Deep in the underbelly of the Fairmont Empress – when the streets of Victoria are still dark and quiet, the historic hotel’s guests are still fast asleep and the colourful tulips in the gardens are still closed against the morning chill – Joga Kaler gets to work.
Kaler is a chef de partie at the historic hotel, which means he‘s responsible for a particular station within its two-floor basement kitchen. In his case, his task is to focus on one fluffy, buttery pastry: the scone.
He arrives at work every weekday at 3 a.m. and begins the process of making these treats, which have become synonymous with the hotel’s wildly popular afternoon tea. On average, he makes 600 a day.
Kaler moved to Victoria from India in 1974, when he was just 17, encouraged by an uncle who lived in the city and spoke of its growing employment opportunities. He drove a taxi and worked at an auto body shop before landing a job at the Fairmont Empress. He has now been with the hotel for 43 years, starting in the stewarding department in 1982 and moving to the kitchen in 1989, quickly catching the eye of David Hammond, the hotel’s executive chef at the time.
Hammond paid a visit to Buckingham Palace and brought its cherished scone recipe back to Victoria with him, appointing Kaler the scone chef de partie in 1991. Since then, Kaler has become the hotel’s Scone Master – that’s what the internal team calls him – having made, by recent estimate, more than 8.4 million perfectly round, sweet-but-not-too-sweet golden raisin scones over his tenure.
Pastry chef Joga Kaler has been making the high tea scones at the Empress hotel for 30 years.The Globe and Mail
These heavenly morsels are an integral part of the hotel’s afternoon tea. A tradition since the Fairmont Empress opened in 1908, the service is now considered to be the busiest in North America (even, impressively, busier than some in London), with an average of 450 people from all over the world booking as far as a year in advance to snag a seat.
Guests are able to select their flavour of tea from an extensive menu – including the Empress Blend, which Elizabeth II drank when she visited the hotel in 2002. Bites are presented on three tiers of royal china created to mimic the original dishware George VI and Elizabeth I presented to the hotel in 1939.
Among the goodies, diners might find the Coronation Chicken Sandwich (curried chicken framed by bouncy brioche) or the Midnight Bloom Dark Chocolate Bar with rose tea ganache. It’s all delicious, to be sure, but it’s the scones that most people will never forget. Baked fresh every day and served with clotted cream and jam, they are pure comfort: soft, moist, perfectly flaky.
For Kaler, making them has become a form of meditation. Each morning, he arrives at work and checks the reservations log to see how many guests are confirmed for tea that day (there may be additional scone requests, as well, for banquets, for example). Then he starts baking, churning out what equals approximately two scones a minute.
He never refers to his recipe book – he hasn’t in 34 years. “I used the recipe maybe four times,” he recalls. “After that, I never looked at it.” That means his scones are pure intuition – and, given that he‘s remained in the job for more than three decades, there‘s got to be a whole lot of joy baked in, too.
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