Andrew Mavor
Canadian Guest Chef 2020 | Owner/Chef Hanks and Nowhere Restaurants (Victoria, BC)
Originally from Stratford, Andrew Mavor’s culinary style is one that playfully presents the best ingredients without pretension. Informed by a life spent travelling, his food is best thought of as what you’d love to cook at home if you had the time (plus a pretty big pantry and an encyclopedic knowledge of strange ingredients). His resumé is long and bizarre, including 10 years in the music industry, running a guerilla sushi stand at a music festival in the desert, making hot sauce for a chicken wing chain in Las Vegas and cooking 30 pig heads in a football field.
In Victoria, BC, Mavor opened two restaurants. He turned an oddly experimental BBQ joint in a tiny powerhouse – his first restaurant, named Hanks *A Restaurant. Known for its aggressively rustic charm and tongue in cheek tone, the restaurant built a strong cult following on Vancouver island. A heavy emphasis on locally sourced whole animals, creative preparations and unapologetically strong flavours gave the food at Hanks a particular charm, cementing it as a destination restaurant.
His second restaurant, Nowhere *A Restaurant opened in early 2019. A slightly more refined version of the style of Hanks and with more of an emphasis on plants and seafood, Nowhere found its stride immediately and was subsequently nominated for Best New Restaurant in En Route magazine in 2019. It placed 5th in the country.
Mavor was nominated for “Foodie of the Year” by Western Living for 2020. He resettled in southern Ontario in late 2019 to pursue a career teaching the culinary arts and is currently sharing his knowledge with the students of SSES at the Screaming Avocado Café.