Jesse is the current Young Chef’s Representative of the Edmonton Chef’s Association.

Born and raised in Edmonton, Jesse has spent the last 9 years on a journey of hospitality self-immersion. A career that started at Earls & Hudsons Canada’s Pub as a server, bartender and manager organically evolved into a passion for the culinary arts. 

Jesse pursued his passion for cooking at Earls where he learned the basic technical skills and spent any free time combing over cookbooks and other literature from the likes of Thomas Keller & Anthony Bourdain, anything to grow his understanding. After a successful transition to the culinary side of operations, Jesse found himself with an opportunity to take over as the Chef at the Hudsons location he had worked at years before. The full circle experience as Chef at Hudsons allowed him to work through a different side of our industry and explore the amazing Canadian pub style cuisine while working to elevate the food program. 

The next steps in Jesse’s career really ramped up his involvement in the community which he is incredibly passionate about. After being recruited by Cactus Club Cafe in 2017 Jesse has worked his way up to the Senior Sous Chef role at their West Edmonton location where he spends the majority of his time developing new cooks and leaders. Jesse & his mentor Jeff Brown shifted their focus on hiring & recruitment in 2018 to culinary students from Edmonton’s NAIT Culinary Arts Program. They’ve since built a strong relationship with the Chef Instructors at NAIT and continue to speak to new students, offer mentorship and entrance into the working roles as cooks. Jesse’s reach has also extended to his involvement with the Edmonton Branch and is now setting his sights on the local high school culinary programs in hopes of allowing young students to find their culinary passion earlier than he found his. 

In recent years Jesse has also looked to grow the culinary scene in Edmonton offering private chef services in his free time from his website chefjmk.com. With the current climate due to Covid this has unfortunately been put on pause, but before the pandemic, Jesse offered an in-home dining experience to small groups who wanted to learn more about the culinary industry in Edmonton. Using only local ingredients from within the greater Edmonton area, Jesse not only cooked with those ingredients but educated his guests on them and the great companies behind them in hopes of increasing the awareness of what the city has to offer. Jesse is currently enrolled in the Culinary Arts Apprenticeship Program at NAIT. 

In addition to his culinary involvement Jesse is an avid golfer, spending the majority of his free time in the summer at the Edmonton Country Club or with his two rescue dogs Makayla & Molly - even though they don’t have opposable thumbs they make great sous chefs!

Follow along as Jesse takes over the Culinary Federation Instagram stories on February 20th!