EAT Magazine 12-06 November|December 2008

We’ve been busy behind the scenes revamping EAT’s online presence The new EAT website has grown in scope and style Personal recipes from local chefs, stories on local ar tisan ingredients, contests, book reviews, and the wine of the week will all be updated often so that every time you visit there's something fresh to read about (and what you read last week, and loved, will still be there )

Eatmagazine.ca will also feature exclusive culinary ar ticles, news stories, and links to the most au courant in epicurean writing from BC, Canada and around the world For the most up to date event information take a look at The Bulletin Board Plus you can still browse The Marketplace for shopping and read the online version of the print EAT, page for page, on the website. RSS Feed capability has also been added.

At the top of our homepage you’ll find the free sign up link to Tapas, EAT ’s twice monthly newsletter. Receive V.I.P. aler ts to timely food news so you can know at a glance if there's a dinner or festival coming up that you want to attend. As a subscriber to Tapas you'll be updated on what's new on the EAT website

Check out www.eatmagazine.ca and check it often We hope you'll like it And as always, we'd love to hear from you; let us know what you think about this or any other topic by emailing editor@eatmagazine ca Happy holidays to everyone and all the best for 2009 G ary Hynes, Editor

Editor in Chief G ary Hynes

Contributing Editor Carolyn Bateman, Vancouver Contributing Editor Julie Pegg

Editorial Assistant Katie Zdybel

Local Repor ters

Victoria: Katie Zdybel

Nanaimo: Su Grimmer

Comox Valley: Hans Peter Meyer

Tofino | Uclulet: Kira Rogers

Vancouver: Julie Pegg

Okanagan: Jennifer Schell Pigott

Contributors Larry Arnold, Michelle Bouffard, Jennifer Danter, Pam Durkin, Gillie Easdon, Andrei Fedorov, Jeremy Ferguson, Nathan Fong, Lorraine Forster, Duncan Holmes, Mara Jernigan, Chris Johns, Tracey Kusiewicz, Tara Lee, Andrew Lewis, Ceara Lornie, Sherri Mar tin, Kathryn McAree, Michaela Morris, Andrew Morrison, Julie Pegg, Karen Platt, Treve Ring, Kira Rogers, John Schreiner, John Sherlock, Elizabeth Smyth, Chris Mason Stearns, Michael Tourigny, Sylvia Weinstock, Rebecca Wellman

Ar t Direction G ary Hynes

Publisher Pacific Island Gourmet | EAT ® is a registered trademark.

Adver tising:

Lorraine Browne (Vancouver Island), Paul Kamon (Vancouver), Kira Rogers (Tofino), G ary Hynes (agencies, regional and national) 250 384 9042, adver tise@eatmagazine ca

All depar tments

Box 5225, Victoria, BC, V8R 6N4, tel 250 384 9042, fax 250 384 6915 www.eatmagazine.ca eatjobs.ca epicureandtravel.com

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Since 1998 | EAT Magazine is published six times each year No par t of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher Although every effor t is taken to ensure accuracy, Pacific Island Gourmet Publishing cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions that may occur All opinions expressed in the ar ticles are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the publisher Pacific Island Gourmet reser ves the right to refuse any adver tisement All rights reser ved

THE CONCIERGE DESK

For more events visit THE BULLETIN BOARD at www.eatmagazine.ca

Nov 6 OROFINO WINEMAKER S DINNER at C AFÉ BRIO

Café Brio thinks Orofino is the best BC Winery you haven’t heard of yet. A handful of their gold medal winning vintages from the Sim ilkameen Valley will be paired with local octo pus, lamb, and B C spot prawns as only Brio could prepare them $98 per person, call 250 383 0009 for reser vations

Nov 7 TEQUIL A

TA ST ING AT SIX MILE LIQUOR STORE

Premium Tequila Tasting at the Six Mile Liquor store is back by popular demand Tickets are $45 (and expect to sell out) 6:30 8:30pm Also experience a pair made in heaven with their Por t and Chocolate Tasting in November (exact date to be announced), $35. Call 250.391.4458 for more information.

Nov 1

15 ANNUAL G AME & WILD MUSHROOM FESTIVAL at PARKSIDE

Experience the chanterelle, bluefoot, trumpet, and pine mushrooms native to BC that Chef Durbach of Parkside will be featuring in his menu during the season. Paired with wild game like quail, rabbit, and bison, they make an outstanding menu For example, Cromesquis of rabbit, mushrooms & smoked ham hock with sweet garlic puree 1906 Haro St , Vancouver or call 604 683 6912

Nov 6-10

CORNUCOPIA: WHISTLER’S CELEBRATION of WINE & FOOD

Swirl, sniff, sip, and spit a variety of vintages at Whistler’s Cornucopia Eat lunch and discuss sustainability with Anthony Nicalo of Farm stead Wines, get to the roots of your food on a Chef ’s Trip to the Farm, and pick out your favourite ingredients to take home at the Slow Food Ar tisan Market. Visit www.whistlercor nucopia.com for full schedule and tickets.

Nov 8 DINNER AT DEERHOLME FARM

French Wild Mushroom Feast. www.magnor th.bc.ca

Nov 12

TAPA S COOKING CL A SS: GET T ING READY for the HOLIDAYS

Chef Romy Prasad of Savory Coast Restaurant will be teaching students how to whip up Tuna Tar tar, Mango relish, and more for impressive holiday fare at Wellbrook Winery in Delta 6pm 9pm, $55 per person Classes limited to 16 people; call 604 946 1868 to register

Nov 14-15

SLOW FOOD FILM FEST

View food films “ The World According to Mon santo,” “Hijacked Future,” and more Slow Food Vancouver Island and Gulf Island’s Film Fest at the University of Victoria campus Don’t miss the premiere of local documentary, “Is land on the Edge ” Tickets $5 $75, visit www filmfest slowisland ca for complete de tails and to order tickets.

Nov

15 16 FINE WINE, FINE ART SHOW at CHALET ESTATE WINERY

View local ar tists’ work, sample Chalet Estate Winery’s best. The Chalet Estate Winery is in Nor th Saanich. www.chaletestatewinery.ca or call 250.656.2552 for more information.

AND

Nov

20 23 ONE OF A KIND FL AVOURS at the ONE OF A KIND ART SHOW

The popular handmade only ar t show comes to the West Coast. One section devoted en tirely to homemade edibles: ar tisan breads, cheeses, preser ves, chocolates BC Place Sta dium in Vancouver, $10 at the door for adults or $8 in advance www oneofakindvancou ver com

Nov

21-23 CULINARY WEEKEND WITH MARA JERNIGAN & BILL JONES

2 nights accomodations with breakfasts, cook ing demos and dinners 250 746,4637, www fairburnfarm bc ca

Nov

25 GET FAT COOKING CL A SS WITH JENNIFER McL AGEN

McLagen’s new book, Fat, celebrates the greasy, buttery richness of cooking with fat Glean what she learned while writing about one of modern Nor th America’s most taboo in gredients and enjoy a hefty meal with the au thor. At Barbara Jo’s Books for Cooks in Vancouver, $95 per person. Call 604.688.6755 to register.

Nov 27 FARML AND CONFERENCE: OUR FOODL ANDS, OUR FUTURE

This conference in Sidney will take a hard look at sky rocketing land costs and putting the farm back in ‘farmland ’ Also a discussion of models for land leasing and sharing, and how to meet the demand for local food For more info contact Linda Geggie at 250 727 9605

Nov

27: HOLIDAY CHEER LOUNGE NIGHT at SILK ROADS

Sip on a tea cocktail and pamper yourself with free mini spa treatments at Silk Roads in Vic toria They’ll also be sampling their holiday teas and giving out door prizes 7pm 9pm, free

Nov 29 FOOD ROOTS SUSTAINABLE FEA ST

The last Sustainable Feast before the New Year features Alderlea Vineyard wines and features a guest speaker from the vineyards. Tickets $35 and available at various locations down town Victoria including Café Mela and the Par sonage Café. Visit www.foodroots.ca for more details.

Dec

3 BC WINE APPRECIAT ION SOCIET Y ’S CHRISTMA S BA SH

The W.A.S. was created for the enhancement of knowledge and interest in the Wines of British Columbia Dance til your feet hur t at their annual Christmas bash while drinking provincial wines www bcwas com for more info

Dec 30 GOURMET CRUISE THROUGH the GULF ISL ANDS

At this time of year the waters around the Gulf Islands are at their most serene Cruise on a 115 foot yacht through peaceful waters Long hikes on deser ted beaches, champagne toasts, gourmet hot cocoa, and impeccably fresh seafood. Call 604.812.9660

CONTEST WINNER

by Katie Zdybel

BLUEBERRY-CRANBERRY RELISH

Start the party brilliantly. Serve this zesty-sweet relish with Brie on croûtes.

1 cup canned whole berry cranberry sauce 1cup frozen blueberries, unthawed 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/2 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

In a medium-sized microwavesafe dish,stir cranberry sauce. Microwave on high power until melted,60 to 80 seconds.Fold in blueberries and nuts;stir in lemon juice.Serve warm or cover and refrigerate for up to one week.YIELD:about 2 cups

www.bcblueberry.com

…FieldtoFreezerinaFlash.

Victoria’s Culinary DNA

O ne w ri t er emba rks on a n ap p rec i at i v e journey t o uncover the labyrinthine matrix of people, places and cui sines t hat make up t hi s sma ll, fo od- obsessed city.

Par t Two of a series

Mar vellous mall: Zambri’s

by Gillie Easdon

Fast track to 1999, where another unlikely location proved ideal for the proliferation of fine cuisine. Far from the coastal, white linened quietude of Sooke Harbour House, siblings Peter and Jo Zambri were establishing Zambri’s in the far corner of a chaotic and crowded parking lot on Victoria’s Yates Street in 1999 For many, the location was a mistake However, thanks to the duo’s tenacity, Jo’s history in applied geography and their upbringing in Toronto amid its myriad plazas and hole in the wall restaurants, the doubters were proved dead wrong

Peter Zambri was lured to the coast and the Wedgewood Hotel by past Sooke Harbour House chef Gordon Cowen (1988 1990). Peter had planned to open the Chateau Whistler under Bernard Casavant, but Sinclair Philip passed on Peter’s resumé to Cowen, who then proceeded to entice him to Vancouver instead of Whistler. After the Wedgewood, Peter was at Sooke Harbour House between 1991 and ’93 and then set off to live, learn and love in Italy, Southeast Asia and India Returning to Victoria, he worked as the Sooke Harbour House gardener for the 1999 season Prior to Zambri’s, Jo had been with Canadian Springs Water Company, “managing deliveries, trucks, customers and routes quite similar to restaurants ”

Zambri’s is modelled after the enoteca, what Jo calls “a casual restaurant with wine cel lar, a wine bar type of establishment.” The restaurant was both their ideas. They opened on October 18, 1999 and were slammed. “We have to do that again?” Jo exclaimed. Yep. And again and again. Over the years, Jo and Peter have shared their bustling mecca with Derek Dammann (of John Hall’s Cassis), who went on to work with Jamie Oliver and recently opened DNA Restaurant in Montreal, and Jonathan Chovancek (another Sooke Harbour House and Aerie alumni) who is now with Catering Capers in Vancouver Other past Zam bri’s notables include Perry Nor th, who went on to West and recently left Opus, and som melier Frances Sidhe, who is now working with Wren restaurant in Oak Bay Jo Zambri recounts the rags to riches tale of one Anthony Shannon, who “came in with a second hand jacket and a tie He ordered lasagna and when I brought him the bill, he said that Peter had told him he could do the dishes for it.” Anthony Shannon continued to work at the restaurant over the years, learning to cook and butcher, then moved to Vancouver with his par tner Kerry Brown (past Zambri’s server) and worked as chef with Perry Nor th at Opus until recently.

Unlike most Victoria restaurants, Zambri’s does not take reser vations (save for a shor t time when they took reser vations for four course Saturday night dinners) “It’s a demo cratic thing A restaurant is a casual eatery It’s good for business sometimes it’s not good for business sometimes,” says Jo In their nine years, two exceptions have been made: one for James Barber when he was unwell and one for an elderly regular who would not be able to stand. “My parents wait in line,” Jo contends. When asked about the mechanics of the restaurant, Jo beams about how well all the staff get along, “save occasionally Peter and I. We’re Italians. Our personalities are there.”

In the French Manner

Victoria has enjoyed a long history of fluency in French. Indeed, chefs from La Belle Pays have been the key, foundation and seed of fine dining in Victoria.

Daniel Rigollet was gifted to Victoria by way of France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Montreal. A CP veteran, Rigollet arrived in 1970 to work at the Em press, “ The Old Lady,” as he fondly calls it From there he went on to the Oak Bay Manor (1972) and then opened The Parrot House at the Chateau Victoria (1975), now Vista 18 “It was exciting You knew the oppor tunity was there, room to improve,” says Rigollet about the culinary landscape during the 1970s and ’80s

Finally, it was time for him to open Chez Daniel’s (now Paprika) But where to set up shop? As it turns out, the ideal location was “literally right under my nose,” mere blocks from his home. Rigollet wanted a neighbourhood restaurant that would be frequented predomi nantly by locals with whom he could build relationships. Moreover, he was keen to keep away from downtown’s din. “ There was great suppor t from the community,” he divulges. The food he offered was “pure French, simple.” Rigollet admits however that he was “his own worst enemy I had to be in the kitchen all the time ” His philosophy of culinary suc cess? “Honesty, integrity and humility ” (Rigollet went on to become Bailli Honoraire Chaine

des Rotisseurs and is currently a chef instructor at Malaspina University College (now VI U.) The 1990s saw Italian cuisine rise in popularity all over Nor th America. Concerned about the impact this might have on business, local French restaurateurs Daniel Rigollet, Sinclair Philip and Deep Cove Chalet’s Pierre Koffel would confer. Ultimately, they agreed that they must “stick to their guns,” says Rigollet “Professionalism is to hold onto your colour, hold onto your vision, make sure you know exactly what you want to do don’t sway ” The French restaurateurs suppor ted each other For years they met once a week to play cards Daniel Rigollet, Jean Pierre Mercier from Chez Pierre, Michel Ford from the French Connec tion and Pierre Koffel from Deep Cove among them The game? The rumour was they were playing poker, but the game they actually played was Tarot, a French card game similar to bridge. The one paramount rule? “Not a word of English … we were trying to keep sane,” says Rigollet with a smile.

Next in the

series: An Industry Matures and Victoria Comes of Age: Herald Street Caffe

Un-stress Your Holidays

GOODFORYOU by Pam Durkin

The Fit List*

Seasonal

gif ts for the health-conscious foodie.

Ihave several avowed “foodies” on my Christmas list this year Usually this is a cate gory of recipient that is astonishingly easy to shop for. Last year I simply whipped up a batch of lavender shor tbread, purchased some heavenly Florentines and proceeded with the wrapping. Unfor tunately, gift giving looks a bit more daunting for Christmas 2008. It turns out a few “health conscious foodies” have crept onto my list. You know the type makes goji berry granola, always buys organic, doesn’t DO wheat or dairy. In fact, I suspect you’ve got several people like this on your list too. Don’t worry, there’s no need for con sternation. After careful probing I’ve compiled a list of savvy gifts cer tain to delight even the most health conscious of gourmands.

WILD SWEETS from DCDUBY Now that chocolate has officially achieved health food status, you can give it with impunity to even your most health obsessed friends And there simply aren’t more exquisite chocolate treats to give than those being created by the husband and wife team of Dominique and Cindy Duby The couple, who have been hailed by famed Chicago chef Charlie Trotter as “giants in the pastry world,” have taken the ar t of chocolate creation to a whole new level Based in Richmond, B C , the Dubys combine cutting edge, molecular gastronomy techniques with novel pairings to create whimsical and exotic of ferings that are multi sensory experiences (the apricot/chanterelle chocolate and the “tex ture” bar I sampled certainly engaged several of my senses!) The chocolates are divided into categories classic, spirit, limited edition, roasted/spiced and fruity/floral. In addition there are truffles, Arôme and texture bars, chocowine and caramel confits plus a line of innova tive aroma oils, gels and salts designed for use by the creative “at home” chef. N BC’s Today Show dubbed the Dubys’ creations “really cool, unique chocolates you will never forget.” I couldn’t agree more. For more information or to order products, visit www.dcduby.com.

GOURMET NUTRITION The Cookbook for the Fit Food Lover by Dr. John Berardi, Michael Williams and Kristina Andrew This gorgeous cookbook is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate With more than 120 beautifully photographed, nutritious creations, this book has wide appeal It is perfect for nutritionally oriented foodies and those who need a nudge in that direction Co authors Dr John Berardi, Michael Williams and Kristina Andrew all have impeccable credentials Berardi is chief science officer of Precision Nutrition Inc and adjunct assistant professor of E xercise Science at the University of Texas Local chef Michael Williams, a graduate of Camosun College, has done stints at the Aerie Resor t, Switzerland’s Hotel Schweizerhof and at Daniel Boloud’s famed New York eatery Daniel. Kristina Andrew, Williams’s par tner, is a professional cooking instructor, personal trainer and coach. The team has produced an informative gem of a book. Full nutritional data is given for each recipe along with ideas for improvisation, guidelines for “post workout” meals and meal plan templates. I tried the caramelized beet and fennel soup with cheddar and was suitably impressed. If you have a similar experience with the book, take note chef Michael provides private cooking lessons, personal meal planning and also stages private dinner par ties. The book is available at Plenty on For t Street. For more information on chef Michael Williams, visit www.chefmichaelwilliams.com.

TIGH NA MARA GIFT CERTIFIC ATE For finicky health conscious foodies, there can be no better spa than the Tigh Na Mara Resor t The Cedar Dining Room features inspired West Coast cuisine that relies heavily on local ingredients par ticularly seafood (The Tower of Local Crab with Heirloom Tomatoes is but one example ) But perhaps the most hedonistic treat at the resor t is the Tree Tops Tapas and Grill, where spa guests dine in robes and san dals while indulging in endless spa inspired, antioxidant rich tapas Spicy avocado won tons with seasonal greens, black sambuca cream and cherry essence or roasted shallots and por tobello mushrooms with pan seared spinach and buttermilk dressing are just two tapas examples sure to delight even the most discerning foodie. For information and reser vations, call 1 800 663 7373.

