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In the kitchen at C|Prime Modern Italian Steak & Wine, chef Behshad Zolnasr likes to joke that his career started with a TV show catchphrase. “My grandma always had Emeril Live on,” he remembers. “It was that ‘Bam!’ moment—watching him cook for a live audience, seeing people react to food right in front of them—that stuck with me when I was eight, nine years old. After that, I never wanted to do anything else.”
Food has been a through line in Zolnasr’s life from the beginning. Born to Iranian parents who moved to Vancouver when he was a baby, he grew up on the North Shore surrounded by a family of gifted cooks. His parents, aunts, and grandmother turned the household into a kind of informal culinary school. “Both my parents are phenomenal cooks. My grandma too. That heritage was always there,” he says. “So when my friends were stressing about careers in grade ten—law, medicine, business—I already knew. I made a deal with my parents: I might not be a lawyer, but if I’m going to be a chef, I’ll be the best chef I can be.”
William Johnson
His first chance to prove it came at the age of 16, in the kitchen of Earls in North Vancouver. Most teenagers would start as a dishwasher. Zolnasr talked his way straight onto the line. “I told the chef, give me a shot and I won’t let you down. That’s how I got my first leg up.” He juggled high school with an apprenticeship program that let him work full days in the restaurant, building experience dish by dish.
From there, he took the long way around the culinary world. After a stint at West Vancouver’s Beach House, he enrolled at Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts on Granville Island, then bought a one-way ticket to Europe. “I spent two years bouncing around kitchens,” he says. “London with Gordon Ramsay, San Sebastián, little trattorias in Italy. I’d show up, hand over my resume, and offer to peel potatoes just to get my foot in the door. If you worked fast, they’d move you up. You earned your stripes.”
William Johnson
It was a crash course not just in technique but in culture. “Coming from corporate kitchens where everything came in boxes, to Europe where the chef goes to the fisherman that morning and designs the menu around whatever’s fresh—that was a huge shock. It taught me to think about food differently.”
New York came next: Jean-Georges, one of the city’s temples of fine dining. There, Zolnasr saw what he calls “the pinnacle of money in a kitchen”—copper pots, rulers for plating, tasting menus running into hundreds of dollars. “The kitchen was bigger than some restaurants,” he laughs. “It was eye-opening. But also, you realize it’s just people cooking at the end of the day. The ingredients might cost a fortune, but it’s still about precision and passion.”
The doppio ravioli is filled with two flavours in one pasta—currently lemon ricotta on one side and summer peas with basil on the other. William Johnson
By his early 20s he was back in Vancouver, ready for his first head chef role at Cafe Ça Va in West Van. “That’s where I really learned the difference between being a cook and being a chef. As a cook you’re doing; as a chef you’re conducting. You’re bringing people together to create something bigger than yourself.”
That lesson carries through today at C|Prime, where Zolnasr has been executive chef since 2021. The restaurant, tucked inside the Century Plaza Hotel downtown, bills itself as Italian by way of New York City. But Zolnasr has made it his own by weaving Vancouver into the fabric of the menu.
The bone marrow tartare (Osso e Manzo) has been on the menu since day one, evolving each year as Zolnasr’s cooking has sharpened.”> The bone marrow tartare (Osso e Manzo) has been on the menu since day one, evolving each year as Zolnasr’s cooking has sharpened. William Johnson
“There are so many Italian restaurants in this city that are rooted in family recipes passed down for generations. I didn’t want to compete with that—I don’t have someone’s nonna’s Bolognese,” he says. “What I can do is use the techniques I learned in Italy and apply them to the best ingredients from here.”
That means a doppio ravioli filled half with summer peas and basil, half with lemon ricotta—cut it open and you see green and white side by side. It means a tortellini of BC Dungeness crab, or a polenta topped with slow-braised beef ragù boosted with porcini powder for a hit of umami. It means steaks dry-aged in house, pasta rolled daily, and sauces built from stocks the team simmers from scratch.
William Johnson
Some dishes carry stories as much as flavours. Take the lamb shank, one of the restaurant’s most talked-about plates. Each braise draws on a “mother stock” that’s been going for years. “Every time we finish, we save a couple of litres and start the next batch with it,” Zolnasr explains. “It’s developed this depth you can’t replicate any other way.” The shank arrives standing tall on the plate, bone cleaned to gleaming white, meat collapsing into rich sauce. “It’s a showstopper, but it’s also technique and patience.”
Or consider the Osso e Manzo, where filet tartare is tucked into a roasted bone marrow and served with charred sourdough. “That’s luxury at its finest,” he says. “Richness, texture, something primal about it.” The beef tartare has been on the menu since his first day at C|Prime, evolving each year as his own skills and style have sharpened. “Sometimes I look back at old photos of the dish and think, wow, we’ve come a long way.”
If his food is rooted in Europe and refined in New York, his leadership style is pure Vancouver. Zolnasr talks with pride about his team—Chef Jo Hognestad, his longtime collaborator and chef de cuisine; pastry chef Diana von Kalnassy, who makes everything from scratch, from ice creams to petits fours; and a management crew that has stayed loyal since day one. “We couldn’t do this without them,” he says simply. “I’m blessed to have people who push as hard as I do.”
William Johnson
C|Prime is more than a restaurant; it’s an atmosphere. The dining room has the dark-wood, low-light intimacy of a Manhattan steakhouse, softened by the easy hospitality that Vancouver does best. The wine list leans Italian but isn’t afraid to play globally. And the menu shifts with the seasons, always anchored by the best of BC’s farms and fisheries. “We’re not hyper-seasonal, but we do change constantly,” Zolnasr says. “If peas are done, they’re done. If something local comes in that’s beautiful, we’ll work it in. That’s the fun of it.”
Four years into the job, he still feels like he’s just getting started. “We left the concept vague on purpose,” he says. “That gives us freedom to explore, to grow, to keep pushing.”
William Johnson
Which, in a way, takes him back to that moment in his grandmother’s living room, watching Emeril shout “Bam!” on TV. Cooking, for Zolnasr, is still about giving people something to react to—something they taste, feel, and remember.
“I’ve always said, if I’m going to be a chef, I want to be a great one,” he says. “That’s what drives me. To put food in front of someone and see their face light up. That’s it. That’s why I do this.”
Dining and Cooking