Charcuterie Ratinaud
Gottingen Street's secret sandwich bar
BY LINDSAY WICKSTROM
PHOTOS MICHELLE DOUCETTE
When Frédéric Tandy accepted a job at Keltic Lodge, he had no idea where Cape Breton (or even Nova Scotia) was. He had applied for three jobs: one in French Polynesia, one in Southern Spain, and one that just specified “Canada.” He decided on Canada because he was drawn to its vast lands and abundant nature, but he only learned of his precise destination after accepting the job.
One week after arriving in Ingonish, he realized he loved the province and would spend more time in Canada than initially planned.
That was 22 years ago.
Tandy hails from Limoges, in the centre of France.
Frédéric Tandy
“A lot of people don’t necessarily know about it because it’s probably one of the only regions in France where we don’t make any wine at all. It’s kind of like the [Annapolis] Valley without the ocean and wine industry.”
After graduating from culinary school, he wanted to see the world, but he also knew he wanted to open his own business someday. When he arrived here at 22, he didn’t realize he would eventually have a thriving charcuterie shop in Halifax.
First, Tandy worked three summers at Keltic Lodge, landed a job at Bish (now the Bicycle Thief), and did stints in Whistler, BC and Fleur de Sel in Lunenburg.
He decided he would like to open a traditional French bistro—something different that nobody had done—but getting a loan for a high-risk business (like a restaurant) was impossible without any financial backing.
“So basically, the banker was like: ‘keep dreaming it’s never gonna happen,’” says Tandy.
However, opening a specialty shop was a much lower risk. Tandy started using the kitchen at Bish to make his charcuterie, which he sold at the market.
In 2011, he opened Ratinaud Charcuterie on Gottingen Street. It was initially a struggle, with a federal inspector following him around constantly. (The government couldn’t wrap its head around drying meat and had no regulations for charcuterie then because nobody had done it). However, the business was successful and moved to a larger space on Gottingen Street in 2015.
The new shop had space in the back for something else, so Tandy opened the Kitchen Table, a 20-seat, 8-course tasting menu experience. He eventually stopped doing that and lent the space to other businesses in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“After Covid I was lucky to be able to still open, and we actually did really well during covid,” says Tandy. “I absolutely can’t complain, considering the situation.”
Ratinaud now has 90 varieties of cheese, 30-40 charcuterie products (all made with local ingredients), baguettes, quiches, and rotisserie chicken. There is a large freezer section full of various products and ready-to-heat meals. We have Julie Cook to thank for all things pastry: quiches, chicken pies, onion tarts, sausage rolls, and cookies. Tandy brought her onto the team a few years ago (they had worked together at Bish back in the day), and her background in the pastry arts eventually made its way onto the repertoire.
Last fall, Tandy started offering lunch in the shop’s back room on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The small chalkboard menu mainly consists of sandwiches, quiche, salad, and house-made potato chips. Wine, beer and cider are available to pair with your lunch.
Tandy gets his meat from Windy View Farm (and a couple of other local vendors), and his produce typically comes from the Warehouse Market. He also forages for local mushrooms and other ingredients, smokes his salmon and brisket, and makes his in-house sauces, chutneys, and pickles. Just about everything he does is hyper-local and from scratch.
The lunch spot doesn’t have a name, nor is it advertised. Tandy relies primarily on word-of-mouth.
“That’s how I like to build my business,” he says. “When I started [Ratinaud], actually, Instagram didn’t exist. My vision is to build my business with the reputation of what we do, and the quality of the products we use instead of building it over pictures on social media.”
There is a simplicity to Tandy’s food that deceives the eye thanks to expertly crafted flavours born from high-quality ingredients.
A great example is the Chicken Baguette, which features fresh baguette and rotisserie chicken brined with locally foraged spruce tips or sumac. Tandy says he uses these as an alternative to lemon (for their acidity) because he likes to get all his ingredients from as small a radius as possible. Accompanying the rotisserie-cooked chicken is a house mayonnaise made with local eggs, grainy Atlantic Mustard, sherry vinegar, fresh tarragon and Spanish olive oil. The flavour of the house-made mayo and the spruce-brined chicken has a certain synergy and depth, delivering an almost earthy quality that elevates it beyond any chicken salad sandwich I’ve ever had.
The Brisket Sandwich is much more elaborate. Tandy doesn’t have a hot smoker, and his brisket takes three days to make: it is brined, cold smoked and then cooked sous vide. It delivers all the tender meatiness and rendered fatty goodness you expect from a good brisket. Tandy serves the meat piled high in house-made focaccia with spicy raclette cheese, confit shallots in port and red wine, roasted cabbage dressed with apple cider vinegar, and candied mustard seeds. The result is like a jazz ensemble in your mouth: the flavours jive together in a syncopated harmony in which each element takes turns having a solo performance in your mouth before returning to the rhythm section: sweet, spicy, bitter, fatty, crispy, crunchy, meaty. This decadent sandwich is sure to dazzle and fulfill you.
Tandy says he brought his grilled cheese sandwich back to the menu because people hounded him about its return ever since he removed it. The concoction features butter-grilled Pullman loaf bread with Cow’s Smoked Cheddar, apple chutney, and another whimsical cheese. Tandy has used truffle fontina, gruyere, and Emmental in the past. Not only do his sandwiches rotate, but the same sandwich might differ each time you have it. It may be tomato season, and Tandy switches things up to take advantage of that, or he may be excited about a particular cheese this week.
And that’s the thing about “Lunch with Fred” (our unofficial not-name of the lunch counter, where you sit and watch Tandy make the food right in front of you): Tandy decides the menu items on whims and spontaneous inspiration. He bases everything on ingredients rather than concepts.
“I started loving cooking because I love ingredients,” he says. “So when I see a good ingredient I get excited. I’m like, okay, if I get this, what am I going to do with it? So that’s kind of how my brain works.”
Tandy takes a very equalitarian approach, regularly incorporating input from his team, doing the dishes and taking out the garbage like anyone else. He offers full benefits and even bonuses at the end of the year.
“Nobody in my businesses in 15 years calls me chef. They don’t even work for me; we work together as a team. My team that I have right now I think my youngest employee has probably been with us for about 6 years. I barely ever hire because my team is loyal because we all work together.”
There is something very down-to-earth and authentic about Ratinaud that I quite like. His model is neither pretentious nor high-falutin, nor is it superficially hyped or Instagrammafied. It is a talented team focused on high-quality local ingredients and a from-scratch mentality. They don’t advertise. They don’t cut corners. They just deliver a really good lunch.
