loading . . . Local Chef Wins International Award With Chapman’s Ice Cream Owen Sound Indigenous Chef Zach Keeshig’s sweetgrass ice cream collaboration with Chapman’s Ice cream has won a first place international award.
It tied for first place for the most innovative ice cream with a Dubai entrant at the International Ice Cream Consortium annual conference in Thessaloniki, Greece last week. The innovation it tied with was an ice cream sandwich machine.
There are six categories the big ice cream companies from around the globe compete in at the conference: best ice cream, most innovative ice cream, best technical business solution, best commercial business solution, best flavour, and ice cream maker of the year.
Keeshig tells Bayshore Broadcasting News, that back in In 2024, Chapman’s Ice Cream and Keeshig teamed up to create the sweetgrass ice cream.
“I was very lucky last year to be invited by Ashley Chapman and a company called Seeing Red to create the ice cream for the first ever Indigenous fashion show that happened at Casa Loma in Toronto– but the idea for the ice cream —- I’ve been serving a version of it for quite a long time in the restaurant and then in the old pop-up that I had at the farmer’s market,” explains Keeshig.
He says, “When I had the vision for the recipe, I didn’t want to use kind of settler ingredients so we got rid of using vanilla and black pepper, lemons and different things like that. I went to a man who is an ally of the Indigenous community in Owen Sound here called Thomas Dean and at the time, he was running the community garden behind the old Strathcona,” (school, now apartments).
Keeshig says he approached Dean, asking if he grew fresh sweetgrass in the garden. “He brought me to this patch of fresh sweetgrass and cut it and I remember smelling it, and it bringing me back to a moment that I had with my dad when I was a young boy smudging in my dad’s truck with dried ceremonial sweetgrass and so that’s where the idea came from for that.”
* _**Owen Sound Chef Turns Search For Indigenous Flavours Into Small Collab With Chapman’s**_
Keeshig returned from Greece Sunday night, and says, “I think Ashley and Lesya Chapman should get their kudos. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to showcase this ice cream not only at the level that we have in Ontario but on an international level now, and I want to say thanks for their generosity and commitment to helping me put Indigenous ice cream and Indigenous culture on the map of Canada and now on a world stage.”
He adds, “Ashley was very, very, generous to fly myself out and one of my chefs to come out to Greece for the week, go out for dinner, help promote the ice cream and then go to the final gala at the end and receive tied first place.”
Keeshig hopes to do one final sweetgrass ice cream pop-up this season and is talking with an Owen Sound ice cream shop about offering it in the coming weeks.
As for ordering it at his restaurant Naagan, Keeshig says, “Our menu changes so often, we serve it when the sweetgrass is in season,” which he explains is from spring to late fall. “We just did a big harvest of the sweetgrass patch and we’ll be using it to make different drinks and things like that.”
If you would like to make a dinner reservation at Keeshig’s Naagan, you can go to the website at https://www.naagan.ca/reservations.
“We release reservations for the restaurant one month at a time. We’re just about to release November,” says Keeshig.
He is also doing a pop-up in Toronto for three nights with Rily Kitchen, noting,”We’re going to be taking over their kitchen for three nights at the end of November to bring Naagan down to Toronto.”
Keeshig says last year, the Michelin Guide expanded to the Canada. It is considered an authority on the very best restaurants in many countries around the world and a Michelin star ranking is a prestigious honour.
Keeshig says, “We’re hoping from now until next year, we can catch the Michelin Guide’s eye and be the first Indigenous restaurant and first Indigenous chef in Canada to win a Michelin star and to be the first chef in Owen Sound to do so.”
Last year, Naagan was named as one of Canada’s 100 best restaurants. It was listed as the ninth best new restaurant to open in Canada and 92 overall— all within months of opening his Owen Sound location in the Chicago Building downtown.
* _**Chef Zach Keeshig’s Naagan Restaurant In Owen Sound On ‘Canada’s 100 Best’ List**_
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