A culinary career was always the obvious choice for Oliver Truesdale-Jutras. Growing up with a chef father and vegetarian mother meant plenty of discussions about food at home.
His chapter in Singapore began serendipitously. The Canadian had been running a roving restaurant pop-up wherein he used only locally sourced ingredients and had made a stop in the south of France when he crossed paths with Cynthia Chua, CEO of Spa Esprit Group.
Impressed with his efforts, Chua offered him the position of head chef at Open Farm Community (OFC), the urban farm and restaurant in Dempsey. He didn’t hesitate to accept. “I’ve always wanted to work closely with growers and OFC has tightly-knit relationships.”
During his tenure, Truesdale-Jutras helped double the farm area and expand OFC’s network of Southeast Asian farmers. The goal was to limit imports from outside the region to only the absolute necessities, so he and his team created an “ethical passport” programme.
Whenever the use of an ingredient from outside Southeast Asia was proposed, someone from the team would make it a point to look for an alternative available within the region. ‘Passports’ were only issued to ingredients from outside the region if they came from a source with unbeatable ethical standards.
As a founding member and Chairman of Singapore’s F&B Sustainability Council, Truesdale-Jutras spearheads the pursuit of greener solutions to lower the local industry’s carbon footprint. But the title is really a double-edged sword, he says. “The term ‘chairman’ glorifies a job that sometimes feels like herding cats.”
“On good days, I introduce people with problems to people with solutions. I can inspire the next generation of F&B to look at the industry and know that while it is nowhere near good enough, it has the potential to be beautiful.”
Oliver Truesdale-Jutras on his role in the F&B Sustainability Council
That said, he is now cooling off on the word “sustainability”, suggesting that it has become “too late” to agree on a distinct meaning. However, he believes there is a need to introduce a common lexicon around responsible capitalism.
For one, the people who sow the seeds need to be appreciated more. “Since I was raised by former hippies, I started my career in restaurants that emphasised responsible sourcing. This led to a happy disillusionment during the first few years when I assumed that having face-to-face relationships with farmers and artisans was normal. I felt compelled to fix the broken links when I went out into the wider world and realised this wasn’t the case. It’s the single biggest problem in our food system, and it won’t go away soon.”
Truesdale-Jutras has since left OFC. He now leads the sustainability efforts of dining concepts by The Lo & Behold Group and runs Regrowth, a one-stop shop for F&B enterprises where he plays a variety of roles, from offering sourcing suggestions to designing an entire concept while ensuring it is economically and environmentally sustainable.
The concept of sustainability is not meant to be seen as something to accomplish—it’s more like a lens through which one views things. Having a lucrative practice helps, he says. “Being responsible for people and the planet is a smart business decision. It probably represents the single biggest economic opportunity since the Great Depression.”
Art director: Ed Harland
Photographer: Mun Kong
Photographer’s assistant: Melvin Leong
Hair: Ann, Athens Salon
Makeup: Keith Bryant Lee using Charlotte Tilbury