THE EXC ALIBUR DEHYDRATOR Endorsed by celebrity raw foodists like Gabriel Cousins and Carol Alt, the Excalibur is the dehydrator of choice at leading health clinics, retreats and spas This machine allows you to produce an array of enzyme and vitamin rich goodies that have not been “damaged” by heat It comes with a choice of four, five or nine drying trays and has a 26 hour timer for convenience And if you think the only thing you can whip up with a dehydrator is fruit leather, think again The Excalibur allows you to create sump tuous scones, crackers, breads, desser ts, candied fruits the list is as endless as your imagination If “raw” is your loved one’s new mantra, this is the perfect gift Available at Tri angle Healing Products 250 370 1818

HONORABLE MENTIONS Organic Spelt Cookies from Cowichan Bay’s True Grain Mill Bak ery. Available at Plenty on For t Street. Ar tisan Salts from Redmond, Washington’s Ar tisan Salt Company. (The Indian Black Salt adds a wonderful “eggy” flavour to vegan dishes.) www.ar tisansalt.com

Julie Pegg

Big Bread

t a l y ’s h o l i d a y l o a f i s a s w e e t s e a s o n a l t r e a t

and amalgamated both labels synonymous with panettone in 1990. During the run up to Christmas, Motta/Alemagna, marketing globally, distributes more than 250,000 panetonnes throughout Italy alone

Panettone means simply “big bread ” But more ro mantic notions surround panettone’s name Reference Waverly Root’s Food of Italy or Locatelli’s Made in Italy, (or just Google panettone) and you’ll find a tall tale or two My favourite is about a nobleman who pre tended to be a baker’s apprentice and made a “huge, sumptuous bread” (pan) for “ Toni,” a baker’s daugh ter, with whom he fell in love.

Christmas in, Christmas out, every Italian grocer/baker in the city stockpiles panettone (pronounced “pan e ton ay”) Bosa and Cioffi’s, Vancouver’s most familiar Italian food shops, carry a few panet tone year round, but come Yuletide, box upon pyramid shaped box of the airy, raisin studded celebratory bread dangles from the rafters or crowds the shelves. Sundry ar tisanal bakeries have adopted and adapted panettone, too Vancouver’s Terra Breads fashions two types of panettone: one a dense, dried fruit version and one packed with chocolate and cherries. These come in regular and mini sizes and are not only available for Christmas but also for Valentine’s, Mother’s Day and Thanks giving

I was surprised to discover that little had been written on this sweet subject. (Check out the indexes of culinary magazines and cookbooks, and “pan cakes” flip right into “pan frying ”) Eliz abeth David (Italian Food) nods briefly in panettone’s direction calling it “a kind of brioche containing sultanas,” but she provides no recipe And my go to for all old world fare, Elizabeth Luard, says nary a word about the bread. Website searches, save Wikipedia, turned up precious little, too I was lucky enough, on a recent visit to Ontario, to spy Made in Italy, Food and Stories by Georgio Locatelli on my sister’s bookshelf and gleaned some information there

There is little doubt that panettone’s lineage is Milanese. In 1919, a Milanese baker named Angelo Motta began bak ing the airy bread en masse for fellow townsfolk Six years later, another local baker, Gioacchino Alemagna, went mano a mano with Motta, providing stiff competition. Nestlé gobbled up

Waverly Root claims “pannetone is the world’s best accompaniment for breakfast coffee It remains fresh for a long time I don’t know why ” True Panetonne’s longevity is puzzling. Once I forgot to put a commer cially bought one in the freezer. About two weeks’ later, I found it sitting atop the deep freeze unharmed and unaltered, just a bit dry a perfect building block for a trifle, bread and butter pudding and French toast. Traditionally, three two hour rises give the bread its airy texture. My brother in law’s mom, Rena DeClerico, likes to set the dough on the kitchen counter for one long overnight rise I doubt the mass marketed brands derive their light texture from any careful monitoring. I read somewhere glucose assists in the lightness and durability of mass marketed panettone

Not a fan of industrial strength panettone, a Tuscan friend, Ber t Ferri, bakes his own “It was not a local tradition and my mother did not make it. I was in spired by stollen, the German fruit bread. I love the stuff, but being Italian I gave making panetonne a try I guess my concoction resembles a bit of both ” I can vouch for Ber t’s excellent adaptation, having receiv ing one as a gift. Owner/baker at MIX the Bakery, Rose Concepcion, says she prefers stollen, claiming, “I like the heavy fruit to bread ratio and the marzipan cen tre makes for a far more interesting bread ”

Methods for baking panettone sway from easy to advanced. As with many recipes, there can be any number of riffs on the base line, in this case flour, sugar, butter, eggs and yeast Blanched almonds and candied pineapple dot the Americanized recipe in the Joy of Cooking. A number of modern recipes jazz up the bread with chocolate or liqueur such as limon cello. A ridiculous online formula star ts with commer cial panetonne, dousing it with orange flavoured liqueur, cream, nuts and heaven knows what else And in From Biba’s Italian Kitchen (William Morrow Cook books, 1995), Biba Caggiano offers a fine, medium ef for t recipe, confining the fruit to dried citron and Madeira soaked sultanas

As I write this, Biba’s panettone (I took the liber ty of adding a few chopped dried apricots), thrice risen, puffs up in the oven, its golden dome peeking from the Melitta coffee tin Baking panetonne in empty cof fee tins turns out a fine dome Bundt or tube pans also work well

As for the sweet bread’s shelf life? From the look of things, I doubt it will be put to the test.

I

whether homemade or bought at your favourite Italian grocer.

A City’s Cinderella Story

Tacoma is slipping on the glass slipper and shrugging off its status as Seattle’s ugly stepsister with a revitalized museum district and some great dining. by Joseph Blake

For decades, Tacoma has been Seattle’s forgotten, ugly stepsister. Left to rot and har bouring a scary reputation for racial violence and drug wars, Tacoma began to rede velop its Historic District/Museum District in the 1990s. Shadows of the town’s brawling, first century waterfront are receding to reveal another urban Cinderella like Van couver’s Yaletown or the Pearl in Por tland but this one has a glass slipper

The stunning, Ar thur Erickson designed Museum of Glass is an international centre for contemporary ar t and the cultural cornerstone of Tacoma’s $150 million transformation along Thea Foss Waterway The museum’s centrepiece is the Hot Shop Amphitheater, where you can watch the museum’s crew and visiting ar tists create works of ar t from molten glass A state of the ar t audiovisual system and exper t commentary provide insight into the glassblowing process during theatre like demonstrations of the craft.

During our visit, the team produced dozens of silver seabirds for the large pools that edge the sprawling, outdoor plazas surrounding Erickson’s striking building. The 500 foot long Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian overpass linking the museum to downtown Tacoma, is a remarkable showcase for the work of famous Tacoma bred ar tist Dale Chihuly and a breath takingly beautiful entrance to the museum With sunlight pouring through the roof ’s scenes of underwater marine life, you feel as if you are floating over the bridge

A few feet away, the renovated Union Station, now a government building and also used for special events, is another showcase for displays of Chihuly’s glassblowing genius Across Pacific Avenue, rows of restored 19th century brick warehouses house a 46 acre campus for the University of Washington. Near the Chihuly Bridge of Glass is the Washington State His tory Museum, the first of the new buildings in Tacoma’s revitalization process and completed in 1996 by architects Charles Moore and Ar thur Andersson.

A free light rail train runs on an eight stop route from the Tacoma Dome to the city’s still emerging Theatre District One of its stops is at Pacific Avenue in front of Union Station, and we rode it south one stop to the Tacoma Ar t Museum and then south another stop for an el egant lunch at Pacific Grill We feasted on chef Aaron Valimont’s Pacifica Cocktail of Dunge ness crab, shrimp, clams and mussels with tomato gazpacho, lime, cilantro and Tabasco as well as another house specialty of crisp potato pancake with American sevruga caviar, crème fraîche and chives.

We had an even better meal at Indochine, an Asian fusion dining room near Union Station. Chef Ly Ngov’s generous Thai seafood salad offered lightly poached prawns, scallops, cala mari and clams marinated in lime, basil, cilantro and garlic ser ved on a bed of fresh garden greens We also enjoyed the Tangerine Shrimp with cucumber crème fraîche, Yin Yang Ahi and a toasted sesame chicken wrap A couple of glasses of Willamette Valley Pinot Gris matched a light and sensually spiced meal

Primo Grill is a neighbourhood favourite with furnishings playfully painted by Tacoma Com munity College students and a warm vibe that matches the Mediterranean menu I always search out Mexican food when I visit the States, and my Tacoma discovery was La Fodita, where very fresh ingredients reinvigorated the standard, Jalisco state inspired offerings. I

also visited JazzBones, a live music venue for local and visiting jazz and blues musicians with a special tapas menu on Thursday nights to accompany the offer of free Latin dance lessons. Por ter’s Place is a funky southern barbecue joint where the smoky, sweet meats literally fall off the bone of their ribs This is the real deal, and so is Southern Kitchen, a soul food place for catfish, cornbread and grits Live, local jazz is ser ved up here as well Wine lovers might want to check out Enoteca, a tiny room next to the Tacoma Wine Mer chants store near the Tacoma Dome (another stop on the free light rail) for Washington state wines, local ar tisan cheese and fresh chocolate treats. Beer drinkers must visit the Ram on the scenic waterfront. With seven local microbrews including Butterface Amber Ale on tap, a nine foot screen and 15 smaller television sets scattered around the room, try this bar on game day. Another cool brewpub is Engine House No. 9 (locals call it E9), a neighbourhood hang in a converted historic firehouse. The Spar, the site of Tacoma’s oldest saloon, is another joint with lots of waterfront ghosts and a seawor thy crowd

For the munchies, try Hello, Cupcake on the U W campus I recommend the Red Velvet frosted with cream cheese You’ll find lots of locally produced food products at the Thursday Farmer’s Market on Broadway in the Theatre District (9 a m to 2 p m , May October) and at the Tacoma Dome Market Tuesdays from 3 p m to 7 p m (June September) Taste of Tacoma is an annual culinary showcase at Point Defiance Park and this year is scheduled for June 27 29.

Our recent stay in downtown Tacoma was made much more comfortable and exciting by the amenities at Hotel Murano, a newly opened reincarnation of the former Tacoma Sheraton. Taking its name from the Venetian island where glass is famously made, the Murano’s lobby, atrium and hallways feature the work of 40 international glass ar tists The hotel’s modern, European elegance is also enhanced by blown glass bed lamps, multiple choice pillow menu, a spiritual menu (in addition to the King James and New American bibles, they’ll send up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, the Koran, the Book of Mormon or the Tao Te Ching), and an iPod in room por t or loaner iPod programmed with rock, jazz, reggae, blues or clas sical music. A shor t walk from the Museum District, the new Murano is a dreamy place to spend a couple of days discovering a transformed Tacoma. Joseph Blake

Hotel Murano, 1320 Broadway, 888 862 3255

Pacific Grill, 1502 Pacific Ave., 253 627 3535

Indochine, 1924 Pacific Ave , 253 272 8200

Primo Grill, 601 S. Pine St. #102, 253 383 7000

La Fodita, 2620 N Proctor St , 253 752 2878

JazzBones, 2803 6th Ave , 253 396 9169

Porter’s Place, 2615 E. N St., 253 383 7603

Southern Kitchen, 1716 6th Ave , 253 627 4282

Enoteca, 21 N. Tacoma Ave., 253 779 8258

The Ram, 3001 N Rustin Way, 253 756 7886

Engine House No 9, 609 N. Pine St., 253 383 7707

The Spar, 2221 N 30th St , 253 627 8215

Hello, Cupcake, 1740 Pacific Ave , 253

The Soul of Seattle

Pike Place Market is practically a city in itself and one that is deliciously devoted almost exclusively to food.

a dining room in the French countryside. Its signature appetizer is ooh la la foie gras steak, a por tion three times the size of the exiguous “toonie” you’d get for the same money in Toronto or Vancouver This baby explains why they call it “the cocaine of cui sine.” For foodies who feel there’s still hope for their souls, carpaccio of amberjack brings oh so delicate flesh lightly mari nated in nutty Moroccan Argan oil, a hit.

Scallops at Campagne

Nobody has to tell E AT readers the market is the soul of any city Now into its 101st year, Seattle’s Pike Place Market is one of the oldest and maybe wisest in the U.S. It’s Seattle’s num ber one tourist attraction. Washington State’s, too. And the arguable hub of Pacific Nor thwest foodiedom. Any Seattle visit star ts and probably ends right here.

Except for the street markets of Paris at Christmas and the country markets of southwest France, I’ll take Pike Place any time It’s almost all about food It hasn’t been hijacked by fast foodsters or corpora tions (although Starbucks and Seattle’s Best both star ted here). A governing non profit corporation keeps it honest. Eighty per cent of the market economy comes from food

I can’t think of another market that qual ifies as a city in itself Pike Place covers eight city blocks It has 23 buildings, 250 shops, 100 farmers, 250 craftspeople and 300 buskers It has its own hotel and bed and breakfast. It has 400 apar tments sub sidized for about 500 elderly and low income earners. Plus a medical clinic, food bank, senior centre, child care centre and preschool It should get its own flag Welcome to Ali Baba’s cave of food On our last visit, we came home with glowingly fresh Hawaiian swordfish and the biggest scallops we’ve ever seen from Pure Food, the oldest of the four fish markets; dark chocolate linguine yes, chocolate from Papardelle’s; chanterelles and Oregon truf fles from Sosio’s; hazelnut flour from Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards; and from Le Panier, baguette and croissants the way they turn ’em out in Paree

Along the way, we talked to a lot of un commonly cheerful people who knew what they were selling, where it came from, what it’s about and why we should buy it.

The Market has about 70 eating stops from take out to full scale restaurants, so you can practically live here. Campagne, lo cated in the cour tyard of the Inn at the Mar ket hotel, gives off the warm amber glow of

Chef Daisley Gordon, an American, fur ther proves his G allic credentials with ris de veau yes, sweetbreads, the grand gland in butter, shallots and capers And after wards, a crrrust, a crrrunch, a blast of crème and a hazelnut crème brulee to rival La Cirque’s Manhattan mar vel.

The hot newcomer on the Pike Place restaurant scene is the Steelhead Diner, a first restaurant for chef owner Kevin Davis and his wife, Terresa Beneficiaries of a smar t policy that permits only chef owners to open Market restaurants, they buy most supplies from Pike Place vendors and boast no ingredients from “south of Oregon or east of Idaho ”

You won’t find steelhead trout on the menu it’s what Chef likes to catch as a fly fisherman but who cares when you can star t with caviar pie? I’ve been lusting after this dish since I read about it 20 years ago Think mascarpone cream topped with a rainbow of American sturgeon, trout, salmon and golden whitefish eggs, sitting in a hail of onion, egg and capers chopped so fine you can easily ignore it. Health warn ing: Can produce delirium in the sensually unimpaired.

Originally from New Orleans, Kevin Davis cooks American with the current accents of the global village kitchen His table salt is deeply smoked with alderwood and his pepper zapped with habanero and lemon, both from World Spices on the Market’s lowest level Razor clam chowder gets the obligatory truffle oil drizzle. His crab cake brings a mittful of Dungeness crab that leaves its peers looking effete by compari son. He flash fries ling cod for fish and chips. The chips are “brought in.” Too bad: it’s all too good for mcfrites

Where to stay:

In the market: Inn at the Market, rooms from $225 to $625, www innatthemarket com;

Pensione Nichols Bed and Breakfast, double $120, www pensionenichols com Downtown Seatt e: Andra Hotel, rooms from $189, www hotelandra com

Where to eat: Campagne, 206 728 2800, www campagnerestaurant com; Steelhead Diner,206 625 0129, www steelheaddiner com

C T O R I A

Food can be ar t, though the reverse is rarely true. At Mela’s Tearoom, owners Elizabeth Levinson and Caroline Macey Brown most cer tainly had a vision blending food and ar t, for the tea tables are nestled inside the Winchester G allery on Humboldt St. Never be fore have I been a chai spill away from a $14,000 Warhol. Mela’s Tearoom expands on the sis ters’ existing Café Mela with an elegant lunch menu The fresh choices the day I went included a creamy pink and white quiche of smoked salmon and dill, ser ved with a mixed green salad, for a non socialite price of $9 95 Pomodori rapini continues the theme of pleasing colours a deep red tomato encases a velvety egg salad flecked with tarragon, mint, chives, and pars ley And Tuscan ham and cheddar croissant is simple and pure, which a high end dry ham and L’Ancêtre cheddar cheese from Quebec. Desser t is irresistible Chocolate Cake with Apricot Preser ves and Chocolate G anache Icing speaks for itself, and the Classic Vanilla Cupcake with Juliana Pink Icing is a must if your special guest is a little girl. The tea menu is just as carefully selected, with 14 teas in the categories of black, white, green oolong, and herbal. The Chai om Prakash is but one example a blend of Keemun and Assam teas scented with cardamom, cinnamon, fennel, and ginger And, for the record, I managed to not spill it on the Warhol

A far cry from the

barbeque sauce vibe

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up in a minute and to enjoy a really good Southern style

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Kansas, and Illinois. From those travels come the pulled pork, beef brisket, and smoked chicken sandwiches. The beef brisket was a high light for me; after being smoked for 17 hours, the sauce infused meat falls apar t in your mouth with a gentle swirl of spice The pulled pork and smoked chicken pull me down South too, with smoky flavours in the pork, and a great bal ance of mustard sauce and sweet crunchy pickle on the chicken Also wor th trying are the barbeque beans and corn bread for $1 50 each; I absolutely plan to go back and take out several orders of just those for dinner one day And of course you have to finish with some downhome pecan pie; these ones are made by a former Sooke Harbour House pastry chef, and that pedi gree shows in the touches of a buttery crust and a hint of bourbon.

flavours are the felicitous result of the owner’s in depth research and

A different high end restaurant connection brought me to The Broughton Street Deli; it is my wont to ask everyone I meet where they eat for under $12, and this time it was a ser ver at Camille’s who directed me here Soups figure largely at the Broughton Street Deli, with the butter nut squash soup regularly selling out by 12:30 That’s no surprise, as it is sweet, sensual, and inflected with orange flavor Vegetable chowder is robust and rich to the point of feeling, well, meaty And the split green pea soup is a light, fresh puree with pieces of ham dissolving in it The sandwiches come quickly, and are simple, good, and cheap at $4 95 The bread is made fresh in the morning at Irene’s Bakery, and the fillings include a light and flavourful chicken salad with dried cranberries ser ved with a layer of sprouts and slivers of avocado Another tasty choice is “Veggie Delight,” with shavings of white cheddar, avocado, cucumbers, and red pepper, and strategically not including tomato so the fillings don’t slide out. Don’t leave without a peanut butter cookie. At the owner’s urging, I took one to be polite because I don’t normally like them. Well…now I do. These ones are creamy and moist, not powdery as I feared. Finally, the budget conscious definitely want to take note of this tip: on days of the full moon, coffee is free until 11 am. And that coffee is all fair trade, so there’s no excuse not to try it out!

