Shortly after immigrating to Canada from Chile in 1999, Sebastian Cortez, owner of Sebastian & Co. Fine Meats, began his career as a chef. However he soon realized that, while he had a huge passion for cooking and food, the restaurant lifestyle wasn’t for him.
“I wasn’t sure what to do when I left restaurants,” says Sebastian. “Then a friend of mine invited me to join him butchering meat on an organic farm, and it just took off from there.” Sebastian went on to study and practice the art of nose-to-tail butchery, a process which included a stint as head butcher at Toronto’s renowned Healthy Butcher.
While visiting his wife’s family in Vancouver one Christmas, he fell in love with the city’s landscape, and soon after spotted his chance to call Vancouver home. “No one here was doing what we were doing in Toronto, so I saw a good opportunity,” he says. And so in 2007, he opened the doors of Sebastian & Co. Fine Meats, Vancouver’s first artisan butcher shop.
