Ones to Watch: Spirit Wares Is the Chef-Driven Tableware You Keep Seeing Everywhere

Everywhere I turn, there they are: Spirit Wares, quietly claiming tabletops like they’ve always belonged. I’ve never been one to flip a dish to see where it was made—or even to notice a dish, if I’m honest. But plate after gorgeous plate, I’m seeing it: the Spirit Wares stamp. I’ve even paused mid-soup to tilt a bowl and check, like examining the back of a greeting card for the Hallmark stamp. More often than not, if the dish has caught my attention, I’ll find that stamp. Spirit Wares dishes are everywhere.

At first it felt like coincidence; now it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in stoneware form. A textured plate that catches the light just so. A bowl glazed in tones that read earthy at lunch, moody by dinner. Elegant enough for a Renoir still life and—yes—showing up in Michelin-starred rooms (I’m looking at you, Burdock and Co. and AnnaLena in Vancouver). These dishes can be found everywhere from rustic West Coast Modern dining rooms to minimalist cafés—and will soon debut as a collab in the Fall/Winter 2025 Phil and Sebastian collection.

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Now, the chef-led Canadian tableware company is setting places at home, too. “People want to be chefs at home, and we’re actually giving them that,” says Calgary-based chef Cam Dobranski, who is one of four co-founders of the brand. Created for restaurants but coveted by design lovers, Spirit Wares’ pieces are mix-and-match perfection: imperfect yet ornate, muted yet eye-catching. They elevate a dish without stealing the spotlight.

When Spirit Wares first launched in 2002—then called Spirit Chinaware—it began humbly. “Back then—20 to 25 years ago—it was hard to source restaurant-quality plates in Canada. Most came from Europe,” says Toronto-based chef and co-founder Tom Malycha. He and his hospitality-school friend Rudy Guo found factories in Southeast China and began importing tableware “literally a container at a time,” with no grand plan beyond selling directly to chefs they knew. “We sold door-to-door, chef-to-chef, building word of mouth,” says Malycha.

Two years later, Dobranski joined as a Calgary sales rep, eventually becoming a partner. Not long after, Louis Clement followed the same path—rep first, then partner. Together, the quartet built out a small but nimble team that would help Spirit Wares grow into the brand it is today.

That entrepreneurial spark—what they call the spirit of hospitality—still runs through the brand. “It’s about operating with chefs, for chefs,” says Malycha. If a chef calls, there’s no labyrinth of distributors, just a direct line to what they need. Their focus has always been simple: everything you’d find on top of a table, built to work as hard as the kitchens they serve.

Today, the Spirit Wares line includes kiln mugs in Granite or Quail glazes, rustic oval platters, polished stone cereal bowls, elegant pinch bowls, side plates, fine porcelain dinnerware, bowls of every shape, mesmerizing ramekins. Every piece is hand-crafted, restaurant-quality and finished with a unique reactive glaze that ensures no two pieces are exactly alike—or with a more rustic exposed clay earthenware finish.

The turning point came about eight years ago, when Spirit Wares shifted from “basic stuff” to chef-driven shapes and glazes: “We like creating what people want,” says Dobranski. Inspired by the Nordic wave, French plating traditions and Japanese style, they swapped the blank white canvas for earthenware, stoneware, coloured glazes and more sculptural forms. “Our lineup is like a chef’s brain,” says Dobranski. “In the beginning, nothing really matched and nothing really made sense, but it made sense to us.”

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Trends may swing back to white plates, but Spirit Wares pairs that standard with sculptural shapes: think doughnut-style profiles with recessed centres that frame the food, or rims that rise and ripple for extra dimension. It’s all part of their mission to create ceramics that are as beautiful as they are durable: tough enough to withstand the beating of a commercial kitchen, yet elegant enough to complement whatever lands on them.

That passion for finding just the right plate pushed the founders to stretch their creativity beyond the back of house, building a brand of restaurant- and hospitality-focused ceramics that chefs now covet. “You create the vision. We’ll create the plates,” is how the team puts it for their wholesale partners. And for those of us at home, the same thoughtful, hand-crafted pieces can transform a Tuesday dinner into something that feels five-star.

It helps that the brand moves quickly. “We’re such a fast, young company that we’re always changing things up. Things are coming and going. We’re trying to be the trendsetters and not the trend followers,” says Dobranski. Spirit Wares releases new collections constantly, keeping chefs inspired and design lovers on their toes. Plate size matters, too. “Ten inches max for downtown restaurants so they fit on small tables,” says Malycha. Even storage habits are shaping design: “People are storing plates in drawers and stuff,” adds Dobranski.

And the team puts as much emphasis on accessibility as it does on design. All Spirit Wares ceramics are dishwasher- and microwave-safe. They’re tough enough for commercial kitchens, yet cost-effective, so chefs and home cooks can stock up. While available in select lifestyle shops and bigger-name retailers like Simons Maison, Oak and Fort’s homeware section and Ming Wo Vancouver, the company primarily sells online. For those seeking a peek behind the curtain, Spirit Wares has showrooms in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Edmonton—strictly by appointment, and exclusive to the hospitality industry. “We just don’t have the manpower right now for full-time staff at the showrooms,” says Dobranski.

With growth has come leverage: Spirit Wares can now guide production details and create custom runs for both national chains and boutique restaurants. That agility has helped them build loyalty. Malycha recalls a small Nova Scotia restaurant that had collected Spirit Wares for 15 years, rotating pieces by season like a menu. “That kind of relationship is the point,” he says.

And while collaborations are nothing new— “I designed a coffee mug for OEB Breakfast, and that took about a year,” says Dobranski—their current projects point to even more creative partnerships: that Phil and Sebastian collaboration (a barista competition line), new stoneware from Brazil and even a chance meeting with a Danish ceramicist—with potential Portuguese and Spanish workshops being considered for the future.

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Not every idea is serious (dog bowls, dessert carts, even mystery-box plate sets have been floated). “One of our stupid ideas is going to work,” Dobranski laughs. “We’re just not sure which one.”

The Spirit Wares team has plans to reach beyond the appointment-only showroom, too: a Toronto space shared with Medium Rare Chef Apparel (owned by Dobranski and Andrew Dallman), new collaborations with designers and even more colour and form experiments. “We want to be the cool kids of plateware,” says Dobranski. “If you know about us, you really have to search us out.”

Which is, of course, the paradox: once you notice Spirit Wares, you won’t have to search hard. Consider this your invitation to flip over that plate and take a look.