Mela’s Tearoom, 792 Humboldt, between Blanshard and Douglas, 250 382 8528 PIG, 749 View Street, between Blanshard and Douglas, near the View St Parkade, 250 381 4677 Broughton St Deli, 648 Broughton St, between Douglas and Broad St, 250 380 9988

elegant atmosphere

Mela’s Tearoom is the put yer elbows on the table and honey yer droolin

of PIG on View Street.

therein lies its charm. This

place to go to get your meal ser ved

sandwich for

bucks. The authentic Southern barbeque

taste testing in Tennessee,

Elizabeth Smyth

Elizabeth Levinson and Caroline Macey-Brown

The recent discovery of Pizzeria Prima Strada in the Cook Street Village brought back some fond memories My mother grew up in Montreal in a neighbourhood that included many first generation Italian families They shared their homes, their food and their culture with anyone with an appetite She would make pizza the way the Montreal Italian families used to make it by preparing dough using a century old recipe, adding leftover tomato sauce from spaghetti marinara, baking in one very, hot, wood fired oven (500˚F). Result a simple Napoli pizza!

Born and raised in the San Francisco bay area, Kristen Dallas met up with her future husband, Geoffrey, in the early ’90s while he worked in software development. When Geoffrey and Kristen arrived in Victoria to raise their children, their first discovery was the lack of traditional Italian pizza Their mutual passion for regional culture and food would eventually coalesce, and the Prima Strada concept was born Their desire for an authentic pizza experience inspired them to do advanced research at home They dis covered three key things to great pizza: a really hot oven, a naturally leavened star ter in the dough and minimal toppings

The Prima Strada pizza is baked in a wood fired oven at 600˚F. The pies go in one or two at a time and come out in under three minutes. From the pizzaiolo (internationally cer tified pizza chef ) to the professionally trained barista, Prima Strada does not miss one detail in delivering a delicious product.

On our first visit to Prima Strada, we tried the Salsiccia Piccanta: fennel sausage, tomato, mozzarella and roasted bell pepper The quality of this pizza experience rests within the simplicity of the toppings a quar tet of locally sourced ingredients that de liver clean flavours without the distraction of a chewy or thick crust

On subsequent visits we ordered the Funghi pizza, little more than mushrooms, roasted onions, thyme and a remarkable mozzarella We star ted with the salad spe cial greens, marinated cherry tomatoes and mozzarella. Paired with a local beer, a Pil sner from the Vancouver Island brewery, Prima Strada pizza is not only a feast for the palate; the space itself ser ves up a constantly changing visual ballet. Sightlines afford a clear view of the traditional oven and the pizzaiolo as they prepare, bake and deliver their hot product to eager patrons We closed our evening with espresso and a single scoop of gelato Memories are made of this! Colin Newell

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Jon Pulker (Primo Pizzaiolo)

Crafted Brew

Something fresh and hoppy has just washed up on Victoria’s coastline.

On the crest of the culinary “fresh and local is best” wave, Driftwood Brewer y breaks on Victoria’s thirsty shores. The microbrewery, comprised of Jason Meyer, CEO, Kevin Hearsum, president, and G ary Lindsay, director of sales and mar keting (titles offered up with broad grins, from this company of three) is dedicated to complementing the Island’s present beer of ferings with less explored styles, and at times, more challenging varieties.

Meyer, who spearheaded the brewery and writes the recipes, is an extreme foodie, making his own sausage, cured meats, cheese and roasting his own coffee He is most passionate about “fur thering craft brewed beer as a legitimate par t of gastron omy on the Island ”

Integral to the ethos of Driftwood Brewery is the core belief that fresh beer is superior. With this in mind, the beer will be sold only on the Island, on draught or in bombers (650 mL bottles) at cer tain private liquor stores “Travel and temperature changes can compromise characteristics in a beer. Also, we want to be able to provide exceptional customer ser vice in person,” explains Hear sum

But back to the beer. The flagships are White Bark Wheat Ale, Driftwood Ale and Farmhand Ale They will also produce sea sonals, such as spiced winter ales, imperial stouts and barleywines White Bark Ale is a Belgian style Wit with subtle malt, coriander and Curaçao orange peel. It would be de scribed as the lightest of the three beers and pairs well with bitter greens, radishes, acidic fruit (apples, pears), white fish and Chinese food Farmhand Ale is a Belgian style Saison, originally brewed for the seasonal workers (thus “saison”), and is composed of tar t malt, fruit, spice and a unique yeast This ale

by Gillie Easdon

marries well with sweeter, washed rind cheeses such as Gouda and Trappist, nuts (filber ts, pecans), heavier rye breads, gamey meats, steak and pizza.

And finally, we have Driftwood Ale This is the all round accessible tasty beer It is made from a blend of German and Nor thwest hops with cotton candy and fruit notes Driftwood Ale is perfect with anything on the barbecue, a pulled pork sandwich, soup, fried chicken, a book, a picnic add to the list as you see fit

Lindsay, an exper t in the industry for over a decade, confides, “ The industry is widely excited It has been great to see the mar ket grow, not just in volume but also in ap preciation of craft brewed beer in Victoria ”

Unlike the major label beer drinker, craft beer drinkers, recognized by their basketful of myriad bottles, are not known for their loy alty They tend to be quite adventuresome and enjoy sampling a selection of beers.

In solidarity with Driftwood’s mission to deepen the appreciation and understanding of beer, the brewery will be hosting a series of free seminars covering various topics such as beer and food pairing, Belgian beer and the history of beer. Meyer, a brewer and cer tified beer judge, will be leading these ses sions

One of the most remarkable and unfore seeable elements of building the Driftwood Brewery was the reaction of the beer com munity, “Other local breweries are really sup por tive and excited They’re all beer geeks just like we are,” laughs Meyer When you are out for a bevvie, look for the Driftwood tap handle; you’ll know it when you see it After a pint or so, may you, too, appreciate Driftwood Brewery’s slogan, “We Live Great Beer ”

R e b e c c a W e l l m a n

Jason Meyer, Gar y Lindsay, Kevin Hearsum

The Black Stilt

B e i n g t r ue - bl ue a bo ut

Dave Crothall, manager and the owner of the Black Stilt cafés of Victoria, is not satisfied with mere labels “I’m going to Costa Rica with two or three staff,” he tells EAT, “to visit cer tified organic and non cer tified organic farms to see the differences my self ” Already ser ving fair trade, cer tified organic beans from the family owned Oughtred roastery in Delta, B.C., Crothall wants to dig deeper into the world of cultivating the coffea plant, meet the labourers and obser ve the bean as it travels through its early stages

The Black Stilt is also taking its envi ronmental promises to a deeper level In an age when consumers must be wary of businesses’ green washing ploys, Crothall and his staff have made a genuine pledge to reduce waste and their carbon foot print. Compostable to go cups, coffee lids and other disposables, plus a strict recy cling program, diver t 90 percent of the Black Stilt’s refuse from the landfill And

what does that look like? Crothall explains: “At the new location, we’re producing only two bags of garbage a week, which is pretty awesome for a place that sees hundreds of customers coming through its doors.”

Snug on the corner of For t and Richmond, the new Black Stilt café opened in early fall and Crothrall is pa tiently obser ving the culture of this par ticular milieu for cues “I move pretty slowly, which I think can drive my staff crazy,” Crothall admits. “But every neighbourhood is different and I’m trying to gauge what this new neighbour hood wants.”

Being a par t of the lives of the people of the neighbourhood is impor tant to Crothall In the original Hillside location, the Black Stilt suppor ts the Oaklands Community Centre in a number of ways, including a wall to wall homage to chil dren’s ar t created at an after school ar t class at the centre. “Some of it was really quite impressive,” says Crothall. Since then, several local photographers have coloured the walls of the Black Stilt, while Victoria poets and musicians use the floor as their soapbox

Whether you come for a fine cup of the black stuff, the free Wi Fi, or the ethics, the Black Stilt is a well rounded player. And at a time when buzzwords like “fair trade,” “organic ” and “community” are being tossed around liberally by busi nesses who want to please, the Black Stilt is trying to go deeper than labels and far ther than the reaches of its cafés

Katie Zdybel

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Italian 2.0

By Andrew Morrison

Three new restaurants ignite Vancouver’s inner Italy.

ond was Cibo (Italian for “food”) on the lobby floor of a new boutique hotel downtown called The Moda (900 Seymour, 604 683 4251, modahotel.ca). And the third will be Campagnolo (Italian for “country bumpkin”), currently under construction on the gritty stretch of Main Street next to the Ivanhoe Hotel (1022 Main) If the three projects have anything in common save for a shared affection for Italian food, it’s that they’re all owned and cheffed by young, non Italians A trend, perhaps, but a welcome one (rather than ask where all the Italians have gone, I’m beginning to suspect they were never here).

Chefs Lucais Syme and Adam Pegg were well versed in the myriad Italian cuisines before they opened La Quercia this past July. I first met Syme when he worked the line at the homely but impres sive Adesso Bistro in Kitsilano (now sadly a college kid hangout called Kar v) It was here that he and Pegg first met and worked together, and where the seeds for their project were first sown

Ayear ago I wrote a feature in these pages that wondered why Vancouver had al ways had trouble fielding and suppor ting great Italian restaurants There are cer tainly several that have excelled (Il Giardino, Cioppino’s and more), but many more have withered away or failed dramatically. The story considered several things. First, that unlike Toronto (which has always had a robust Italian dining scene), we’ve never had a large enough base population of Italians living in Vancouver to allow for authentic Italian to flourish. Second, that the very notion of an authentic, homogeneous Italian cuisine is tricky when you consider how many provinces and distinct cooking styles the country boasts And third, that “mangiacake” fare (alla Chef Boyardee) and ambiance (“O Sole Mio”) were too well established as the benchmark for anything resembling “real” to make much in way of inroads Modern Italian in Vancouver? Fuggedaboudit

The story also mentioned how Italian Kitchen on Alberni (and now also its little cousin Trattoria Italian Kitchen on West 4th) demonstrated that the design elements usually as sociated with Italian restaurants had died. I K is hyper modern in appearance, really one of the most fashion forward and vibrant rooms in recent memory. I’ve since complained about the food (finding it inconsistent and wholly secondary in scope to the restaurant’s “see and be seen” scene), but I still consider it a spark, albeit a wet one, that has led to a sea change in how this city views the Italian genre Gone were the straw covered Chianti bottles and the Lady and the Tramp vibes It was Milan, circa now, with the only clues to the food concept revealed on a menu that steered corporate nabobs and plastic surgery refugees towards dining family style through a range of sharable platters Though it could have been tastier, it was cer tainly amusing to watch

Since then, two of the best restaurants to open in Vancouver have been Italian, and there is a third probable winner on the way. The first was La Quercia (Italian for “the oak tree”), found where West 4th and Alma meet (3689 W. 4th, 604 676 1007, laquercia.ca). The sec

When Adesso closed in 2005, Syme (who had also staged at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago) moved on to Cioppino’s before landing at Parkside under cele brated chef Andrey Durbach. When Durbach opened the Italian themed La Buca in early 2007, Syme joined the brigade, fur ther padding his resume and reper toire For his par t, Pegg worked at Victoria’s Herald Street Caffe and Il Terrazzo before settling in Italy to stage in Piedmont, Abruzzo and Trentino Be fore returning to Canada, he became the first Cana dian to complete the Master of Italian Cooking course at the Higher Institute of G astronomy in Jesi, just inland from Ancona on the Adriatic coast.

The pair were reunited on the line after Pegg signed on at La Buca, and it was here that they began to move quickly towards independence Rarely does one find an equal par t nership in the kitchen with a pair of chefs tag teaming tasks, bouncing ideas off each other and quality checking every plate that goes out Yet this is their system, and they seem to have it dialled to a science As Mar tha Stewar t would say, it’s a good thing

Like La Buca, La Quercia’s location is recessed deep in a residential neighbourhood, well off the restaurant scene radar It’s also tiny, with a mere 32 seats in a woody space spor t ing bamboo floors and oak accents throughout. For the floor, Pegg’s wife, Karin Lazzaris, im por ted silverware and linens from her family’s hotel in the Italian Dolomites (wooden spoons handcrafted by her father are now used for stirring risottos). The chefs have a kitchen window through which they can take stock of how diners are coming along, while a two seat mini bar affords diners the chance to stare back into the kitchen No matter where you sit, the full effect is very warming Off white walls hung with mirrors are softly lit, and whatever soundtrack there is gets drowned out by the cacophony of noise that comes with a full house, night after night

The menu, according to Pegg just prior to opening, would be “reflective of the simplicity and classic combinations of Italian cooking ” And so it is Their food is maturely wrought and totally without extraneous whimsy, staying true to Pegg’s warning that there would be “no foam this or scented that.” That isn’t to say the many dishes I’ve tried were unexciting. Far from it. Their sous vide vitello tonnato, for example, a staple dish of thin veal lathered in a creamy, tuna flavoured sauce, was better than any I’ve ever had, the meat dissolving beautifully on the molars with the acidic accelerants of capers and lemon juice Pastas like their agnolotti di Guido (stuffed with veal, ricotta, Swiss chard) and their hear ty take on Bolognese ragu shine sharply with bold flavours that don’t overwhelm or ever get tired

Cibo, Campagnolo | plus… the best ever poutine, a cranberry bog & and an all Canadian

Karin Lazzaris, Lucais Syme & Adam Pegg at La Quercia

Main courses like tagliata di manzo a well rested flat iron steak grilled rare, sea soned, sliced and topped with fresh arugula, pine nuts, parmesan shavings and olive oil are ar tfully laid out and don’t break the bank (large dishes range from $18 to $25) It’s a very small menu of 11 plates, but the special board is constantly updated to reveal their deep bench. It is food that triggers dormant strands of Vancouver brain tissue long paralyzed by years of bad pizzas and overcooked noodles. “We are not re inventing the wheel,” Pegg advised at the outset, “but rather making it perfect.” Think refined rusticity. Think Peter Zambri meets Mario Batali but cleanly shaven and in a tailored English suit Think perfect

Cibo is as similar to La Quercia as it is different: sexy, modern and bereft of any de sign clues as to what awaits on the plate; you wouldn’t think it was an Italian restau rant if you walked by Anchored by old cedar pillars and original 1908 terracotta floors, the room is dominated by two large por traits of expressionless African women, their six foot faces boldly rendered on canvases that gleam brightly with lime greens, pig pinks and lemon yellows. Banquettes upholstered in sable leather and grey plush ac company rigid, black topped tables and candy striped chairs. A white marble fire place flanks a glassed in tower of wine, and the glow of the light fixtures is held within by partially frosted picture windows that look out onto bustling Seymour (the one way traffic zips by, incessant red tail lights providing a perennial sense of movement) The soundtrack, which morphs between Euro pop and synth, is far removed from what I’d expect in an Italian restaurant, but I couldn’t help but find it refreshing It’s a very calm space that stops just shor t of being boring As a consequence of having the ser vice station out of sight, one never sees the casually kitted staff loitering, and since the bar is located on the other side of the building, it appears at once sedate and serene, re gardless of how busy it may be.

Like the two Italian Kitchens, only when the menu arrives does its “Italian ness” become clear. Since opening in July, Cibo has wowed local foodies with its simply ex

Sahara Tamarin, Neil Taylor, Sebastien LeGoff at Cibo

pressed fare. Few dishes have more than two or three dominant flavours, each one re vealing by way of exquisite harmony the chef ’s intuitive sense for what traditions can be improved upon. The beef carpaccio, for example, wasn’t the machine sliced, wax paper thin jobs that get pre prepped, shrink wrapped and stacked in the fridge prior to ser vice. The Cibo version sees beef tenderloin hand carved to order, all gussied with farm fresh wa tercress and sprinkled conser vatively with sea salt and pepperoncino Pasta dishes bor der on the sublime I was awed by the subtle fennel and oregano twang of the Sloping Hill’s pork stuffed agnolotti, so gently flavoured with drips of aged balsamic and a con ser vative grate of parmesan A light touch permeates everything

E xecutive chef Neil Taylor, who arrived in Vancouver from the U K just a little over a month before Cibo debuted, had the milieu already figured out. He came from London’s famed River Cafe, an Italian themed icon based on the same local, seasonal and organic principles that have come to define Vancouver’s emergence as an internationally recog nized food city (it was also home to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, but that’s neither here nor there) Taylor quickly made the rounds of our markets and met the suppliers who’ve kept the high end restaurant engines roaring, took a tour of some of our better restaurants, and got to work crafting a dinner menu that didn’t lean on what’s familiar to mangiacake palates (no “red sauce” drenched spaghetti and meatballs here) His kitchen also func tions without the aid of a large commercial freezer, forcing him to keep his menu fresh and on its toes. After its first week, the menu began to mutate to reflect what was show ing best at our markets. Two months later, I’m thrilled that I can no longer recognize it. Campagnolo is not yet finished, but it holds plenty of promise. Located in the old Adega spot on the grungy stretch of Main that connects to the Georgia Viaduct, it’s the last place I would expect Tom Doughty, Robert Belcham and Tim Pittman to open their second restau rant The first, West 4th’s popular Fuel, was widely acknowledged as the top new eatery to open in 2007 “ The location poses a challenge for us in terms of its current neighbour hood,” Doughty says, “but we would sure feel great to be considered a sor t of restaurant pioneer for the area ” Why not? It’s entirely possible Wild Rice and Chambar were cer tainly huge risks when they opened in the Crosstown neighbourhood, as were Salt Tast ing Room and Boneta in G astown. In the end, it comes down to strength of concept and an unyielding dedication to quality, both of which the Fuel fellows have in spades. We know the Fuel fellows are dedicated to quality and that local sourcing of ingredients is a top priority, but what of the concept? What’s fascinating about their new Italian ven ture is not so much which regions they chose to focus on but rather the manner in which the choosing was done Campagnolo’s chef de cuisine Alvin Pillay was a kitchen asset at Fuel, an employee that Belcham and Doughty identified as a genuine talent and someone they did not want to lose So when Pillay thought it was time to move on and give notice that he wanted to work and travel through Europe to learn more, Doughty and Belcham gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse “What do you think about going to Italy for us?” In a surprising move, they bankrolled Pillay’s six month culinary safari to go in search of a place where the available proteins best mirrored those of B.C. Pillay star ted in the south at Naples before heading nor th, eventually repor ting back that the Piedmont and Emilia Romagna regions had the “right stuff.” Lamb, beef and chicken dishes abounded, but pork dishes accounted for most of the region’s specialties This dovetailed nicely with

Belcham’s near obsession with swine There is a saying in the city of Parma, Emilia Ro magna’s capital: “ The pig is like Verdi’s music, there’s nothing to throw away ” Belcham, who famously prepared a special “Whole Hog Dinner” in 2007 that included housemade charcuterie, braised crown bacon, stuffed pig’s ear, crispy sweetbreads and roasted sad dle, was sold

Campagnolo, which should open very shor tly after this goes to print (they’re aiming for November 1) will offer a 65 seat open concept dining room buttressed by old growth fir beams, as well as a 25 seat wine bar tucked in the back. Doughty, a past Sommelier of the Year and winemaker in his own right (Montagu Cellars), is busily working on a wine list that will feature many Italian and B C labels built to pair with Belcham’s menu of salumi, piz zas, pastas, risottos and seasonally inspired main courses “Rob, Tim and I simply love Ital ian food, Italian style and Italian zest for life,” Doughty says “We also feel that everyone, somewhere inside them, loves Italian food as well ”

We most cer tainly do

La Quercia | 3689 West 4th just off of Alma | www.laquercia.ca | 604.676.1007

Cibo | 900 Seymour Street | www.modahotel.ca | 604.602.9570

Campagnolo | 1022 Main Street

Tim Pittman, Tom Doughty, Alvin Pillay (chef de cuisine) & Rob Belcham at Campagnolo

T r a c e y K u s i e w i c z

What’s in Season

Salsify, a long skinny brown root, is nick named the “vegetable oyster” because of its oyster like flavour. Salsify is available from September to February Black salsify is avail able in winter. Use salsify in soups or as a cooked vegetable.

