Cooking Up A Kraken Masterpiece

For Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn, the personal relationships behind the food and wine he’s learned to passionately appreciate over the years are just as important as how good it all tastes.

They stir up memories of Dunn’s grandmother, Judy -- whose father was from Northern Italy – and how she’d taught little Vince to help her make Italian dishes as a toddler, stirring countless ingredients into pots as big as he was. And of his late grandfather, Chris, who kept a vegetable garden where Dunn would run around eating tomatoes off the vine, crunching on fresh green peppers off the plant or picking fresh strawberries.

“From a young age, I was very Italian influenced,” Dunn said of his early years in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, then a move to the town of Lindsay about 90 miles northeast. “My father’s from Italy. And obviously, if you know anybody from Italy or with an Italian background, it’s all about food.

“And then, on my mother’s side, her grandparents are of Italian descent and so there were always a lot of cooks in the house. Always my grandmother and my parents were always cooking things, and growing up with gardens in our backyard. I was always just running out to the backyard and eating the stuff out there.”

These days, having morphed into a top Kraken defenseman, the offensively gifted Dunn has financial resources to dine in the finest restaurants and sample world-class wines, which he did last summer traveling through Italy and Portugal. But he’s never forgotten the value of simplicity behind food and any wine that goes with it, reminding him of where he came from and what’s important.

“When my grandmother would cook something homemade, or my mother would cook something homemade, I always just felt a sense of comfort,” he said. “I liked it better than eating at a chain or typical restaurants. I kind of appreciated how much time and effort goes into cooking and saw how simple it could be. I also saw how complex things could be and how you could go very different routes in the kitchen.”

Dunn’s early years were somewhat complex and took a different route after his parents divorced when he was only 3. His mother eventually remarried her husband, John, who adopted Vince as his son and whose last name of Dunn is used by the Kraken defender. The couple love traveling abroad and taking cooking classes, which also rubbed off on Dunn, who was carefully plating his own dishes – and tasting the occasional wine – by his early teens.

“What’s really vivid in my mind about Vince’s cooking was always his strong appreciation for what he was cooking and what kind of plate it was on,” Dunn’s mother said. “He wanted to make sure it looked pretty, and the portions were the correct size and just the overall aesthetic of the plate. Even if he was only making himself breakfast in the morning, it would always look like it came from a five-star restaurant.”

By age 15, Dunn had been drafted by the Ontario Hockey League’s Niagara Ice Dogs and moved to that Canadian province’s renowned wine region to play junior hockey and live with his first of two Italian-descent billet families.

First, he spent a year with the Vendetti family, Rocky and Donna and their two daughters, as an underaged rookie with the Thorold Blackhawks of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League. Rocky owned the team and served as its general manager. He’d never taken in a billet player before but felt responsible for Dunn, given his young age.

“I still remember the day Tracy dropped him off, and she told me, ‘You know, this is the first time he’s going to be away from home, right?’” he said. “He was just 15 and a bit on the shy side. But he fit right in. He was just like one of our own.”

In fact, Vendetti was so worried about taking care of Dunn and helping him avoid hand injuries so he’d be ready for hockey that he banned him from using sharp knives in the family kitchen – leaving his daughters to cut up his food for him.

“We would have the traditional Italian meals, and Vince was always a part of that,” he said. “He was one of our family members, and we tried to have all of our meals together and keep ourselves family-oriented when he was here.”

Vendetti’s wife said Dunn would still routinely fix himself huge charcuterie platters of Italian meats and cheeses to eat after every game. Her husband, she added, came to view Dunn as “the son he’d never had” and her daughters as “the brother they’d always wanted.”

They all keep in regular contact, Dunn talking to Rocky by phone and the daughters on social media. The Vendettis later billeted Dunn’s hockey-playing stepbrother, Nolan, as well and have remained friends with his parents – even taking vacations with them.

“Vince has managed to stay really grounded as a person,” Donna Vendetti said. “He hasn’t forgotten where he came from. And I think he got a lot of that from his family and the food they all shared together. The food he loved to eat with us in our home was never fancy. It was just good, basic Italian food, and I think it reminded him of being at home.”

After one year, Dunn moved on to join the OHL Ice Dogs team that had drafted him and, for the next three seasons, resided with the Pavan family, Lou and Rhonda, and their daughters in the Niagara wine village of Jordan. What made that stay different was the Pavans ran a 17-acre vineyard that produced grapes for local Niagara wineries – especially regional star Cave Spring Cellars run by Lou’s cousin Leonard – and their eldest daughter Marisa was one of Canada’s youngest sommeliers.

Dunn would follow Lou into the vineyard, learning about the grapes and ripening and picking them for harvest.

“He didn’t really know anything about wine except for Pinot (Noir),” Lou Pavan said with a chuckle. “But remember, he was only a kid. So, I grew Pinot, but I also grew Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Riesling. And my cousin’s a pretty famous winemaker around here, especially for Riesling. So, let’s just say Vince knows wine a little better now than he did before.”

