Wolfgang Sterr joined Whistler Blackcomb as Executive Chef in 2011. Born and raised in the Bavarian Alps, Wolfgang has always had an appreciation for the outdoors, and for food. “I am told by my mom that at the age of three, she’d catch me standing in the kitchen of my parents’ hotel peeking into the pots to see what was cooking,” he recalls. He began his apprenticeship at the age of 15 and graduated with his Chef papers at just 18 years old. Combining his two loves for food and snowboarding, Wolfgang worked in Davos, Arosa and Engelberg Switzerland on a quest to expand his culinary knowledge. Over the next four years he was exposed to Italian, French and German cuisine and was able to snowboard 100 days each season.
Coming to Whistler on a Snowboard Vacation in 1991 changed everything. “I fell in love with the country and its people,” he remembers. In a back-and-forth cross-Canada shuffle between the four diamond Sherwood Inn in Muskoka, Ontario, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, and then back to Ontario’s wine region to follow his dream of opening his own restaurant built on sustainability, local products, energy reduction, great wine and food, Wolfgang gained valuable experience under some of the best in the biz.
Returning to Whistler for a visit in March 2010 made Wolfgang realize that life has more to offer than just work and the mountains called out to him to return. And in a twist of fate whereby one truly recognizes they’re on the right path, his restaurant sold, a job offer came from Whistler Mountain to run the Roundhouse lodge (one of north America’s largest mountain top restaurants), and nine months into the journey, he was promoted to Whistler Blakcomb’s Executive Chef to help lead the massive Food and Beverage division including 14 on and off mountain restaurants.