Winter is the peak period for the sweetest parsnips These roots are an essential ingre dient for chicken soup. They can be roasted, sautéed in stir fries, or boiled and eaten like mashed potatoes In Saanich, Firbank, Mar, Michell Brothers, Oldfield Orchard and Sluggett farms grow parsnips

Large, round, golden Walla Walla onions are one of my favourite types of sweet onions. These sweet, juicy onions are 90% water, so store them in a cool, ventilated area

B C produces about 15,000 pheasants annu ally for food consumption, primarily in the Fraser Valley

Numerous local farms grow winter squash, carrots and potatoes. Winter squash have thick hard rinds and firm flesh Enjoy a cornu copia of winter squash varieties including acorn, buttercup, butternut, spaghetti and Hubbard simmered, baked or steamed

Did you know that rich, creamy Yukon Gold po tatoes were the first Canadian bred potatoes

RECIPE

to be marketed and promoted by name? A re search team at the University of Guelph, led by potato breeder Dr. G ary Johnston and spon sored by Agriculture and Agri food Canada, spent years experimenting with potatoes and finally achieved success by crossbreeding a Nor th American white potato (Norgleam) with a wild South American yellow fleshed variety The result was the delicious, golden Yukon Gold potato, which received licensing in 1980

Sweet potatoes are a traditional treat for Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. The or ange or yellow fleshed tubers are often con fused with yams, which belong to an unrelated plant species. You can bake them, roast them, boil and mash them, candy them with brown sugar to make them even sweeter, or bake them into a sweet potato pie.

Sooke Chicken Farm at 6606 Helgesen Road, Sooke, sells chicken stock made from their farm raised chickens. Contact sookechicken@shaw.ca.

Venturi-Schulze Vineyards in Cobble Hill op erates a vinegary that produces barrel aged Balsamic vinegar. Other local vinegar produc ers include Sea Cider Farm and Cider y in Saanich and Valhalla Farm in Cobble Hill Spinnaker’s Brew Pub also produces their own line of malt vinegars

Pheasant Stew with Cranberry Compote

Castro Boateng, the E xecutive Chef of The Aerie, lets this stew simmer at home for hours while he is at the restaurant, so he can enjoy a hot, hear ty meal when he gets home from work. Ser ves: 4 4 pheasant legs, back attached

1 Walla Walla onion (Cobble Hill Organic)

1 Yukon Gold potato, medium size 1 parsnip

1 carrot (Cobble Hill Organic)

1 salsify

1 small winter squash (Cobble Hill Organic)

1 small sweet potato

1cup chicken stock

1/4 cup red wine

Salt, black pepper and fresh thyme sprigs, to taste

Canola oil

Cut vegetables into a medium sized dice Split each pheasant leg into two pieces through the joint. Pre heat a large pot with approximately 2 tablespoons of canola oil over medium high heat. Sea son pheasant legs with salt and pepper

and place them in the pot Sear legs until they are golden brown on all sides. Re move the legs. Add diced onions, pota toes, carrots, salsify and parsnips. When vegetables start to colour, add tomatoes, red wine, chicken stock and fresh thyme sprigs Bring to a boil Pour all ingredi ents into a slow cooker Cover and stew for approximately 1 hour Add diced squash and sweet potatoes. Continue cooking on low heat for 2 hours or until tender. Divide into bowls. Ser ve with a crusty baguette and cranberry compote.

* Use canned plum tomatoes if desired

Cranberry Compote

250 gr organic dried cranberries

1/4 cup por t

1 tbsp sugar

Splash of red wine vinegar

In a medium saucepot, bring por t, sugar and vinegar to a boil. Add dried cranber ries and reduce heat to a slow simmer. Once the liquid is reduced and the mix ture is a syrupy consistency, remove from heat and cool Spoon over pheasant stew.

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The Quest: Une Bonne Poutine

If Americans have apple pie, we Canadians have poutine. I can’t think of any food that is as emblematic of this country Originat ing in Quebec towards the end of the 1950s (the exact details of its genesis are the stuff of urban myth), it has become ubiqui tous, appearing on menus from coast to coast in restaurants that range from fast food chains like McDonald’s and KFC to high end joints like Vancouver’s Feenie’s and Toronto’s Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar. Though there are many versions, most don’t stray far from the fries, cheese curds and gravy triumvirate. For this issue’s quest, I went in search of delicious rather than price point or fealty to the original

The first was at Fritz European Fr y House downtown The place is Vancouver’s mecca of french fries, with toppings that range from the commonplace (zesty ketchup) to the truly surreal (In donesian peanut sauce). I had their regular poutine (to which one can add myriad extras), which turned out to be a pretty fair approximation of the types I’ve wolfed in front of the “cantines” and “casse croûtes” of Montreal Gut lining and salty, the fries at the bottom of my cup soon turned to brownish, gooey mush That’s OK for a snack after the bars close (they’re open to 3 a m and therefore a nightly magnet for drunks) and typical for a stan dard poutine, but it left me wanting something different

A Morrison

The second was at West Vancouver’s Ocean Club (#105 100 Park Royal W , 604 926 2326, theoceanclub ca), where their $10 take saw bright and thinnish yam fries garnished with caramelized onions, smothered in white cheddar and mounted with truffled shor t rib meat It was an overwhelmingly large por tion and I suspect not all that good for me, but it was more com for table than my bed and a sight tastier than the standard. The third was at Crave, where they do poutine in a similar style (3941 Main St, 604 872 3663, craveonmain.ca). They use more shor t rib jus, however, switch up the yams for potatoes, add truffled parmesan cheese, and sidesaddle some foie gras mayonnaise It’s pricey at $11, but chances are it’ll keep you full for the rest of the evening For my money, however, The Ocean Club had more power on the palate

Finally, it was Chambar’s turn, and I must confess it has long been a favourite (562 Beatty St., 604 879 7119, chambar.com). None of the others can really hold a candle to chef Nico Schuermans’ poutine à la Belge in the originality sweeps The french fries are perfectly good, the pink peppercorns are more of a textural footnote than a dominant ingredient, and the blue cheese and red wine demi gel exceptionally well If I have any complaint, it’s that the por tion is too small for $9 It might be unor thodox and an acquired taste, but I’ve acquired it.

Nico Schuermans of Chambar with his Belgian-style poutine .

The traditional fries, curds and gravy combo is all ver y well, but the French-Canadian snack can atain more lofty heights. Three that do.

More Cheese Please

and make it Canadian.

Neatly decked out in checked shir t and blue jeans, Peter Davidson star ts me out on an intensely blue veined cheese, meltingly creamy, salt and sea tangy, with a touch of grassiness I swoon The cheese is G aie Bleu from New Brunswick. David son is owner/operator of Mount Pleasant Cheese, open since May. The locals’ reaction has been “rapturous,” says Davidson The all Canadian fro magerie adds another happy food note (Capers, Pied à Terre, Figmint in the Plaza 500) to the revitalized Cambie Corridor, which had succumbed to busi ness busting construction of the Canada Line transit route.

Among the cheeses behind the gleaming counter are crumbly acidic Gor ts Gouda from Salmon Arm and Cen dré de Prés from Quebec, an ear thy, or ganic, oozy brie lined with ash I was thrilled also to find peppercorn crusted Pepata Fresco and Taleggio like Par adiso from Monfor te Dairy, which I have visited, in Ontario’s Mennonite country.

There’s space enough for the junior set to taste cheeses (and crayon) at mini sized table and chairs. For the older crowd, the Cheese Education Pro gram holds cheese seminars on par with fine wine seminars (Bonus! At this writing they were free ) Those of drink ing age can sip/savour wine and cheese at tastings in conjunction with Firefly Fine Wines and Ales. Discounts are of fered to those who subscribe to Mount Pleasant’s newsletter. by Julie Pegg

Cranberries? On Vancouver Island? Who knew? Ever yone but me it would seem. I am crazy for cranberries. I use them in countless recipes all year long and slosh the juice down like a pirate with a keg of rum However, I peak in December I stick the little red rubies in just about ever ything I concoct for holi day eating Yellow Point Cranberr y Farm, located just nor th of Ladysmith [www yellowpointcranberries com, 4532 Yellow Point Road, Ladysmith, Tel: 250 245 5283] is home to all things tar t and tasty The farm, owned by Grant and Justine Keefer, is over 43 acres with 15 acres dedicated to cranberries. Cranberries are a Nor th American thing First Nations peoples, who used the berries for food and as a dye, introduced them to New World settlers in the 17th centur y Recognized as a source for vitamin C, sailors carried them on shipboard to prevent scur vy. W ild cranberries are closely related to blueberries. The plumper cultured varieties grow on low, broadleaf evergreen vines and need a cooler climate within which to prosper The vines are cultivated in beds called marshes or bogs The bogs are lef t dr y until har vest, whereupon they are collected two ways In late September, there is a “dr y ” har vest. Fresh cranberries are firm, not squishy, and will bounce if dropped. These are the berries sold in bags at the supermarket or farmers’ markets or used in condiments The second har vest in late October is done by flooding the bog Cranberries float, as such, they rise to the sur face making the har vesting somewhat easier, albeit you are up to your chest in waders, slogging about in a cold bog. The “wet” berries are used 100% for juice. Yellow Point Cranberries are jewel like spheres of mouth puckering goodness Cranberr y Cottage Kitchen, located on the farm, sells over 20 va rieties of cranberr y confections including sauces, vinegars, salsas and chutneys As cranberries are also an indispensa ble par t of any festive meal, if you visit the farm, you may also buy bags of fresh cranberries and cook up your own vaccinium oxycoccos recipes to go along with your roast tr yptophan So pucker up The holidays are almost here and now you know where to buy the best cranberries possible! Su Grimmer

Mount Pleasant Cheese, 3432 Cambie St (beside the Park Theatre opposite Pied à Terre), Vancouver, 604 875 6363 Hours of operation: 10 a m 7 p m

Mt. Pleasant Cheese’s Peter Davidson

The Next Great Chef

By Tara Lee

Minichiello says. He continues, “ There are a lot of people who de bate that this [program] is too shor t but I beg to differ. I think any thing else would be too long Students need to get into the industry ”

Minichiello exudes an unwavering intensity that he seeks to fos ter in the students who are willing to pay the $7,000 to 8,000 tu ition As the admissions officer, he inter views all applicants, accepting students who are mature, conscientious, bright, and “real.” Dreams of grandeur dissipate as instructors hammer in the necessity of perseverance, coupled with a positive attitude.

These traits will come in handy as students undergo constant eval uation in both their theoretical and practical skills. The last four days of school the culmination of their studies are devoted to cook ing for industry professionals who stringently judge their perform ance Students emerge firmly grounded in the knowledge that they have taken a first step in their nascent culinary career “I do not pro duce chefs When you graduate from here, you are nowhere close to a chef [Students] realize that being a chef means more than any school can offer so let’s concentrate on being a good cook,” Minichiello says.

Good cooks are also continually emerging from another private school, located at the foot of the bustling entrance to Granville Is land The Pacific Institute of Culinar y Ar ts (PIC A) has the boutique feel of a 100 student school and the confidence of over a decade’s wor th of instruction Julian Bond, E xecutive Chef and Program Director, gives a tour of the compact, yet extensive facilities that he has been teaching in since the summer of 2007 He left Dubrulle to return to the industry but serendipitously found his way back to teaching after the end of his tenure at as the corporate chef of the Cactus Club chain. “Cooking school is not where chefs go to retire,” he insists. There is a vibrant gleam in his eye and a note of pride in his voice as he explains how it all works “It’s a simple little school, but I like it!” he says

Students pay about $13,000 for six months of full time, hands on education Classrooms are intimate, with only 15 students for each culinary ar ts stream, and 12 for the baking and pastry ar ts ones It’s one hour of lecture time at the star t of the day, and then six hours of concentrated hands on work on the fundamentals. After three months of toiling diligently under one chef instructor, students move onto producing for the catering and bakeshop divisions or working in the on site restaurant. During a recent visit, students were rolling truffles in the chocolate room, doing mise en place in the restaurant kitchen, and assembling elaborate wedding cakes for catering or ders

Pass through the doors of Nor thwest Culinar y Academy on Main Street, and you’ll find the next great cooks. In a large teaching kitchen, students work in teams, bent over cutting boards as they painstakingly practice knife cuts. Instructors circulate around the room, encouraging everyone to feel the rhythm of the blade as they julienne carrots into thin, precise matchsticks. Next door, the pastry students are washing mixing bowls as the aroma of freshly baked French apple tar ts wafts in the air. The passionate energy in the school is palpable, highly infectious, and indicative of the high intensity of today’s culinary education.

Chefs Tony Minichiello and Christophe Kwiatkowsky opened Nor thwest in 2004 after working for four years at Dubrulle (now The International Culinary School at the Ar t Institute of Vancouver) They saw that changes were com ing and decided to abandon ship in favour of their own academy “It’s equivalent to a chef working for a chain and then deciding he’d rather have his own kitchen It’s the freedom to do my menu in a way that I think would work best for my customer base,” Minichiello explains Minichiello realized that his teaching “menu” would have to change in order to suit a new student profile. These candidates were older, had been around the block professionally, and were ready to commit to a cooking career and pronto.

Ray McManus is one such student. Taking a breather from his vegetable stock, he recounts how he left behind his twenty five years of PR experience and his prestigious executive position for the lowly rewards of the kitchen “ To leave my career was a big decision but I look forward to coming every day,” he says, beaming with contentment

At another work station, Ben Zhang is full of zest for his new career after wearying of his job as a fashion designer in Montreal He wanted something fresh and different that really mattered to him “I feel like I have more passion for food,” he insists

The realities of career change mean that these students are hungry for teaching that pushes them harder and faster, no holds barred. The result is a fifteen week full time course that rapidly equips students with the skills that they need to sur vive in the industry. Hygiene and safety, dry heat cooking methods, food costing, charcuterie it’s all there, just done at an accelerated rate. “We created a curriculum that doesn’t have the fillers, that doesn’t lie,”

The whole operation may be streamlined and efficient but it still has the feel of a trusting community: there are no locks on coolers

Pacific Institute of Culinar y Ar ts executive chef & program director Julian Bond with student Tara Kim

Steve Yzerman,

a student at Nor thwest Culinar y Academy, hones his knive skills.

and students leave their belongings out in the open. Much of the success of this commu nity can be attributed to founder and president Sue Singer who opened the school after re ceiving valuable feedback from the industry. “I thought there was a need in Canada par ticularly. I felt that there was a better way to build a mousetrap,” she explains.

Since opening, she has kept the school well connected to the industry. PICA was a found ing par tner of Ocean Wise, has regular prominent guest chefs (eg Claire Clarke, Pastry Chef from The French Laundry), and takes students on field trips to suppliers like Albion Fisheries “You can’t just put blinders on here and teach your foundations and then open your doors and say, ‘Here you go,’” she says

Despite all the school’s offerings, Singer still has prospective students coming to her confused about the differences in program lengths between schools. She responds: “I think you need to assess the number of hours. Otherwise, you’re going to lose the essence of the training. I think that’s the honest way to do it. Ours is six months, seven to eight hours a day. It’s 875 hours of training.” Bond adds that it is all about intense contact hours that are nur turing without “sugar coating it.”

Although Singer is pleased with the school’s high quality education, she does have qualms with the government’s treatment of her international students “I think that as a province, we could cer tainly recognize what international students do, and that they are very valuable They should be able to exercise the right of working upon graduation which is only available to the public system and not private ” She adds that, local or international, PIC A students have gone on to do great things, from Laurie Munn who is the chef at Café Brio, to Alec Lomas who works as E xecutive Chef at the Centara Kata Resor t in Phuket, Thailand.

Over at Bond's and Minichiello’s old teaching alma mater, a totally different philosophy is at work The International Culinar y School at the Ar t Institute of Vancouver has gone through a couple of incarnations: first, when the Ar t Institute acquired Dubrulle in 2003, and secondly, in 2007, when it underwent a name change that highlights its connections to over twenty five other schools under the Ar t Institute umbrella

At its Pacific Centre tower location, the feel is professional and expansive As the eleva tor doors slide open, decorated fondant cakes and sugar ar t projects impress behind glass display cases. Students and instructors in immaculately white uniforms walk briskly along corridors as they head to lecture rooms or one of three teaching kitchens. Over in chef Paul Massincaud’s classroom, students spread tomato sauce onto rolled out pizza dough while buttery croissants do their magic in the oven And in chef Daniel Riviere’s gleaming kitchen, culinary beginners perfect their knife skills as they prep for their ratatouille

President Tom Kim is proud of this busy activity, and especially enthusiastic about the changes to the old Dubrulle program that he believes will improve the “employability” and “promotability” of his diverse student body He explains: “Because so many of our stu dents wanted to be business owners we didn’t think it was sufficient of us to just offer the skills for cooking. We felt it was imperative that we afforded them the oppor tunity to ad vance their knowledge.”

