Marc Lépine – Creative Arts and Design Award 2026
Alumni of Distinction Awards > 2026 > Marc Lépine
Executive chef, founder, and owner
Atelier
Sommelier, 2002
Marc Lépine grew up in Kincardine, ON, a small town on the shores of Lake Huron. As a teenager, he worked as a dishwasher in a hotel in the area. That led to occasional food prep work in the kitchen. He loved it. After high school, he studied Culinary Management at Canadore College in North Bay. Right before completing the program, Lépine and his classmates prepared a luncheon for Queen Elizabeth II during her royal visit to Canada in 1997.
Lépine had discovered his passion, and he was really good at it. But he couldn’t stop there. He enrolled in a postgraduate program on Italian culinary arts at George Brown Polytechnic in Toronto. The following year, he found seasonal work as Bartlett Lodge’s executive chef in Algonquin Provincial Park. Since this job only required him to work in the summer, he was free to dedicate the rest of the year to studying and learning from other chefs.
His first stage (i.e., internship at another chef’s kitchen) was at an alpine hotel in Trentino, Italy. The following winter, he went back to Europe, this time to the French Alps, to work at a chalet in Méribel.
Lépine’s experience in France was incredibly formative. “It’s a place that thinks about food in an entirely different way,” he said. “I got to know the baker, the butcher, the people in the local shops really well. Food is a much bigger part of the culture there than I was used to.”
Lépine spent four summers at Bartlett Lodge. He lived on-site for the duration of the season, and while he enjoyed being surrounded by natural beauty, he stayed focused and gave his first chef job his very best. His dedication paid off. He helped build the business up from 20 covers per night to 80–90 covers by his fourth year there.
Bartlett Lodge. Source: Bartlett Lodge.
In 2001, when Lépine came home from France, he realized that if he wanted to open his own restaurant, which he did, being a good chef wasn’t enough. He had to be well rounded to create unforgettable culinary experiences as a restaurateur. One of the areas he felt he needed to cultivate was his knowledge of wines. So back to school he went.
Lépine chose Algonquin College’s Sommelier certificate program. For a year, he became immersed in the world of wines. He developed the field’s specialized tasting skills and gained an extensive knowledge about growing grapes and making wine. His experience at Algonquin College was so positive, he briefly debated whether to change the course of his career and become a sommelier full time.
Ultimately, his calling was to be a chef who was well versed in wines and wine pairing. But there was still some work to do before opening his restaurant. After graduating from Algonquin College in 2002, Lépine worked at the Courtyard Restaurant in Ottawa. There were two sides to this job, each complementing the other. On the one hand, he was given freedom to try new things with the menu and evolve his personal style. On the other, he catered large events, which had him making popular dishes over and over, mastering them to perfection.
During his six years at the Courtyard, Lépine was positively reviewed by local food critics and named “Ottawa Chef of the Year” twice by the Canadian Culinary Federation. He was in his mid-thirties and people appreciated the unique voice he had developed as a chef. He was finally ready to open his own restaurant.
“The vision for my restaurant became really clear in my last year at the Courtyard,” he said. “I’d started going crazy with modern food technology. We were using liquid nitrogen on a regular basis, we were using equipment like Thermomix and anti-griddles. It was so fun. I wanted my restaurant to have a kitchen full of toys for chefs like that.”
Lépine got everything ready for his restaurant, Atelier, to open in 2008. Part of that preparation included staging at Alinea, a Chicago restaurant famous for its innovative use of technology in molecular gastronomy. When he returned to Ottawa, he opened Atelier’s doors amid a global recession, but in spite of it, the restaurant took off and found success very quickly.
Lépine at work at Atelier. Source: La Presse.
Atelier built a reputation for its unique approach to technology, and young talented chefs flocked to it to learn from Lépine. Over the next few years, he built a “stacked team” that elevated Atelier’s cooking. His sous-chef at the time was Jason Sawision, who has since opened his own successful restaurant in Ottawa, Stofa.
In 2012, Lépine, Sawision, and the Atelier team won the Canadian Culinary Championship (CCC) in Kelowna, BC. It was proof that the Atelier formula was working. “Our team was used to making smaller plates where every little piece of food needed to explode with flavour,” Lépine explained. “What we did at Atelier worked well in a competition setting like that.” People also noted that Lépine’s dishes were expertly paired with their wines, reflecting the influence of his Algonquin College education.
Lépine poses with the trophy and gold medal at CCC 2016. Source: Le Droit.
The next several years cemented Atelier’s standing as “Ottawa’s temple of modern cuisine,” as one reviewer put it. In 2015, Atelier was numbered among Canada’s 100 best restaurants by Canada’s 100 Best magazine; they have repeated this feat ten additional times to date. In 2016, Lépine and his team won the CCC again. Two years later, Canada’s 100 Best named Lépine the Most Innovative Chef in Canada. Then, in 2019, Atelier was named one of the best restaurants in North America by OAD, a select group they have been a part of every year since.
Clearly, by the late 2010s, Lépine was at the top of his game. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Atelier adapted to the new normal and began offering a “drive-thru tasting menu.” Patrons, especially the regulars, really liked the idea and turned it into something fun and memorable. They would drive through, get their meals, and have them on the picnic tables in the park across the street or on the back of their trucks in the parking lot.
Thanks to the loyalty of their patrons and government support, Atelier weathered the pandemic well and came out the other side without issues. Today, in its 18th year of operation, Atelier is as successful as ever and Lépine is at the peak of his career. He and his colleagues are still experimenting in the kitchen, still trying new gadgets and testing new recipes. “It’s really important to me to make food that looks like art,” he said. “Our guests expect us to do that, and we want to keep moving things forward.”
Algonquin College was a significant part of Lépine’s journey. It gave him the skills and confidence he needed to catapult his chef career and help him open the restaurant that would become an epicentre of culinary innovation in Canada.