Born in central Mexico’s Querétaro, a young Rafa Covarrubias moved to Calgary in 2013 to pursue a culinary career. His star rose rapidly after graduating from culinary school. He became the sous chef at Calgary’s MARKET, the award-winning Calgary dining staple which turned into a “roaming restaurant” during the pandemic. A few years later, he was headhunted for Hexagon Restaurant in Oakville, Ont., which opened in 2018. From the sun-dappled dining room in the quiet GTA suburb, culinary wins started coming fast. 

At just 25, Covarrubias won the prestigious 2019 San Pellegrino Young Chef Competition. Then, in late 2024, Hexagon became the first Michelin-starred restaurant in the Halton region—and naturally, Covarrubias paired that with the Michelin Guide Toronto’s 2024 Young Chef Award. 

One glance at Hexagon’s ever-rotating menu of dishes provides ample evidence for why the contemporary French restaurant has made waves in the world of Canadian fine dining. Covarrubias and team will build chopped salads around juicy tomatoes, then add umeboshi, buffalo milk and sorrel. Diners can pair that starter salad with a cut of aged duck and smoked beets spiced with habanada, nixtamalized honeynut and anise, or one might select an agnolotti with Ontario corn, cotija, popcorn and chiltepin chile.The Basque cheesecake is made with sake kasu and Japanese strawberries, while the Mexican buñuelos bring together popcorn sugar, miso crémeux, wild blueberries and corn ice cream.

The creative pairings run throughout Hexagon’s entire menu. Covarrubias’s culinary eye contains multitudes, locating new ways to weave together a rich geographic tapestry of flavours. When describing his dishes, and the Greater Toronto Area restaurant scene more broadly, Covarrubias speaks with a quiet confidence that reflects his deep passion and creativity in the kitchen. One afternoon before Friday night service, he took us inside the afterglow of his Michelin wins, his third-culture approach to menu design, and his grandma’s final batch of tamales.

Toronto’s Michelin-awarded dining is concentrated downtown. Tell me about operating at the same level of service away from the city’s center. 

It’s been seven years of Hexagon being open—and also seven years of learning. We opened as a tasting menu-only restaurant; then we had COVID. It was hard to find our groove. I always wanted my team to create real connections with guests. We’ve been categorized many times as “fine dining but not stuffy.” Every time I read that, I think, “amazing.” 

Winning two Michelin awards must have been surreal, too. I’d love to know what you felt in that moment. 

So they don’t actually tell you what you’re nominated for—we just knew it was the first year Michelin expanded to “Toronto and Region.” So, we were excited and also kind of nervous. I never felt so much emotion and so much support [as I did] at the award ceremony that day. It felt like a big hug from the restaurant industry.

Your “Mole Negro Muscovy Duck” earned you the top prize at the S. Pellegrino Young Chef Competition. Take me inside your inspiration for that dish. 

More so than trying to find a signature dish, I was trying to express my identity through food. This dish took me back to my heritage and my roots—the mole. My understanding of the cultures within Mexico came after I left. You take it for granted when you’re surrounded by it. The diversity here has changed my identity too, so [with the mole duck] I was taking my knowledge of the traditions and bringing them into new ways of cooking I’ve learned here. 

I see so much care in how you integrate ingredients from different cultures and regions.

You have to be very respectful and educated about a culture. As long as you’re doing that, I think it’s amazing. There’s an entire world of flavours, products and ingredients out there. And we’re here in Toronto. Our food scene is still developing and that allows us to enrich our cooking with the cultures that are surrounding us—and learn from them. 

You’ve said that your staff’s upbringings shine through in your menu, that it’s not just all you. Tell me about your team and a dish they’ve helped shape.

Jordan Wilkinson is our Chef de Cuisine here. His mom back in Saskatchewan has this incredible recipe for grilled tenderloins where she soaks them in garlic, honey, soy sauce and red wine. The next day, she grills them and they develop this really unique umami. We started playing with it. 

We changed the red wine to saké, and then didn’t put the honey [in] because we were finding that it would char too much. Our team kept recipe-testing, and we ended up having a dish on the menu for four months, a sake-washed wagyu beef that was grilled three times and paired with seaweed marmalade. 

You drew inspiration from her process and then brought in your own touches. 

Exactly. It’s about belonging, about feeling included, about finding yourself in what you cook. The result was that the wagyu beef had the familiar flavour that really did remind us of Jordan’s mom’s steaks back home, but our way. And we love to play with the recipes that our team grew up with. That’s why food is love. 

What sparked that love for you? 

My family (especially my mom’s family) has a big love for cooking. I fell in love with being in the kitchen because, at celebrations and reunions, the cool people were always in the kitchen. My grandmother certainly was the biggest figure there. We have a saying in Mexico that “she brought us our sazón, our seasoning.” She was the reason why a lot of my aunts picked up a passion for cooking—and cooking for people.

When you think of home, what food comes to mind?

Before I left Mexico, we would always go to my grandma’s old town Torreón for Christmas, and she would pack frozen tamales for us to take back to Querétaro. Once I moved to Canada, I’d still always get some every time I was home. The batch I have right now is the last batch I was given before my grandma passed. For me, it’s home.

Edited and condensed for clarity.