To respond to this perceived demand, the school not only offers its regular year long (four quar ter) culinary ar ts program, but also a year and a half Culinary Ar ts & Restaurant Ownership diploma Students in the six quar ter option will be exposed to business plans, mathematics, writing, and H R management Kim insists that extra courses, like “Market ing of Hospitality Ser vices,” improve student’s business savvy but do so without compro

Paul Massincaud teaches a class at the The International Culinar y School at the Ar t Institute of Vancouver

T r a c e y K u s i e w i c z

mising their core cooking skills. “It’s that balance of academics to enhance promota bility and advancement, coupled with the vocational and employable skills,” he says. The school is confident that the decision to go beyond cooking will bolster its repu tation as a serious academic institution In a meeting room, Kim selects a brochure from a stack of program handouts, and chats about the par ticularities of the Ar t In stitute structure. “ The Ar t Institutes are de gree granting institutes typically. In Canada, we are not degree granting yet but we run on a credit basis,” he says. He points to a schedule for the culinary program, explain ing that students take roughly four courses (eg 2nd Quar ter: Intro to Baking, Interna tional Cuisine, Purchasing & Product Iden tification, Nor th American Regional Cuisine) simultaneously during a three month term. It’s like a university system, only with spat ulas and chef ’s knives.

This thorough, formal training doesn’t come cheaply though. Roughly $5,000 per quar ter makes the program a significant fi nancial investment Kim emphasizes that the tuition is more than competitive: “ Take that and compare us to an unsubsidized tu ition cost from any of the post secondary in stitutions the tuition charged to foreign students and I would say that we compare favourably.”

Kim dismisses criticism of the longer pro gram, arguing that students get a thorough education in school while also getting nec essary time in a restaurant An externship in the industry, and a stint in the school op erated Culinaria restaurant provide some real world experience “Are they fully pre pared? I think so,” he insists.

Such a lengthy program is a harder sell in a hot labour market. “It’s hard right now because the demand is there and you can

John-Carlo Felicella, Head of the C ulinar y Ar ts Depar tment at Vancouver Community College

get in most likely. But think down the road.

At some point, if you want to move up, those who have training should be more at tractive to the employer for advancing I trust that it will be our graduates who will have a year minimum with us,” he says

This long term outlook is mirrored at an other culinary institution with its own unique teaching environment. Unlike the private schools, Vancouver Community Col lege (VCC) has access to public funding which means that tuition is substantially lower (approximately $5,000 for a year), and that it has a much broader, more inclu sive mandate The school offers E SL ver sions of its programs, career prep for special needs students, and is about to launch an Aboriginal culinary stream in Sep tember. It also runs ACE IT, an initiative that par tners with local high schools to provide teens with culinary training. And an Asian Culinary Ar ts program, run by chef Conrad Leung, gives students a wok through Man darin and Szechuan cuisine, as well as dim sum and Chinese barbecuing techniques

Breadth is equally reflected in the kitchens and classrooms that are spread throughout the Pender Street three storey building. Facilities are not luxurious but exude a cheerful utilitarianism that gives aspiring cooks a comprehensive bang for their buck Teaching labs are structured ac cording to one month themed lesson “blocks” that students move through dur ing their school year For example, indus trial size stockpots dominate the kitchen where students learn soup and stock ba sics. The butchery meanwhile has a large smoker and a locker for storing the meat that students fabricate into cuts.

Chef John Carlo Felicella, Head of the Culi nary Ar ts Depar tment, says that the school has stayed consistent since he attended it in 1983, back when it was the Vancouver Vo cational Institute (VVI) He trained right out of high school, full of cocky bravado and lit tle knowing that one day he would return as an instructor. Teaching didn’t come natu rally for Felicella who fell into the profession after he received a last minute, desperate call one Sunday night: “ They said, ‘JC, we need you to come in Can you do it for a couple of days? Well, a couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, which turned into a couple of years Next thing you know it, I’m there full time ”

Felicella eventually chose VCC over his restaurant in West Vancouver, La Toque Blanche, and hasn’t looked back since. His teaching evolved once he realized that the shor t fuse of a restaurant chef has no place in a classroom setting “You can be a genius

Chef

behind the stoves but you can be a lousy teacher. You have to be more sympathetic and un derstanding,” he explains.

Asked what makes VCC distinctive, Felicella replies that the sheer volume of production prepares students for the repetitiveness of the industry, while also giving them tons of chances to perfect their skills: “We are not making one litre of soup to take home We’re making twenty five litres We’re making thir ty por tions of a cer tain project instead of just one ” Students produce ingredients for other classes, the VCC retail store, and even the stu dent run cafeteria and J J’s Dining Room. “Everything ties into everything in this big ma chine here,” he says.

Star ting in 2009, the current program will lengthen into an 18 to 20 month diploma for more advanced study. On the table are molecular gastronomy, thermal immersion circula tors, restaurant management, and a greater range of ethnic cuisines. However, despite this more sophisticated curriculum, Felicella will continue to keep his students rooted in the es sentials: “ There are modern ways of cooking right now but we still have to teach them how to use the fire ”

One VCC alumni who has mastered both the basics and the advanced is Poyan Danesh, now saucier at the Pear Tree in Burnaby. Danesh studied at VCC in 2003 after abandoning dental hygienist studies, and was quickly recruited by Showcase Restaurant post graduation

Out of school, Danesh quickly found him self learning new cooking techniques that built upon the knowledge that he had de veloped in school He is adamant that he wouldn’t be where he is today if not for his VCC training: “ The fundamentals that you learn from school set you on the right path. And with all the connections that I’ve got ten from the chefs there [at VCC], there’s no way I could have done all that I’ve accom plished ”

Marcel Gibeau, a recent 2008 graduate from the International Culinary Institute, is equally thankful for his culinary education Along with a decade of catering experi ence, he feels that his diploma will impress any employer reluctant to take on a more mature applicant. Meanwhile, Sam Pavan, who attended Northwest in 2006, says that his schooling led to a job offer at Ciop pino’s during a one day stage “Nor thwest taught me all the things that I needed to know so I could leave and learn more and do my own thing,” he says

However, school is cer tainly not the only way to ascend in the back of the house. Take Quang Dang, chef de cuisine at C Restaurant, who star ted off in the dish pit at Joey’s, slav ing away in obscurity until he moved up the ranks. Chris Mills who was doing product de velopment at Joey’s recognized Dang’s potential and got him to commit to a career path that has taken the young cook to Joe For tes, Diva at the Met, and now C.

“I’m biased because I’ve never been to cooking school and I’ve never been a great stu dent I’m better off being more self taught and learning through my own mistakes,” says Dang An ability to absorb information readily and to shift mental gears on a dime has been essential to his career advancement He concedes though that formal training might be an option for someone who “needs to have things spelled out in a very regimented and rule oriented style.”

On the hiring side, E xecutive Chef William Tse at Goldfish Pacific Kitchen, says about eighty percent of his cooks have formal training. Diploma or not, he gives positions to those who are open to learning and are continually asking questions. “For me, I base my kitchen on performance and hear t,” he explains. Untested employees begin on prep, and prove their mettle on a busy weekend shift before they progress to garde manger or another star ter line position

Executive Chef Rober t Belcham at Fuel Restaurant also looks for a positive attitude to ward food and the restaurant business, adding that the lack of time for in depth training means that applicants still need a high skill set to work in his kitchen Belcham maintains a strong working relationship with Minichiello at Nor thwest by making guest appearances and giving feedback on curriculum. He cites restaurant management and health and food safety as two knowledge deficits that schools really need to hone in on: “Health and food

Katie Sanders, a 2004 graduate of the Ar t Institute at Aurora Bistro

T r a c e y K u s i e w i c z

safety are some of the biggest issues that we have to deal with today. When our food sources come into question, we have to be diligent all the time I think more time should be taken in the classroom to make sure that happens ”

He urges schools to continue rigorous in struction that ensures that high standards are continually being met. An industry dri ven approach to training new entrants is es pecially impor tant at a time when restaurants are frenzied for qualified help. “ The phone is ringing off the hook,” says Minichiello

For tunately, that call is being heard by fresh talent who are imaginative, passion ate, and ready to take on the demands of the field. Katie Sanders, a 2004 graduate of the Art Institute, feels privileged to continue her education as a tournant at Aurora Bistro. “It’s such a humbling experience as you come out of culinary school convinced that you can take on the world Then, on the first day of the job, all you do is make mis takes I’m so for tunate to be working with a chef like Jeff [Van Geest] who’s willing to let us really learn and experience things ” The learning post school may be tough but this new generation of cooks is more than will ing to face the brutal, but very real joys of the job.

Vancouver Is land C ulinar y Institutions Dish It Out

by Su Grimmer

The three accredited culinary institutions on Vancouver Island can dish it out, and have been ser ving up world-class chefs for over 45 years.

In the case of Vancouver Island University’s Culinar y Ar ts Institute (formerly Malaspina University Col lege, their culinary program star ted in 1964 when they were a small vocational college It has grown to a student complement of 90 per year (2007) at their Nanaimo campus, plus 12 more students at their satellite cam puses in Mill Bay and Powell River.

Debbie Shore, the Chair and Head In structor of the program (herself a graduate of the school), believes the university’s points of differentiation stem from a cur riculum philosophy that star ts with a foun dation in the basics and then focuses on culinary trends and “ahead of the wave” kitchen thinking and learning.

The facilities at the school run from state of the ar t to other areas within the main complex that show the patina of use Their main kitchen is over 30 years old but it is a true work horse of learning The food lab however is only 7 years old and would make Inspector G adget smile from ear to ear

The teacher student ratio is tight at 18 to one with a many of the 6 full time teachers

having been with the university for years.

One of the most notable places to dine in the city of Nanaimo is the “student oper ated” Discovery Dining Room at the univer sity Here the culinary students not only plan and execute the upscale meals, the ser ving staff are students as well

The institute prides itself on having launched the careers of a number of no table “rock star” chefs, as well as alumni working around the world in some of the most prestigious restaurants, resor ts and culinary institution in the world

Victoria’s Camosun College Culinar y Ar ts program star ted in 1973 Headed for years by Erik Andersen, who retired in May 2008, the reins have been handed to Gilber t Noussitou, who joined the college in 1987.

Here a full house means up to 65 stu dents taking various levels of training from their Level 1, 2 or 3 and some, in their third year, working towards their full ticket once they have complete 6000 hours of appren ticeship training

Training here is based on good technique, discipline and work ethic Students get a solid foundation in all aspects of working on “the line” in a kitchen, as well as areas of specialization, comprehensive food prep, all the way up the line to food costing and staff management. The Classroom Restau rant on campus provides hands on learning as the students cook for over 300 at lunch and 40 for dinner, five days a week

Camosun applauds its students with hav ing won 5 Canadian championships and one world championship They too have fa mous alumni now working in starred Miche lin restaurants abroad and five star restaurants right here in B.C.

Nor th Island College’s Culinar y Ar ts pro gram is run out of their two campuses in Campbell River and Por t Alberni Because the population base in both cities does not allow for a stand alone college, facilities are housed within the local high schools, as is the case with some of Camosun satellite campuses.

The program is headed by Chris Hansen, a Chef/Instructor who has been with the college since 1997. Culinary training has been offered since 1989 and will take a stu dent from entry levels basics right up to their Red Seal Level 3

Here the total student body is small at 36 per semester with a student teacher ratio of 12 to one. The college has an extensive co op program which integrates students into real life kitchen environments early on in the program.

Hansen feels their unique attribute is one of getting their students into the field early, be that via their co op program or allowing students to learn at school and work in the field and rotate this study methodology until graduation Many students leave the college with a very seasoned por tfolio which allows them to move into fulltime work with a minimum of adjustment.

CULINARY TRAVEL

Comox Valley

The Comox Valley has one of the most idyllic locations in B C To the east are the waters of the Strait of Georgia, to the west climbs Mountain Washington and the rugged Beaufor t Range Park. The valley itself is a growing destination for chefs, farmers and food lover’s. From the sea, mountain and valley comes some of the finest products and local chefs are utilizing them to fashion a definitive regional cuisine style

Only a few hours up from Victoria, the Island Highway widens and forest and mountain takes over as you leave the more populous south The Comox Valley is a self contained area that has become a popular holiday and retirement des tination. But newcomers interested in culinary pursuits are also arriving, fleeing the high real estate prices of the big city, looking for oppor tunities and new beginnings Here, chefs and farmers are enterprising entrepreneurs as they develop businesses that suppor t local agricul ture and contribute to a developing restaurant scene

The Comox Valley has a long history of agricultural production dating back to 1860’s. With 20,000 hectares of land within the Agricultural Land Reser ve, approximately half of which is currently used for agriculture production, the Valley had 445 farms at last count. Twenty one different types of vegetable crops were identified as well as over 15 types of livestock. This illustrates not only the diverse mix of farm activities and intensity that typ ifies agriculture in the Comox Valley, but the impor tance of farming to the local economy By any gauge, this forms an excellent basis upon which to build a local food scene

Visiting the region you will encounter small farms, vineyards, many owner operated restaurants and cafes and a thriving farmer’s market. For recreation, Mount Washington has its year round alpine activities, the shore plenty of beaches and three towns of Cour tenay, Comox and Cumberland are wor th a walk about With plenty of bed & breakfast inns and resor ts spread out around the valley finding a play to stay is

Courtenay

Cour tenay’s downtown core has a charming small town feel and the restaurants we like can all be found in this area Our first stop is Atlas Cafe (250 6th Street, Cour tenay), open for breakfast, lunch and dinner Chef Trent McIntyre and his par tner Sandra Viney have

What is your vision for the culinar y future of the Comox Valley?

Trent McIntyre & Sandra Viney: By embracing our local pur veyors' we all work towards lessening our footprints. As more Comox Valley restaurants showcase our local farmers and pur veyors on their menu, we highlight the bounty they offer while estab lishing the Valley as "the land of plenty"

What inspires you here in the Comox Valley?

TM & SV: Our Farmers Market, our local producers and the passion that drives them. What one thing does the Valley need to do to achieve its true potential?

TM & SV: We need to embrace the integrity behind the locally sourced and produced menu items. No restaurant will sur vive without the community’s loyalty and support

easy

EAT meanders the back roads, the towns and the farms to f ind out what’s on the menu in BC’s newest food destination.

Pacific Halibut, honey, sesame beurre blanc, yam tempura w/ asian vegetables at Avenue Bistro in Comox

Trent McIntyre and Sandra Viney

r a c e y K u s i e w

created an institution in the region. The tone (decor, attitude, food) is trendy yet comfor t able. The service has always been exemplary. And the food circles the globe touching down in Asia, the mediterranean and the Pacific Nor thwest Look for well prepared caipirihnas cocktails, roast lamb with rosemary and beef rib eye with wild chanterelles Vegetables are treated with respect International wine list This is our go to place for exciting and re liable international cooking

Up the street look for the inviting, distinctive yellow house and Tita’s Mexican Restaurant (536 6th St., Cour tenay). This is the place for the bold flavours of the south. Owners, Lisa and Mar tin Metz are a Slow Fooders and believe in building lasting relation ships with nearby fishers and farmers. Their menu is built on both local organic ingredients and exotic Mexican products. If you like molé, Tita’s con Pollo version is made with local

Raincoast Farms chicken, four different types of chile, spices, nuts, seeds and chocolate. There’s also a full selection of tapas and organic corn tor tillas and green rice and hand pulled flour tor tillas. A recent crowd pleaser is Lisa’s Tuna Ceviche with fresh lime and jalapenos.

A few streets over and to the south is Locals (see review at the end of this story), owned and operated by Chef Ronald St Pierre, who cooked previously at Kingfisher Lodge While in Cour tenay (between meals?) there are plenty of food related shop stops Take a walk along Fifth its jam packed with inviting stores ‘Beyond the Kitchen Door’ (274B 5th St , Cour tenay) is the area’s number one gourmet kitchen store Owner Sue Smith stocks everything the home chef could want as well as some prime local products such as premium quality, troll caught BC albacore tuna from the Estevan Tuna Company. Sue is also one of the main organizers of the Alpine Food & Wine Festival held in September on Mount Washington to showcase local products and chefs. If you’re lucky, you might in town when one the BTKD’s superb cooking classes is taking place. You might be able to sit in with cookbook authors Eric Akis or Karen Barnaby Check our their website at www beyondthekitchendoor com A few doors up at Cakebread Ar tisan Baker y (368 Fifth St , Cour tenay) gateaux is the focus and the bevy of beautiful cakes will draw you inside You’ll also find breads and a selection of chocolates made by Hot Chocolates. Continue along Fifth and over to James and Angeline Street’s Bramble Market (250 702 3980 www.bramblesmarket.ca) where you’ll find the province’s first all BC grocery store. Before heading around the bay to Cour tenay’s twin city of Comox, take a detour to the historic village of Cumberland. Once a thriving coal town, the streets are now lined with shops. Chef Nicola Cuhna and her par tner in The Great Escape, Jean Francois Larche, are symptomatic of what is happening in this former mining boom town. Chef Nicola draws her inspiration from the cooking of Gujarat (Nor thwestern India), Karnataka (Southwest), and Goa This is lighter fare than Punjabi and Bengali based cuisine She also pays hom age to the modernizing influence of Vancouver's Vij This is evident in the lightness and the combination of flavours and colours

Intense little chicken samosas are ser ved with in house plum chutney, Papadam Cigars, a kind of "Indian spring roll" come with tamarind chutney, and Masala Wadas, subtly flavoured lentil patties are ser ved with in house organic pumpkin chutney. These were ac companied by Chef Nicola's special variation on naan a moist flat bread rich with flavour.

