If you know anything about Michael Hunter, it likely has something to do with the vegan protest brouhaha of 2018. Yes, he’s the chef who famously — or infamously, depending on where your sympathies lie — butchered a bloodstained deer leg in the window of his Dundas Street restaurant as a repulsed crowd of vegans looked on.
What you might not know is that Antler Kitchen & Bar recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, that the restaurant has been recognized by Michelin since 2022 and that Hunter is the co-author of two successful cookbooks. The vegan ambush, for all its headlines, had no lasting effect on the chef’s commitment to wild game and nose-to-tail cooking.
Hunter was just 19 years old when a taste of wild turkey steered him in a very specific culinary direction. “My mom said at the dinner table, ‘This doesn’t taste like turkey.’ The friend who took me hunting said, ‘No, that crap at the grocery store doesn’t taste like turkey.’ That was the lightbulb moment for me.”
Though his career officially began when an application to pump gas turned into a part-time job at the adjacent greasy spoon, it was later, while studying at Humber College, that Hunter’s culinary ethos truly took shape.
“It was also the time that the Food Inc. documentary [narrated] by Michael Pollan had come out,” he recalls. “I was really inspired to eat a more natural, more organic diet. Plus, going to culinary school and being taught that you have to start with the best ingredients for your final products to taste as great as they can — all these things were happening at the same time and led to my career being what it is today.”
Committed to from-scratch cooking and sourcing top-tier ingredients, Hunter was also becoming an avid — ahem — hunter. The pastime, he discovered, offered a way to learn the ins and outs of meat preparation while sampling some of the region’s best and rarest finds (yes, even squirrel).
Hunters, he soon learned, also had strong opinions about how game meat should be used. “That’s what really inspired some of my cookbooks; teaching my hunting buddies how to use those tough cuts and really get more out of their harvest. It’s almost a sustainable approach to hunting. You don’t need to make sausage with everything.”
It was during a stint working for SIR Corp that Hunter met his business partner, Jody Shapiro, a photographer and documentary filmmaker. “I was working on my first book,” says Hunter. “He offered to help me with the photos if I taught him how to cook.”
Michael Hunter, chef and co-partner at Antler Kitchen & Bar
Nicole & Bagol
The duo began cooking elaborate meals featuring big and small game, fish and foraged ingredients — initially as recipe testing for the book. “We wanted to do game dinners because we were cooking all this food, but it had nowhere to go. We thought, ‘Let’s have a party and at the same time we can get photos for the book.’”
The intense interest those dinners generated eventually led to the creation of Antler. Opened in 2015, the restaurant remains an intimate spot that, despite its menu focus, avoids the clichés of a hunting lodge. Instead, exposed brick walls, nature photography and a tasteful smattering of decorative antlers drive home the theme. At its core, Antler is a celebration of regional cuisine, derived from both flora and fauna. “Our theme is Canadiana and all things Canada. Obviously, I wanted to focus on what’s wild.”
To mark their 10th anniversary, the team recently refreshed the space and broadened the menu to include more fish and seafood dishes. “After the incident in the window, game and deer really took over our narrative, and that was never really the intention,” explains Hunter.
Still, if you ask the chef, some things are perfect just as they are.
“People ask me, ‘What’s your favourite thing to cook?’ It’s such a funny question. Just whatever is in season, honestly. Or something that I’ve caught in the outdoors with my family. Like salmon or a trap full of Dungeness crab. I don’t think it gets better than that.”
Smoked Swordfish Carpaccio
Nicole & Bagol
“We’ve always had some kind of fish crudo, carpaccio or tartare on the menu — it changes with seasonality. The Smoked Swordfish Carpaccio turned into a recent favourite. The fish comes from the Maritimes; it’s such a meaty, hearty fish. It’s great grilled, but best eaten rare. We smoke it in a cloche over fruitwood. Then, we dress it with lemon vinaigrette, preserved granny smith mostarda and shaved fennel. It’s turned into one of our most popular dishes.”
Pan-Roasted Venison Rack
Nicole & Bagol
“We use the rack, so it looks like a lamb rack with a Frenched bone. A lot of hunters don’t keep the bone attached — they debone everything. It’s fun for me to show people how to do that.
"We used to do it with a spice ash crust — that was like blackening spice with cinnamon, cloves and star anise — very sweet, floral spices. That was with a parsnip purée, and we actually did it two ways — we made a stew with the neck meat, and put that in a well in the purée and put the deer rack on top.
“We’re still doing the purée now — we prepare it with wild mushrooms, cipollini onions and a fig port jus. On the meat, we just use salt and pepper now. We cook it in a pan with rosemary, garlic and baste it, just for something new, a different flavour. People love that spice — it’s such an interesting flavour to pair with game — but after 10 years, it’s not something I crave anymore.”
Wild Boar Cavatelli
Nicole & Bagol
“We took the cavatelli off the menu for a week or two, but the consensus was that it had to come back. We tried a green version, and then realized we shouldn’t mess with the dish. It’s a ricotta dough, almost like a dumpling. We have a hand-roll machine that cuts the pasta and gives them that shape.
"We use a wild boar breed from Europe that was brought here. It’s a little bit different than our farm-raised pigs. We make a tomato ragù with white wine, braise the marbled cuts — the shoulder and butt — then shred it like pulled pork and cook it again in the sauce.
"I worked in some Italian restaurants, and I like the way they prepare wild boar; they use juniper, which is also wild in Canada. That’s been on the menu since day one.”
Wild Bone-In Halibut
Nicole & Bagol
“Halibut is one of my favourite fish. It’s super mild but has this nice sweetness. We work with a couple of different companies, one of them is Organic Ocean in B.C. We know the fishermen — I’ve gone fishing with them. They’re a family-run company, and we do a lot of business with them.
"Fishing for halibut is not as fun as you might think. It’s very much like pulling up a mattress from the bottom of the ocean. They’re a flat fish — they don’t fight like salmon do. They want to stick to the bottom. But they’re such a beautiful-tasting fish — meaty but not fishy.
"We serve it bone-in — I find it stays juicier and more moist that way. It comes with roasted delicata squash, a butter sauce made with bones called a fumet, some confit fennel and tomato, fine herbs and the tops of the fennel greens. We’re passionate about Canadian cuisine, not just meat.”
Alberta Bison Tomahawk
Nicole & Bagol
“We’ve had a bison ribeye on the menu for the last 10 years. The tomahawk is the same cut, just with the bone on.
"For us, it was a matter of asking, ‘How do we elevate some of these dishes?’ This was one of those things that we thought would really be visually appealing — but cooking meat on the bone also adds more flavour and stays more tender if done properly.
"It’s a showpiece. We garnish it with buttermilk- and corn-dredged onion rings. We slide those on the bone and it’s a very cool visual. We make a game jus — we use duck bones, veal bones and leftover venison bones. That’s the nose-to-tail ethos — we add everything to the stock for the sauce.”
