Canada’s 100 Best asked a few of our favorite chefs and restaurateurs what they’re up to this summer –  everything from what they’re eating, cooking, reading or plain-old obsessing over — including what’s inspiring them at home. First up:  Chef David McMillan.

The Montreal culinary institution Joe Beef is a restaurant with personality to spare. And a very large part of that is attributable to co-chef-patron David McMillan, a man who fulfils precisely the same description. Marc-Olivier Frappier may be the man in the kitchen these days. But McMillan and his business and chef-partner Fred Morin set the original, guiding tone – with a passionate embrace of good, solid cooking at its traditional best, often exuberant but never pretentious.

Here McMillan takes us through what this philosophy means to him in the prime of summer:

This summer I’m back into bagna cauda. Bagna cauda anything, bagna cauda everything. The intense sauce and eating heaps of raw vegetables with:

1. Cold roast beef

2. Leftover rôtisserie chicken

3. A pile of cold razor clams

4. Cold Poached Salmon

5. Lobster

Natural wine.  Get on board. I am an enemy of everything over oaked, over-alcoholic, over the sun-drenched, overly sweet, overly lab coat. Drink organic, natural, low alcohol, high acid wines, drink like all those years ago when on the slopes of Pompeii or drink like a Roman of old.

Pictures . Bagna cauda seafood, buttercream and berry jam feuilleté, all dressed avjar spread .

It’s quite regal to chomp down copious amounts of natural wine and eat cold food.

PS: You can bring Bagna Cauda for lunch too.