Tita’s Mexican Restaurant par tner & general manager Heather Standish with ceviche

T

Main courses we ate were smoked local lingcod cakes in a fenugreek fennel curry; Pathrade, a Gujarati specialty of spinach, ground rice, and lentils, steamed and sliced, ser ved in a clinging coconut tamarind curry; and a pork vindaloo flavoured with cinnamon, clove, ginger, and chilies For desser t try sharing the cardamom studded marshmallow a buoyant and chewy concoction and the chocolate paté drizzled with red wine and pear sauce

Comox

The town of Comox (pop.12,000) has plenty of well regarded eateries and pubs. Your first stop heading in is Avenue Bistro (2064 Comox Ave), the newest restaurant from the owners of Atlas Bistro. Like Atlas it has a world view menu that sources local produce but it more casual and features a lounge and an extensive small plates menu. Dishes like Tannadice Farm Pork Spring Rolls, local Albacore Tuna Togarashi with Wasabi Aioli delin eate that commitment Fans of Chef Andrew Stigant, formerly of the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria will glad happy to see he has turned up again at new kid on the block Ander ton Bistro (649 Ander ton Rd, Comox) The menu is long on local featuring Dungeness Crab & Spot Prawn Bisque, Mer ville Farms G athered Field Greens & Herb Salad, Natural Pastures Comox Brie Stuffed Hecate Strait Halibut (an Oceanwise approved fish) among many other enticing dishes. Close in to the ocean the patio and garden at Mar tine’s Bistro (1754 Beau for t Ave., Comox) with their view of Comox Bay and the Beaufor t Range are as welcoming as the aromas inside. Appetizers include Dungeness crab cakes with roasted red pepper aioli and Steamed fresh Mussels, Belgian style, in a leek, white wine cream sauce. Mains offer Seared Albacore tuna, curry mango aioli and fresh seasonal greens with house vinai grette and Crown of Pork, fresh Cherry Madeira sauce, G arlic mashed potatoes and fresh seasonal vegetables Fur ther along Comox Avenue you’ll come to Thyme on the Ocean (832 Comox Ave , Comox), a restaurant that’s been receiving top reviews for its attention to detail and high standards Emil Shelborn and his par tner (in life and in the kitchen) Nah Yoon Kim sources ingredients from local producers and change menus with the seasons. Look for plates like grilled flank steak cooked rare, sliced thin and then layered with thick slices of dense wild matsutake (pine) mushrooms, oven roasted tomatoes, and local water buffalo mozzarella. Island wines from Venturi Schultz and Chalet Estate are a feature. For good, inventive pub fare try the Blackfin Pub (132 Port Augusta St , Comox) overlooking the harbour You’ll find oven baked Queen Charlotte Island halibut with Thai sauce, breaded

and lightly fried Fanny Bay oysters and Jack Daniels infused baby back ribs.

Moving out to the surrounding area, if you are for tunate to be here during market season you must visit the Comox Valley Farmers Market (Saturday morning on Headquarters Rd ) Everything sold must come from the region and with over 80 vendors this is one of the best markets in BC. With its long agri cultural history farming is still an impor tant par t of the local economy. Look for Lijen & Sherlene Hua’s Hazelmere Farms Cer tified organic produce. They grow fresh wasabi, figs, salad mix, oriental greens, fresh soybeans, fava beans, garlic, onions, burdock and they also make kimchi and various pickles An other valley success story is 18 year old Eatmore Sprouts (2604 Grieve Rd , Cour tenay) They grow a huge variety of sprouts and greens including alfalfa, clover mung bean, corn shoots, pea shoots, wheat grass & microgreens along with spinach, salad mix, edible flowers, parsley, swiss chard, mustard greens, kale, tamarillos, lavender and shisho. Unique to the Island is the Island Bison Ranch operated by Delton and Karen Henrich Their bison are grass fed and free range and produce meat that has a full, rich and dense flavour Beaver Meadow Farms, home to Natural Pastures Cheese, was star ted in the 1930s, comprises 600 acres and is a designated Heritage Dairy Farm ( meets animal welfare, bio diversity, and environmental enhance ment standards)

ACCOMMODATIONS

NEW RESTAURANT REPORT

Avenue Bistro | 2064 Comox Ave, Comox | 250-890-9200 | www.avenuebistro.ca

As the sister ship to the region’s standard setting Atlas Café in Cour tenay, expecta tions about Avenue Bistro in Comox have been high Consistency of food quality and excellent ser vice are what I expect from the crew working for owners Trent McIntyre and Sandra Viney The staff at Avenue is younger than at Atlas and Chef Aaron Rail (formerly with Victoria’s Café Brio and The Ma rina) has only recently taken the helm. Recent dining experiences, however, indicate that Avenue is keep ing to Atlas’s high standards. Wait staff were knowl edgeable about the menu and helpful with appropriate wine choices Manager Torrie Howlett was for a long time my favourite bar tender, and the bar at Avenue is a nice place to hang out when in Comox An appetizer of local albacore tuna, pan seared but deliciously pink and rare in the centre, was laid on a colourful bed of mixed greens, avocado, dressed in a slightly sweet hot chipotle maple vinaigrette. For our mains our ser ver hit the mark with the suggestion of the halibut curry. My date noted the tangy curry sauce was subtle and gentle enough not to overpower the delicacy of the halibut; crispy spicy yams complemented the fish’s softness; and a melange of temperatures cold carrots, hot yams and halibut deepened the gustatory experience. My choice was a generous plate of beef ribs, delicately flavoured with a bourbon chipotle braise Our ser ver again came up trumps by suggesting the Quail’s G ate 2006 Pinot Noir It had enough body to stand up to the ribs, but not so much that it overpowered the hal ibut With such a strong star t, the much lighter finish was a pleasant,

sation

We decided to split the sticky date pudding As my date cooed, between spoonfuls, “mmm… sticky gooey yummy…homey good.” A perfect match for the glass of rich, carmely Penfolds Grandfather Por t I was enjoying.

even welcome sen

by Hans Peter Meyer

Natural Pastures’ cheesemaker Paul Sutter

Carmen & Glenn Wakeling at Eatmore Spouts

Lijen & Sherlene Hua at Hazelmere Farms

Walking into Locals is to walk into an inviting celebration of food grown and prepared in the greater Comox Valley region Soft greens linens, accents mix with photographs of produce and produc ers, the accompanying text detailing the wealth of gastronomic delights Chef Ronald St Pierre, well known in the area for his ability to please the palate, has launched Locals as a kind of flagship for the “unique terroir, the distinct flavour of the soil coming through in the food that is produced here.”

Our pleasures of the palate star ted as soon as we were seated A basket of herbed whole wheat bread arrived, with a chickpea and roasted red pepper spread Wholesome and flavourful My dinner date was impressed “I won’t do bread and butter, but I’ll do this.”

Locals’ offerings lean towards west coast/modern, all of it sourced from the region, and with a high “comfor t” factor. We star ted with the Island Bison carpaccio and a half dozen Cor tes Island oysters. The oysters were small, delicate, refreshing with a delightful tang of the ocean

For our main courses we had the pan fried halibut, dressed in sesame seeds, cilantro, and preser ved black bean and garlic sauce and the scallops in a Thai green curry and coconut sauce My friend was thrilled with her meal “I’ve got everything I want my fish, my gar lic, my potatoes, my vegetables roasted with still a bit of crunch Perfect! Just the way I like it ” And it was “comforting,” she said, the sauce light enough to let the subtleties of the fish come through.

I was impressed by the size and texture of the scallops, probably my favourite seafood: they were big enough that I had to quar ter them, yet still tender. And while I’m a big fan of hot spicy food, I appreciated the mild, slightly sweet curry treatment that traded the burn for fruity/tar t tastes

Ordering desser t was purely an exercise in excess So we decided to share the Vegan Chocolate Cheesecake Not too sweet and without any heaviness, this dense slab of choco late delivered a full ganache type experience by Hans Peter Meyer

A n I n t r o d u c t i o n t o I n d u c t i o n C o o k i n g

In an age of energy efficiency, induction cooking is turning the world of frying, boiling, and simmering upside down Peter Penna of Penna & Co. calls it "the opposite of any cooking we have ever known " It works like this: an induction cooker contains a coil made of magnetic material When a current passes through the coil, a magnetic field is produced. When a pot is placed on the cooker, the magnetic field transfers the current of en ergy to the pot, thus the pot itself and not the cooker heats up. Make sense? If not, just know this: there's no flame, no electric element cre ating heat to warm a pot, so less energy is lost in the process And the chances of burning one self are much less as the induction cooktop needs a pot to transfer the heat to; it cools immediately after cookware is removed.

Waring makes an energy saving Induction Cooktop ICT100. Penna explains that only cookware that is magnetic works with induction cooking, (so no glass, ceramic, or aluminum) but for tunately, most quality pots and pans are magnetic anyway. K.Z.

PENNA & CO. 777 Royal Oak Dr, Victoria, 250.727.2110

WARING www waringproducts com

Locals' chef and owner Ronald St. Pierre, with his wife Tricia St. Pierre, sous chef Brian McCormick, and local produce.

HOLIDAY

Kitchen Local a celebration of the season.

It used to hit around the first week in November. Standing in the organic produce section of the grocery store, I would stare blindly at the bins of BC Hothouse tomatoes impor ted from Mexico, the stacks of pol ished New Zealand apples, the heads of ro maine, red and green leaf lettuce and mounds of carrots, broccoli and green onion, all courtesy of California’s ubiquitous Ear thbound Farms. It was a sobering realization; market season was truly over and fresh local produce had be come as hard to find as a flavourful Chinese peach

I admit I’m a bit fanatical when it comes to local eating, so when the last market folds up its tables, I actually go through a period of grieving. How is it possible, I’ve mourned, that such abundance can simply disappear overnight especially as we approach the season of feasting, friends and family? It has posed an ongoing quandary for me; the holidays, rich in excess, have been singularly devoid of the local produce we love Surely everything doesn’t simply stop growing, bemoans my inner urbanite, who takes a much less realistic slant on these things than I care to admit. After all, we are in a rel atively temperate climate. But every year, that’s just what seemed to happen. One fine October weekend, an abun dant display of fall produce decorates eight foot tables covering the asphalt at our local elementary school; the next, not even a stray beet rolls through the empty park ing lot Closed See You Next Year And year after year, my hear t (and stomach) weep.

Then last year, as I returned from an appointment one grey November morning, I drove past the stand at Madrona Farm on Blenkinsop Road. I glanced at the sign as it went by my window Open Wed Sat, 11 2 Hopeful, but pragmatic, and only expecting to see a few scraggly bits of kale, I hung a U turn, pulled into the driveway and

got in line behind four people who obviously knew some thing I didn’t. The stand itself was full carrots, broccoli, greens, Brussels sprouts, beets, garlic, dark green spears of Lacinato kale and more a cornucopia of beautiful vegetables spilling over the edge Produce nir vana Eggs, too. The stand would be open right through Christmas, and beyond, said farmer David Chambers. In fact, he con tinued, despite a deliberate lack of greenhouses on site, there would be fresh produce available at Madrona Farm all year long. “We grow things year round,” Chambers told me as I bit into the sweetest, carrot iest carrot that had ever crossed my lips, “by understanding and utilizing the windows of oppor tunity that open up for planting every season. We don’t need greenhouses to do that.” It would appear from the variety of produce before me that Cham bers has cer tainly developed a keen sense of timing and a highly successful par tnership with G aia. Suddenly, the grey, meagre West Coast winter became a whole lot brighter and richer

I drove away wallet only marginally emptier consid ering the fullness of my hear t and bags As I contem plated what I would cook that night with my unexpected windfall, it struck me; the availability of this produce meant I could provide the B IG holiday meal and do it all locally. I could have my 10 mile turkey with all the trimmings, and eat it too How better to celebrate the hol idays and our good for tune at living in such a beautiful, bountiful par t of the world than with a holiday feast made from regional abundance

This would be my challenge to myself perhaps not as ambitious as a year of 100 mile eating or daily sex with my husband of many years but a challenge nonethe less. I may not end up with a bestseller out of it, but I would reap tremendous satisfaction and prove a point to the sceptics sharing my holiday table You see, I live with a Christmas purist; this meal couldn’t stray too far

from the traditional feast in pursuit of the higher ideals of food security and suppor ting local agriculture. His side of the family all 14 of them invited to share my table will only indulge my somewhat sanctimonious locavore tendencies so far without griping Then again, I’d bet that none of them thought it was possible to eat locally, in Vic toria, right through the winter. Who had?

The thing is, once I began to wrap my mind around the challenge, I realized just how easy it would be to main tain my principles and still create a holiday feast my fam ily would love and their ancestors would approve of Here on Vancouver Island and throughout B C , the market for local has never been better and producers of all types are literally stepping up to our plates. I could and would cover every aspect of the meal without straying far from home. I would satisfy both the traditionalists and the environmentalists. And really, with the exception of the turkey I had pre ordered from Ireland Farm, I didn’t even have to plan that far in advance

From appetizers to desser t, I sought out the best of the area My goal was to stay as close to my postal code as possible and see what I could find. Needless to say, once I began dissecting the dinner into its elements, the proj ect took on a whole different dimension. I’d not only need the big elements turkey, vegetables, potatoes but the flour for bread and pastry, the butter and eggs, nuts, cheese, fruit, wine and herbs In the end, the most re markable thing about creating a local holiday feast aside from the tastes is just how simple it is to do Everything you need can be found right in our own back yard.

We thought you might be interested in trying a regional holiday spread too. We’ve included information on every thing you might need plus some great recipes RECIPES ON OVERLEAF

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fa c t , i t w a s p r o b a b l y m o r e l i ke t h e 1 0 - m i l e h o l i d a y o n c e w r i t e r a n d

“locavore” Karen Platt was f inished sourcing—and cooking—her Christmas feast.

Beet & Winter Green Salad with Truffled Goat

Cheese Dressing

David Woods’ truffled goat cheese is extremely decadent Use the aromatic truffle topping for the dressing, then crumble the snow white cheese over the salad It’s a glorious match with roasted beets Ser ves 8 to 10

David Wood’s creamy truffled goat cheese, 1 Red wine vinegar, 2 tbsp

Dried tarragon, 1/4 tsp

Sea salt, 1/4 tsp

Olive or vegetable oil, 1/4 cup

Ruby beets, 4 Daikon, 2 inch piece

Spicy Winter Greens, 8 to 10 cups

For the dressing, scoop the truffled topping from the goat cheese and place in a blender. Add vinegar, tarragon and salt. Whirl to mix, then add oil Whirl until oil is completely mixed in Wrap un peeled beets in a foil package and roast in 400F oven until ten der. Star t checking for doneness after 45 min. Cool, then peel. Slice into thin wedges Spoon 1 tbsp dressing over beets

Using a mandolin, shave daikon into 8 to 10 thin rounds, then cut into thin strips. Place in a large bowl and add greens. Pour in just enough dressing to lightly coat Crumble goat cheese over top

MAKE AH E AD Prepare and refrigerate dressing up to 5 days. Prepare beets and daikon 1 day ahead

Brussels Sprouts with Warm Apple Vinaigrette

You either like ‘em or hate ‘em but it’s just not Christmas without them. Matched with a comfor ting applesauce dress ing and tar t cranberries, you’ll find that even the most staunch sprout loathers ask for seconds of these Ser ves 8 to 10

Apple, such as Gravenstein, Empire or Macintosh, 1 Butter, 2 tbsp

Sunset Bay Honey, 2 tbsp

Vegetable oil, 1/4 cup

Sea Cider Apple Vinegar or Cider Vinegar, 2 tbsp Brussels Sprouts, 2lbs Bacon, 2 strips

Cranberries, 1/3 cup

Peel and core apple, then coarsely chop Pan fry in butter and drizzle with honey Add a splash of water and cook until ap ples are very soft Place in a blender and add oil and vinegar Blitz to evenly mix Dressing will be thick

Trim outer leaves from sprouts Cut large sprouts into quar ters and smaller ones in halves Blanche in boiling water, then drain.

Pan fry bacon until crisp, then remove to paper towels. Pour fat into a large wide saucepan or Dutch oven and and set over medium high heat. Add sprouts, a pinch of salt and about 1/4 cup water Stir often until tender crisp, 4 to 6 min Pour in apple dressing and cranberries Stir until heated through, 1 to 2 min Spoon into a ser ving bowl and crumble bacon over top

MAKE AHEAD Prepare apple dressing and refrigerate up to 5 days. Blanche sprouts and immediately cool in an ice bath. Refrigerate overnight. Cook bacon a few hours before using.

Root Cellar Gratin

This is the best way to get all those good winter veggies into one dish instead of making lots of sides. Think scalloped po tatoes meet the root cellar carrots, turnips and rutabagas they all go well together A mandolin is necessary to slice them paper thin so everything cooks at the same time An other bonus: these don’t have to be piping hot In fact, they

taste best warm verging on room temperature Ser ves 10 to 12

Avalon Whipping Cream, 2 cups

Fresh thyme, tied with kitchen string, 1 bunch David Wood’s Montana cheese, grated, 1 cup Sea Salt, 11/2 tsp

Freshly grated nutmeg, 1/2 tsp Freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, 2 large Carrots, peeled, 2 to 3 large Rutabaga, peeled, 1/2 large Turnip, peeled, 2 medium

Bring cream to a boil Add thyme and simmer for a few min utes to infuse flavour, then remove from heat Mix together 3/4 cup cheese, salt, nutmeg and pepper Butter a 9X13 inch casserole dish or line with parchment.

Using a mandolin (neccessary for very thin slicing), thinly slice potatoes. Arrange in layers in pan and sprinkle with sea soning mix between each. Thinly shave carrots, then layer over potatoes and sprinkle with seasoning Don’t worry about neatly layering them just sprinkle over top as evenly as possible Continue slicing and layering with rutabaga, then turnip and sprinkle seasoning mix between each Press down to lightly pack

Pour cream over top and sprinkle with remaining cheese Cover with a piece of buttered parchment, then seal pan tightly with foil. Bake in 400F oven for 45 min. Uncover and continue to bake until golden and bubbly, 15 to 20 more min. Let stand at least 20 minutes before ser ving.

