis into perfect, pillowy pouches. “Chefs lead a team and everyone can kind of cook together,” Gardham says, and I’m seeing that evidence in real time.

“In the news, we hear about all the bad things that happen in our industry all the time: restaurant closings and this and that. This is the most positive, empowering event that happens in the industry, and every story that happens at CooksCamp is one that’s uplifting our community as a whole,” Belcham says. 

Tickets to CooksCamp 2026 are now available online.
September 16 to 18, Pemberton, B.C.