Dunn fondly remembers his three years living with the Pavans while honing his NHL draft status with the Ice Dogs. It was during that period the St. Louis Blues drafted Dunn in the 2nd round, 53rd overall in 2015.

He'd come to the family with an appreciation of wine, his Italian-born birth father having allowed him frequent tastes from his homemade batches. “Everybody knows that when you go to Italy and just try the house wine, it’s terrific,” Dunn said. “So, that’s what I was drinking growing up and where my passion for wine comes from. It was more homemade and didn’t have a lot of additives like you see in some American wines. So, maybe that’s why I lean toward more Old World wines because that’s what I grew up drinking.”

But the Pavans opened up a new world.

“That’s where I started to learn about tannins and the aging process,” he said of Lou Pavan’s teachings. “And I saw him have some really, really tough years. Just like a traditional farmer, he struggled when the weather wasn’t great. And other years, he did great.”

Dunn remembered walking out the home’s front door for long walks in the vineyards, hearing fake cannon shots going off to frighten away birds from eating grapes.

“It’s just a very different type of living,” he said. “Just getting an appreciation of how hard they really work and how weather-dependent they are. I remember when the weather wasn’t great, and you could lose a whole cycle, or your vines could be totally destroyed.

“So, when I see a bottle of wine, I always think about how much time and effort was actually put into it. And just have somewhat more of an appreciation of someone kind of grinding their own way rather than just throwing a bunch of stuff in a factory and letting a machine do it.”

Rhonda Pavan remembers Dunn being intensely focused on hockey but always respectful.

“He loves his family like crazy,” she said. “You could see that. But, I mean, he loved us like family, and we loved him back. He was very, very kind – wanting to be a part of everything we did. There was never an issue, never a problem. It just broke my heart when he left.”

When Dunn won a Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019, both the Vendettis and Pavans celebrated with him in Lindsay when he got to keep the trophy for a day.

Last summer, his taste in food and wine ever broadened, Dunn visited Italy for the first time and also Portugal. The trips were heavily food and wine-influenced, his Portuguese stay in the country’s wine-producing Douro River Valley with the Italian portion focused on the Tuscany and Piedmont regions.

Dunn is a big fan of Brunello di Montalcino red wine, made in Tuscany from Sangiovese grapes. He hopes to get more into red Burgandy wines from France, made with the Pinot Noir grapes he liked as a child.

His grandmother, who now lives permanently with Dunn’s mom and adoptive father, is impressed with Dunn’s culinary growth. The organic, high-end meats and produce he’ll bring home to them in Ontario from overseas or American specialty shops – not to mention premium bottles of wine – show he never stopped appreciating her early kitchen lessons.

“He’d be playing with the pots and pans, and I’d put cereal in the pot and let him stir,” his grandmother said. “But then, when he got a little bit bigger, he wanted to be up on the counter. He used to say, ‘Nana, cook, cook, cook.’

“So, I’d sit him on the counter, and whether I was doing pasta sauce or pasta, we’d do the ingredients together. He’d be mixing them. We’d do meatballs, and he’d just love it. As long as he was in the kitchen with food."

She said Dunn “has always been very conscious with his eating habits” and the “quality of food” he consumes – something that’s helped him stay in top shape. He’ll often do the cooking for them when he's home to avoid using ingredients that aren’t organic or gluten-free.

Even in the high-end restaurants, he takes them to, she said, Dunn will chat up servers about the food’s preparation if he likes it. Often, they’ll head back to the kitchen to ask the chef for more specific details.

“It’s not just ordering, sitting down and finishing your plate and away you go,” she said. “He’s really into it. Even for the wine pairing and everything.”

His mother said many of Dunn’s friends either own restaurants or work at them, and the food and wine served carry special meaning.

She figures that in his OHL years, Dunn used the big meals with the Vendettis and Pavans as a conduit for discussing hockey, family and missing home. And that for him, dealing with tough postgame situations has long involved a glass of wine and some cheese, or bread, or “something simple, but also very, very good.” She and Dunn spent plenty of time bonding in the kitchen when he was younger and still do – with him suggesting new things for her to try and her trying to make her plates more visually appealing for him.

“It’s not only fueling his body,” she said of his approach to food and drink. “But it’s also fueling relationships that he has with people.”

And like a fine wine, Dunn said his skills have helped him mature as his hockey career unfolds. They enabled him to look after himself at a young age away from home and share his fondness with those closest to him at the time.

He'd cook for his roommate with the Blues, winger Sammy Blais, who’d sometimes reciprocate as well. His Kraken defensive partner, Adam Larsson, has joked about Dunn constantly sending him photos and videos of his cooking.

Dunn admitted he’s yet to cook for Larsson. But the pair frequently hang out and dine together on the road, where Dunn will try Larsson’s favorite sushi and other Asian-inspired dishes he’s less apt to cook himself.

“It’s like anything else; you never stop learning,” Dunn said of his culinary adventures. “You have to constantly evolve, whether it’s playing hockey or learning to cook or enjoying wine. That’s what makes us better.”