MAKE AHEAD Assemble gratin Drizzle 1/2 cup more cream over top to ensure all veggies are covered Cover and refrig erate overnight Bring to room temperature before baking

Garlicky Creamed Winter Greens

This is a new take on classic creamed spinach but with win ter kale and chard. Go for extreme green and finish the dish with a handful of fresh tatsoi Ser ves 8 to 10

Kale, 2 large bunches

Swiss Chard, 2 large bunches

Avalon organic butter, 3 tbsp

Garlic cloves, minced, 5 Shallots, minced, 2 All purpose flour, 3 tbsp

Avalon organic homogenized milk, 11/2 cups

Chili flakes, 1/4 tsp

Fresh tatsoi, 1 cup

Cut out coarse stems from kale and chard. Coarsely chop leaves Working in batches, quick cook greens in a little water in a frying pan just until they turn bright green and star t to wilt Remove as done to a baking sheet Refrigerate immedi ately to keep colour bright When cool, gently squeeze out excess moisture Set aside

In a large saucepan, melt butter and add garlic and shal lots. Cook until translucent, then stir in flour. Gradually whisk in milk, whisking out any lumps before adding more milk. Add chili flakes and simmer for 5 min., then stir in wilted greens. Add more milk to thin out, if necessary. Turn into a ser ving bowl G arnish with fresh tsatoi leaves

MAKE AHEAD Prepare kale and chard Cover and refrigerate overnight Same with sauce To assemble, reheat sauce You will need to add more milk to thin it out Gently warm greens in a large wide saucepan with a little water Stir in sauce

Blackberr y Wine Poached Pears

While I love Christmas pudding and all the buttery holiday cookies and treats, I feel so stuffed at the end of the turkey feast, that I really just crave fruit and cheese. Pears poached in local blackberry wine make an elegant ending and are di vine paired with a sliver of Hillary’s blue cheese and local hazelnuts

Cowichan Valley Blackberr y Desser t Wine, 375 mL bottle Dr y red wine, something local, 1 cup Granulated sugar, 1 cup Whole cloves, 2 Orange, 1 Pears, such as Bar tlett or Anjou, 5 Hillar y’s Yoo Boo Blue cheese, 5 thick slices

Toasted and skinned hazelnuts, coarsely chopped, 1/2 cup Fresh mint

In a large wide saucepan or Dutch oven, combine blackberry wine with red wine, sugar and cloves Using a vegetable peeler, scrape 2 large strips of peel from orange and add Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until sugar is dissolved, 2 to 3 min Peel and slice pears in half lengthwise Scoop out and discard cores

Add pears to wine mixture and simmer, turning occasion ally until pears are tender. Star t checking for doneness after 30 min. Depending on their size and ripeness they may need 10 to 20 more min. Pears are done when you can easily in ser t a knife into fruit

Carefully spoon out pears and place in a large bowl Boil sauce a few minutes until it’s syrupy Pour over pears and let cool completely Best

The It alian Baker y T ur ns 30

It's been t hir ty years since t he Pozzolo family opened t he doors of t he It alian Baker y in Vict or ia. And f if t een year s since Michele Pozzolo’s son Alber to, present owner and manager, first came to work at his dad's elbow Walk t hrough t hese doors today and that singular essence of It alian pastr ies and bread f loods your senses. “My g randfat her’s dad,” Alber t o t ells me over a cup of coffee in t he baker y, “paid for his son to go to Tor ino so he could lear n pastr y making And t his,” he says, gestur ing around us, “is where it got us ”

The recipes Alber to’s grandfat her lear ned have passed t heir way, for eighty seven years, along a family tree whose roots began in 1921 wit h t he t hr iving Pasticcer ia Piana of Tor ino, It aly where Alber to’s father helped (at his father in law’s elbow) when he could he was at t he same time, ear ning a Doctorate in phar macy In 1978 t he Pozzolos moved t o Vict or ia and opened t he It alian Baker y Alber t o’s mot her, while raising t he children, instilled in t hem a passion for quality of work and t aught t hem a histor y of t he profession The opening of t heir rest aurant, La Piola, followed in 2002, of fer ing fresh, local ing redients in t he tradition of seasonal It alian cooking.

The business remains a family operation; Alber t o’s wife Janet work s behind t he counter seasonally and is responsible for t he day to day accounting functions. Family members have pitched in and branched out into t heir own It alian eater ies over t he years. And t he rewards of t he or iginal recipes, generations lat er, f ill t he baker y wit h t he t aste of tradition 3103 QUADRA ST., VICTORIA , BC, 250 388 4557

L A PIOL

Slow Food Nation

A weekend of slow food in America’s favourite culinary city. Could it be done here?

By Mara Jernigan

This year’s Slow Food Nation, held on Labour Day weekend in the hear t of San Fran cisco, was touted as America’s biggest food event in history. Sixty thousand atten dees listened, learned, tasted, sipped and swirled their way through San Francisco’s Civic Center and For t Mason Exhibition Hall experiencing American ar tisan foods that em body Slow Food’s mantra of “good, clean and fair.” The event was inspired by Slow Food’s two signature international events, Salone del Gusto, or Great Hall of Taste, and Terra Madre, which each bring together more than 5,000 food producers, chefs, educators and youth from around the world, bundled into individual food communities Slow Food Nation tried to com bine the best of both of those events, with an all inclusive mandate that involved farmers, eaters, restaurants, policy makers and intellects [[intellectuals?]]

The night before I left to attend the event, I had stayed up until 1 a m reducing and canning tomato puree with the head of Slow Food France, spurred on by my annual har vest season, guilt ridden panic. Fifty pounds of very ripe cer tified organic local tomatoes yielded five, one quar t Mason jars of concentrated tomato “passata” at a cost of more than $100, not includ ing our labour. Was this too much work for such a small amount of product? I kept thinking about my tomatoes over the course of the weekend Preser ved and fermented foods of all kinds were featured in many beautifully designed dis plays at Slow Food Nations’ Taste Pavilion A return to preser ving food is the kind of action Slow Food is trying to encourage “Jam and pickle making has gone from a necessity, to an ac tivity of the poor, to a hobby of the rich and educated,” states Anya Fernald, executive direc tor of Slow Food Nation The former program director for the Slow Food Foundation established its International Presidia project between 2002 and 2004.

“One of the ideas this event is trying to promote is that small life changes can make a dif ference. If we could get just 10 percent of the public spending 10 minutes more a day think ing about their food, that would be great. We can all do something simple, cook a family meal from scratch, pack a lunch, make a vinaigrette ” Fernald continues, “ The high price of food is a political problem in America If a politician wants to appeal to the common person in the U S , he will have his picture taken eating at McDonald’s We want to re dignify food and bring it back as the cultural institution it is meant to be by letting people know that preparing and eating food can be joyous and celebratory ”

Indeed, the Italian based Slow Food has had to make some cultural adjustments to adapt to Nor th America because the universal “Right to Pleasure” is seen in a different way in Anglo Saxon cultures. As well, Slow Food USA has repeatedly been accused of being an elitist, pre dominantly white, upper class organization while working to address issues of food security, obesity and taste education. Slow Food vice president Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame has made school gardens a major Slow Food initiative Students from the Slow Food University of G astronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, have star ted a worldwide Slow Food Youth Move ment, and former president of Slow Food USA Michael Dimock, now president of the non profit Roots of Change, has worked with Slow Food to promote a Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, a document unveiled in the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall on the eve of Slow Food Nation and signed by thousands during the event.

In this country, Slow Food Canada is working on many of the same issues its American coun terpar t is working on, with several differences. The U.S. membership, now well over 10,000, is roughly tenfold that of the Canadian organization. For close to 10 years, the Americans have had a head office in New York, staff and funding for several projects including the U.S. Ark of Taste, as well as the suppor t of several celebrity food activists like Waters and bestselling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollen Slow Food Nation was the “coming out” party for Slow Food in America, and I was curious about how the weekend was organized, con templating whether it might be possible to do a similar event in Canada one day

The event was well funded by a raft of sponsors from Saveur Magazine to natural foods giant Whole Foods. The products themselves were very carefully chosen by product “cura tors,” exper ts in their par ticular field of cheesemaking, bread or meats, for example. There were strict guidelines to meet the good, clean and fair criteria. Making sure products were source verified; GMO , antibiotic and hormone free; organic or transitional; and small scale, ar tisanal were just par t of the process. The event even had a social justice director.

In response to the repeated criticism of Slow Food being elitist, Anya Fernald and the Slow Food Nation team worked hard to make sure the U S event was affordable The $65 admis sion to the Taste Pavilion subsidized the free marketplace in the Civic Center Local architects were par tnered with pavilion curators to create displays using appropriate, reusable agri cultural materials such as crates, canning jar lids and, in the case of the Native Foods Pavil ion, native grasses and plants from the Bay area.

Arguably, Slow Food Nation had something for everyone. Slow Food Rocks, an outdoor con

cer t series, was held in a meadow adjacent to the Taste Pavilion. There were the signa ture Slow Food Taste workshops, green kitchen demonstrations, a day for policy and non profit “changemakers,” free films and dinner dates in Bay area restaurants known for using local, sustainable ingredi ents. I was drawn to the impressive lineup of speakers, which included some of the world’s top thinkers in food, such as Pollen and Waters as well as environmental ac tivist and author Vandana Shiva, nutrition educator Marion Nestle, award winning writer and conser vationist Wendell Berry and Slow Food’s founder Carlo Petrini

In a panel session entitled A New Fair Food System during the Food for Thought speakers series, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and Stuffed and Star ved au thor Raj Patel were joined by several ac tivists defending meat packers and farm workers rights. The session brought the very real plight of migrant agricultural work ers to the surface This is the dark under belly of our food system and one that Slow Food and many other food groups have been reluctant to tackle From illegal Mexi can farm workers living under bridges dur ing grape har vest in Napa to deaths from heat exposure in the Central Valley, these are some of the realities of the Nor th Amer ican food system and until recently even Slow Food has not really talked about them I learned that three large tomato companies in Florida produce vir tually all of the com mercially grown tomatoes for fast food chains, grocery stores and food ser vice providers. E xtreme heat and pesticide ex posure as well as a lack of housing, health care and workers rights are the norm. At its worst, there are documented cases of slav ery, sexual exploitation of female workers and rock bottom pay as little as $50 for picking two tons of tomatoes Suddenly the price of my home canned tomatoes did not seem so high

Perhaps the crowning glory of Slow Food Nation was the Victory G arden in the Civic Square, located in the hear t of a food inse cure region of the city. Planted in the same site as San Francisco’s post World War II Vic tory G arden, the project was enthusiasti cally suppor ted by San Francisco mayor G avin Newsom and was a magnificent cen trepiece for the weekend’s events Planted with a variety of heirloom vegetables, drought tolerant and native plants, culinary herbs and more in early July, the site do nated food to local food banks and hosted both a community day in August and the post event Labour Day Youth Eat In. While the garden was planted as a temporary fea ture, civic authorities have agreed to let it remain until at least November Could such an event be held in Canada? With three national meetings under their belt, 36 convivia across Canada, a national newsletter published in both official lan guages and a national website, Slow Food

Canada is emerging as one of Canada’s largest and most impor tant culinary organ izations But Slow Food Canada still does not have a National Association, head office or staff and at this point it is still an organi zation of volunteers scattered across a large, bilingual country Financially they do not have the backing Slow Food U SA and Slow Food International has developed. Suppor t from regional or Provincial govern ments has tremendously benefited Slow Food in Italy and we have not yet seen that kind of governmental support for Slow Food or ar tisan food production in Canada, al though the governments of Quebec and Al ber ta have assisted in sending small scale farmers to Terra Madre Foundation funding and ethical commercial sponsors will be in creasingly hard to come by, even in the U.S. So a large scale Slow Food event in Canada is probably at least a couple of years away. However, excellent regional Slow Food events continue to be held across Canada, including a new Slow Food Film Festival on Vancouver Island, cycling tours to farms in the lower mainland and in Whistler, school garden and taste education programs, and even canning workshops and heirloom tomato potlucks.

Good, Clean and Fair: The pick of the crop at Slow Food Nation.

What was really Good: At a farmers’ market in the Civic Center I found Frog Hollow Farm peaches, Full Belly Farm melons and Cowgirl Creamer y Red Hawk cheese Over at Fort Mason, top artisan charcuterie producers Armandino Batalli (yes, that’s Mario’s Dad) and Paul Bertolli ser ved up mortadella, culatello and other handmade specialty mea t products The en trance to the taste pavilion was flanked by a row of brick ovens pumping out a selection of artisan piz zas and Indian breads as well as a bread museum with an eight foot snail made from orna te artisan loaves gathered from the nation’s best bakeries. What was really Clean: The Sustainable Wine Bar at the Fort Mason Center was a tasting area com prised of 450 wines from 40 different sta tes, the countr y’s largest selection of organic and biod y namic wines More than 12,000 a ttendees tasted raw milk from Organic Pastures Dairy in Fresno Raw milk can now be legally sold in some states, includ ing California

What was really Fair: In the Slo w Food Na tion Victory Garden, those on a budget could hear speak ers for free a t the Soa pbox and buy an affordable snack from the Slo w on the Go section fea turing hand ground organic corn tamales and tortillas from Primavera, organic fair trade iced coffee from micro roasters Blue Bottle Coffee, Bi Rite Creamer y Ice Cream and even 100 percent organic, grass fed beef hot dogs from Let’s Be Frank

Useful links:

Declaration of Healthy Food and Agriculture www.fooddeclaration.org.

Slow Food Nation website (as well as its extensive blog), www.slowfoodnation.org.

Slow Food Canada (where you can link to your local convivium): www slowfood ca

The Oyster is Their World

by Tim Morris

Underfoot, the oyster shells crunch slightly as Pat McDonnell and I wander across his lease on Cor tes Island a sea of white. These ocean delicacies come gift wrapped and swimming in their own nectar and it seems you either love them or hate them in their natural form: fresh, cold and raw from the shell. McDonnell knows them well enough to pinpoint an oyster from a different bay by taste. “ The big difference is salin ity in the liquor. That will vary from beach to beach. Bay to bay.”

What terroir is to wine an expression of place and season reflected in the wine “meroir” is for oysters The coined term means knowing how the beach, time of year, growing method, ocean temperature and feed can shape the taste of each bivalve

It’s the day after the Cor tes Island OysterFest held on the Victoria Day long weekend, and the weather gods have been kind for the first time in its six year run The sun was out and it was hot. Music from the bands playing on the back of the truck rolled across the field by Squirrel Bay and while the kids romped in the field, oyster lovers from Vancouver Island,

Quadra and Cor tes joined others from Halifax, Toronto and California to gulp, slurp, eat and moan down some 5,000 oysters, 240 pounds of clams and 30 quar ts of prawns.

Cortes Island is a two ferry trip east of Campbell River and home to some 900 residents year round All told, about $4 million wor th of shellfish move off the island each year, and al though there are maybe some 35 growers, perhaps only slightly more than a dozen are into it as a full time living The numbers have dropped, says more than one grower, in part because the wholesale price of oysters has not budged significantly in a decade

As we continue to tread across McDonnell’s beach lease, he gathers a bag for a dinner with friends. He explains that when he first became an oyster grower, like others, he sold into the wholesale market. But now he and par tner Cec Robinson have developed their Whaletown Oysters into a specialty brand for a regular clientele of 54 Vancouver Island restaurants.

As Robinson puts it, “Until five years ago, [we were] just selling to the bulk market, throw ing bags on the truck every week Not a lot of satisfaction in that It is a lot more satisfying dealing with the customer I’m having fun at it now ” And they can charge enough to make a living

It almost happened by chance At the first OysterFest, two women kept coming back to their stand and finally said they’d like to buy some Robinson and McDonnell said sure, ready to pack up a few dozen It turned out the women run Tita’s Restaurant in Cour tney and that star ted the idea of selling direct to restaurant chefs.

It was an eye opener, Robinson says. “My assumption was that it would be difficult to find people willing to pay much for oysters where they grow. But what I found is that the restau rants actually were not able to get a reliable at that time supply of consistently excellent oysters And they reacted with enthusiasm, they were so excited They wanted to deal with the grower and tell their guests exactly where the oysters came from and talk to me about what could be just a little bigger and a little smaller and customize their order and get exactly what they want And they know they’ll get the same thing next week ”

This par t of the shellfish business begs all sor ts of comparisons with craft breweries or small wineries. They are mostly aiming at a market willing to pay a bit more for a specialty product. The 15 or so full time oyster growers on Cor tes have star ted to build their brands in the same way small wineries evolved: producing their own brands with distinct tastes and loyal followers.

They sell to the chefs and the chefs in turn to customers, like Josephine Lee. “I’ve never met on oyster I didn’t like,” says the Victoria resident at the festival for the first time A foodie, she knows her oysters, wants them fresh and wants to know where they come from Meroir

She hit 52 oysters in one sitting a few years back a record she figures and usually heads back to her favourite Victoria restaurant because she knows the chef takes great care in

(L) Cor tes Island oyster evangelist Brent Petkau. (R) Chef Kathy Jerritt stirring together a lemon caper aioli for oyster burgers at Cor tes OysterFest 08.

Pat McDonnell of Whaletown Oysters picking oysters from the beach

where he gets his raw oysters. “And I think it’s impor tant, if you really are an oyster lover and know what a fine oyster tastes like, to find a place you can go and be comfor table. Knowing you can eat 52 oysters if you want to and not wake up next morning feeling queasy ”

Lee arrived here because she’d struck up an email conversation with Cor tes Island oys ter evangelist Brent Petkau who, as his T shir t proclaims, invites everyone to join the Oys ter Revolution “An oyster is very different than a mussel or clam To have a premium quality oyster, you have to handle it repeatedly,” says Petkau. “Each time you are working with it, each time you are giving it that extra flavour a cultured oyster will offer you. It takes time. And I’m not working for nothing.”

While enthusiastic and voluble about oysters as a sustainable food, a sexy food, a healthy food and a wonderful tasting food, he is equally forceful about the need for better wholesale prices for the product, saying that on Cor tes both the inventory and morale of growers is low

The solution, if not higher prices, is direct marketing Petkau sells most of his oysters to restaurants in Calgary and Toronto, and his mantra is to convince consumers to eat shell fish once a month

With that comes the obvious question of how oysters taste depending upon the season. The best time, he says, is spring. “Right now [in mid May] is the finest [time for] oysters you will find throughout the year. They’re star ting to feed. Spring is in the air. Life in the ocean arrives with spring a month before it does on land. So right now all these critters in the ocean are just consuming huge amounts of food coming through the winter where they’ve been star ving ”

And the impact on taste? “Full, flavourful biting into blue green algae You’ve got flavour, you’ve got festivities The oysters are busy making love They are spawning and it’s almost like eating an overripe peach And seasonally, appreciate what you’ve got If you find an oyster spawning not to your liking and creamy, put it on the barbecue ”

Cec Robinson, one half of Whaletown Oysters with McDonnell, describes September and fall oysters as “very thin, after spawning and rather than creamy, they go sor t of translu cent. They take on their strongest taste at that point, a metallic taste after spawning.”

