Rhubarb Chutney Optimization

George Brown College’s Food Innovation and Research Studio (FIRSt) is collaborating with Imago Restaurants Inc. on a formula optimization project for their rhubarb chutney recipe. Imago Restaurants Inc. was established in 1985 under the Imago umbrella and they currently operate six Duke Pub restaurants located throughout the city of Toronto.

Cindy Simpson, the Executive Vice President of Imago Restaurants Inc. has previously collaborated with the FIRSt team to conduct theoretical nutritional analyses on their menu items. Through conducting these analyses, Imago has begun redeveloping their menus to offer healthier, but delicious dishes to their patrons. Imago’s restaurants offer a rhubarb chutney recipe that accompanies several of their most popular dishes. Imago has identified inconsistencies in their current chutney recipe (depending on restaurant location), so the FIRSt team will work with Imago to develop a gold standard recipe ensuring that taste, texture and cooking methodology can be standardized across all restaurants.

The recipe will be multi-purposeful, so it can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. Once established, the rhubarb chutney recipe will be developed into a benchtop formula to be used as an in-house foodservice product with the goal of turning it into a commercialized retail product sold through Imago’s restaurants. Principal Investigators, Winnie Chiu, M.Sc., Director, FIRSt, and Moira Cockburn, M.Sc., Senior Research Food Scientist, FIRSt, will use their extensive industry experience to complete this project, while working with students from GBC’s Culinary Arts program. Upon project completion, the goal is to provide Imago a final product with commercial potential, that can be sold in their restaurants and, potentially, on the shelves of grocery retailers in the near future.