In winter, Robinson finds them “more briny, a more powerful salt taste, more of a cu cumber taste I’ve heard that term and it’s actually quite accurate ”

Most of these oysters, with names like Kushi, Whaletown Bay, Royal Cour tesans, Stranger’s Bay, Viks, all begin life as one species, the Pacific oyster or, if you like to get technical, Crassostrea gigas It is the seasons and how they are grown that makes the dif ference

The restaurants all want different sizes One way to control that is moving the oysters up and down the beach, into or out of trays. For these customers, there’s a lot more involved than just picking an oyster off the beach.

Pat McDonnell and I continue to make our way along the shell encrusted beach towards the bay in front of his house A few hundred metres out on a raft, some 30 buckets bob in the water holding a quar ter million tiny but growing oyster seeds When they arrive there are about 5,000 to a tablespoon, says McDonnell

One of the biggest threats to the small oyster growers’ industry is the supply of seeds, most of which are sourced in the U S “ That is our industry’s biggest problem coming up ” This year, a large amount of the seeds from their usual supplier died, leaving only enough for the much larger U.S. growers. “But for anyone here to get them . . . vir tually impossi ble.”

However, the story appears to have had a happy ending. “We lucked out,” continues Mc Donnell. “We found a place, never dealt with before, and our fingers are crossed. They came from Cornwall, England ” He chuckles that we grow Atlantic salmon while they grow Pacific oysters

We look out to the raft where that future paycheque, in 12 to 18 months’ time, is grow ing, bobbing in 30 buckets After three weeks, they get split into 60, and as they grow, they will be thinned out so that by September, there will be 200 buckets “We like to keep it to no more than 1,000 per bucket. They are happier and grow better.” In winter, before the southeast storms hit, those oysters will be brought ashore to star t their beach or tray life. That nursery raft is critical. “If that fails . . . it’s like a funnel. What comes out the bottom is like a paycheque.”

But for the shuckers and the oyster lovers who were celebrating in the sun at the OysterFest this past May, that side of the business is remote when compared to the sounds of raw pleasure It’s all good as far as oyster lovers like Josephine Lee are concerned And growers can only hope for more and more customers like Lee, those who appreciate oys ters the way others enjoy craft beer or specialty wines Customers who will demand of their local stores and favourite chefs some sense of where, when and how their oyster on the half shell came from. It’s the meroir factor!

NANAIMO & Area

Real Food [152 Morrison Street, Parksville, Tel: 250 248 0003] is just that real Hus band and wife team Dallas & Tracy Collis take their food seriously Dallas is so ardent about his victuals, and their lineage, he wants to pass the knowledge on As such, he lectures at two of the local schools teaching kids about their food’s origin and supply chain The man could be the godfather of the 100 meter diet, forget 100 mile. He is adamant about local and cooks that way as far as he can push it. Real Food is a tiny spot. That’s because the business is based on the principle of “eat here at lunch take us home for dinner.” Most of the dishes have an Italian passpor t overridden with another visa saying, “Made Right Around Here ” If you do not get there early, the lasagna with parmesan cream sauce is gone Saffron risotto with Italian sausage and grilled peppers is a regular feature, as is the Torta Rustica and stuffed eggplant Dal las makes all the breads himself Order the wild mushroom soup and a hunk of his bread and you will understand carbohydrate nir vana If you really want to blow your jets, and your waistband, have the tiramisu.

Hail a good Caesar! Welcome Giovanni’s Ristorante [Unit # 4 180 Second Avenue West, Qualicum Beach, Tel: 250 752 6693]. At long last, decent Italian food, made by Italians. Restau rateurs Giovanni and Helen Belcastro come to the beach after a long stretch running a success ful Italian restaurant in Calgary They took a hiatus to sleep and now they’ve settled in, making an “al dente” into their new home in Qualicum Beach They tried for a soft opening in August but word got out, so hungry were we all for good Italian Don’t even think of getting in the door with out a reser vation It is dinner only and white linen to boot Front of house is going through some growing pains which should have sor ted itself out by print time. The kitchen, however, has its act in gear. Calamari marinara was tender and true to its Napoli roots. White veal piccata was per fectly executed. Ditto the chicken Marsala. Pastas could use some fine tuning with a limit on in gredients in favour of elegant simplicity The wine list is in evolution, lacking, oddly, any good Italian wines, except for a street café Bolla That being said, Tony Soprano would eat here This place will grow into itself and carve a notch on the “must try” list of good restaurants in mid Van couver Island

Tar tan Pie Wee Baker y [Unicorn Farm, 1430 Errington Road, Errington, Tel: 250 228 7162] is owned by diminutive, feisty storyteller chef Scotty Swistchew Once you get your ear tuned to the Highland brogue, shut up and listen. Scotty has travelled the world, first as head chef on various ships in the British Merchant Navy, then on deep sea exploration vessels doing cool things like searching for Amelia Earhar t, and, prior to retiring from a life at sea, 14 years as a chef with Seaspan International plying the working coast of BC Scotty makes pies All kinds of pies His pie crust is a gift to mankind: thrice sifted flour, butter, shor tening and eggs, dash of salt, gently kneaded, rolled out, fluted around the edge to keep the black birds inside, and then baked It is flakey, buttery bliss! Sampled for posterity were the chicken pot pie, the steak pie, the shepherd’s pie and the cherry pie All two thumbs up winners He also gives you a vat of gravy to go along with each meat pie. Now, to be frank, I can’t say everything he makes is over the top. Run from the clam chowder and pass on the steak and kidney pie; kidney is not sup posed to bounce. Otherwise, tuck in and enjoy. Oh, about the black birds, I think they were black berries actually as there was no squawking

The Lantzville Village Pub [7197 Lantzville Rd, Lantzville, Tel: 250 390 4019] is a fixture in what used to be a 1920’s heritage hotel on the 30 kilometer zoned road through the small vil lage of Lantzville Having driven by it a zillion times and noted stacks of cars and trucks outside, it finally dawned on me that perhaps folks might be onto something. Don’t expect gastro pub fare. Instead, you will find a friendly relaxed environment, slammed to the hilt with locals, tasty well prepared pub grub, good ser vice and a decent selection of beers on tap. Someone is the kitchen has a love affair with a hog going on You will find lots of squealer on the menu from pulled pork to honking slabs of ribs and many things with bacon crammed into every orifice Needing to be many things to many folks, they also do enormous salads, a few sassy spicy noo dle bowls, hear ty working man sandwiches, good soups and hand cut fries What more can you ask from your “local”?

Su Grimmer

COMOX VALLEY

The big news in the greater Comox Valley Campbell River region has to be this Septem ber’s First Annual Alpine Food Festival at Mount Washington Alpine Resor t [mount washington ca] Kudos to Karen Bonell and Tim Defer t and their staff at Mt Washington, and especially to Sue and company at Beyond the Kitchen Door for this kick off to celebrating the bounty of this region. The weekend event featured workshops with celebrity foodies like Karen Barnaby (Vancouver’s Fish House) and Victoria’s Eric Akis. My favourite was watching (and the tasting) what Chef Ronald St Pierre of Locals [364 8th Street, Cour tenay 250 338 6493 www localscomoxvalley com] and Sarah Walsh of Prontissima Pasta [www prontissimapasta com] did with a shor t time line and a wide range of fresh local ingredi ents Just another reason why September is my favourite time of year to be on the mountain This event raises a number of questions and issues, as well as oppor tunities for the growing

“food/wine/culinary tourism” that this region should be working to address The Cowichan Val ley has done well, suppor ting its producers and food and wine industry, positioning itself as “Canada’s Provence.” With local wine production coming onstream, and several vineyards in the works, the Comox Valley is beginning to attract similar attention. I was told by one source that this region has more going for it than our neighbours to the south. The Alpine Food Festival did a remarkable job (for a first time event) at highlighting our gustatory riches Off the top of my head these highlights included producers like Black Creek’s Island Bison (which is showing up on menus throughout the Valley and the Lower Mainland), Mer ville’s Halstead Farms (organic chicken), Beaufor t Vineyard & Estate Winer y [www beaufor twines ca] in Grantham, and Black Creek’s Pattison Farms (organic vegetables), to name just a few of the many producers involved Now, if only the folks in charge of local economic boosterism could get excited about this...

Getting people excited about food is one of the things I appreciate about Cour tenay’s Beyond the Kitchen Door [274B 5th St, 250 338 4404 / www.beyondthekitchendoor.com]. Besides their hefty involvement in the Alpine Food Festival BtKD hosts a number of classes throughout the year This fall it’s cooking from the Indian subcontinent with chef Tahera Rawji (Nov 8 10), peren nial favourite Eric Akis (Nov 13 14), and then Jon Frazier of Atlas Café [250 6th Street, Cour tenay 250 338 9838](Nov 24) Please note: These events sell out quickly

In Comox, Avenue Bistro [2064 Comox Ave, 250 890 9200] has firmly established its legit macy as the sister to Cour tenay’s venerable and esteemed Atlas Café. Recently adopted “red seal” chef, Aaron Rail, brings his wealth of experience at places like Victoria’s Café Brio and The Marina to the Avenue kitchen, and is making a positive impression local diners

I continue to be impressed by what Chef Emil Shellborn & par tner Nah Yoon Kim are doing at Thyme on the Ocean [1832 Comox Ave, 250 339 5570] They recently star ted a wine club, and are now doing monthly tasting events All events offer winery pricing with at least a dozen wines to taste per evening The restaurant will be closed from Nov 9 18

In Cumberland The Great Escape [2744 Dunsmuir Street, www.greatescape cumberland.com, 250 336 8831] is making changes to its regular menu and instituting “ Thali Thursdays.” The restaurant will be closed Nov. 23 Dec. 8. Cumberland also the relatively new home for another producer highlighted at this year’s Alpine Food Festival, Dark Side Chocolates [2722 Dunsmuir Ave, Cumberland 250 336 0126 / www darksidechocolates com]

Cour tenay’s Crown Isle Resor t [399 Clubhouse Drive, Cour tenay 250 703 5050] hosts its very popular annual WineFest fundraiser on Nov 8, with proceeds going to the SPC A After 18 years of experience in Europe, Chef Norman Müller has made the Comox Valley his home and is put ting his mark on new menus for the Silverado Steakhouse and the Timber Room Pub. Travelling south, Lela Perkins and her crew continue to do amazing things out of the tiny space at Kiki’s Tea room & Spice in Coombs [266 Alberni Hwy, 250 927 5454 / www.kikispice.com]. They’ve re vamped the shop, added more seating, with a new brunch menu, and the usual range of wonderful and interesting Friday & Saturday dinners

I’ve also been hearing some good things about The Cedar Room at Tigh Na Mara Resor t in Parksville [1155 Resor t Drive, Parksville, www tigh na mara com/dining cedar room htm 250 248 2072] Hans Peter Meyer

OK ANAGAN

As you begin putting those holiday gift baskets together, don’t forget to include some Okanagan brilliance! Fans of the uber popular Little Creek Dressings (and greens) will be thrilled to learn that there are new products on the way Creator Donna Deni son developed the original Little Creek Dressing in 1995 to complement her husband, Dale Ziech's, gourmet salad greens grown on their farm After one taste, we all became addicted! Donna has just created an Apple Cider Caesar dressing that is totally "vegan" with no eggs, an chovies or cheese Also in the works is a line of Country Vinegars How does Black Currant & Cherry Balsamic Vinegar sound for the Christmas season?? Yum! Products are available in most fine food stores check out their website for locations. www.littlecreekgardens.com

Want to fur ther your wine education? The Okanagan wine country has all of the tools neces sary to learn all you need to know about the ar t of swirling and sipping Wine Plus+ is a com pany owned and operated by Rhys Pender (our local expert currently working towards his Master of wine) who is now offering educational and consulting services to the wine industry Wine Plus+ provides education through the world recognized Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WS ET) with courses offered in Kelowna and Penticton. www.wineplus.ca

Nothing says I love you at Christmas like a box of wine from the Okanagan! Contact Discover Wines in Kelowna to put together a box of liquid delights and have them shipped Santa style to your lucky gift recipient’s door www discoverwines com Toll free: 1 888 500 3990

Make sure to book a dinner reservation at Kelowna’s hottest neighbourhood restaurant: Seven Six Four when in town Chef Mark Filatow, who also remains at the kitchen helm at the cele brated Waterfront Wines, now provides another chic & beautiful space to enjoy high quality, lo cally inspired cuisine If you are lucky, Chef Filatow will have ready his line of preser ves that you can pop into those gourmet gift baskets! Breakfast and lunch are gorgeous and convenient they are open from 7:30am. (If it is on the menu try the pulled pork sandwich…) For dinner reser vations call 250.764.7645 12 4600 Lakeshore Road.

The Rotten Grape has an Enomatic wine system! This high tech machine is a fully automated, state of the art, wine preservation system direct from Italy that dispenses temperature controlled wines The Enomatic’s state of the ar t technology ensures that the delicate characteristics of the wines are preser ved by using argon gas instead of compressed air in a patented process simi lar to that used during the bottling process that ensures the integrity of the wine Patrons of Kelowna’s hippest wine bar can taste 8 varietals of wine (very well selected bottles) sold by the ounce, all at the touch of a button. 231 Bernard Ave. 250 717 8466 www.rottengrape.com

Investor aler t! Kelowna’s fabulous fish market, Hooked on Seafood, is for sale! With a boom ing fresh fish business to boast as well as the best fish and chips this side of the Pacific, owners Barb and Wayne Malone have decided to focus on their next project We will be sad to see them go but wish them smooth sailing on their next voyage I am sure the future new owners will be taught the secrets of their fish and chip business it is a must stop when in town! Take out avail able too: 1951 Har vey (250) 860 2541 (Contact Barb and Wayne if you are interested in pur chasing the business)

For a touch of holiday magic join The Kelowna Actor’s Studio for some fabulous dinner the atre Book tickets to see their production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s adaption of Cin derella from November 20th to December 14th! Bringing the Best of Broadway to Kelowna, Ar tistic Director Randy Leslie and his troupe offer fun productions all year long For your Dinner, Desser t & Theatre Tickets: www kelownaactorsstudio com or call the Box Office at 250 862 2867 Jennifer Schell

TOFINO

After 11 years of business, the owners of the RainCoast Café, Lisa Henderson and Larry Nicolay are taking a sabbatical Long time sous chef, Brett Ballendine and front end manager Jennifer Dar t continue to offer the same dining experience that keeps guests coming back If you are wondering where Henderson/Nicolay’s sabbatical has taken them, no need to look too far, new projects are on the horizon in a city near you. www.raincoastcafe.com

The 12th Annual Clayoquot Oyster Festival, November 20 22, offers plenty to do during an oth erwise quiet weekend. It is a great weekend to meet the locals too. The Long Beach Lodge Re sor t will host its annual oyster festival kickoff event, this year with a slightly different twist; a ‘Wear White’ Oysters and Bubbles Par ty Friday night brings three fun events to choose from; Smoked, Shucked, and Cooked with The Oysterman (Cor tes Island’s Brent Petkau) in the Drift wood Lounge at the Wickaninnish Inn, Pearls of the Pacific, a four course oyster tasting dinner with sake pairings at Shelter Restaurant, and finally the Mermaid’s Costume Ball featuring the

annual Oyster Slurping Contest (with great prizes for best slurper as well as best costumes). Sat urday wraps up the festival with a family friendly children’s book launch, The Oyster Who Looked at the Sky, Oysters AF LOAT! Farm tours and the Oyster G ala, where you’ll find all your favourite Tofino restaurants showcasing oysters in every way Special guests includes local farmers barbe quing oysters in the Pit, alongside Quadra Island’s Outlandish Shellfish Guild, shucking fresh suc culent oysters For more information on the Clayoquot Oyster Festival, visit www oystergala com Do you love chocolate? Chocolate Tofino has just created a new chocolate call the Organic Laven der Truffle using Salt Spring Island organic lavender. Need a local Tofino gift for someone? Try this Island Flavours a 6 piece box of chocolates made locally, includes two Organic Lavender Truf fles, two Clayoquot Blackberry Buttercreams (using blackberries from Clayoquot Sound) and two Wildflower Honey G anaches (using wildflower honey from Babe's honey in Saanich ) And while summer is a time for ice cream, fall and winter are great for hot chocolates, especially the Choco late Elixir, Chocolate Tofino’s signature winter warm up (reminds me of that hot chocolate from the 2000 film Chocolat!) For more information visit www chocolatetofino com Storm watching season in Tofino has arrived The next couple of months are great times to visit the west coast and experience the ‘real’ Tofino; stormy seas, quiet streets, beachcombing, relax ing and enjoying a delicious meal at one of our local restaurants. The Wickaninnish offers pack ages for both holidays, including exceptional dining experiences with unbeatable views of the wild seas and pristine Chesterman Beach For more information on the Wick’s packages, visit www wick inn com And don’t forget to make reser vations at your favourite Tofino restaurant, many of them change their hours for the winter and book for special events Kira Rogers

VICTORIA

Not just for summer anymore, a handful of Victoria’s pocket markets will brave the colder months by moving into warmer quar ters Bypass supermarket chains and find local gourds, fresh kale, Saanich garlic, homemade preserves and loaves for your holiday fetes and feasts The Fernwood Market will shuffle inside Gladstone Café (grab a hot cup of cocoa while you shop for dinner), the Quadra Village Market moves inside Camas bookstore, and the UVic Mar ket, Gorge Tillicum Market, and Royal Roads Market also find shelter. Visit www.foodroots.ca for days and addresses.

To keep your holiday to do list simple, EAT has sleuthed sources for some of the best ingredients around town for you: Ambrosia’s in Oak Bay will be carrying big, fat, free range turkeys from Saanich Kildonon Farms; call 250 592 7225 to order ahead Plenty Epicurean Pantr y at For t and

Cook has got your spices covered: star anise, a rainbow of peppercorns, plus the not so common galangal, real cinnamon, and whole organic vanilla beans. La Collina (1286 McKenzie Av enue) will be wrapping a ribbon around their European style drinking bowls for hot cocoa kits; Peppers in Cadboro Bay will be carrying the ever popular and decadent fruit cake from the Okana gan Valley Munro’s Books, at 1108 Government St , is bringing in the mammoth A Day at El Bulli, for the holidays, an ode to the legendary, multi award winning Spanish restaurant leviathan Also the highly useful Had a Glass: Top 100 Wines For 2009 Under $20, full of Canadian wines and free of snobbery. Silk Roads Tea (1624 Government St) is offering a series of workshops on homemade gifts and recipes (make your own 100% natural perfume or tea mar tinis). Visit www.silkroad stea.com for dates, but if you can’t attend, purchase kit workshops to do it yourself at home. Muf fet & Louisa’s will be carrying Sarandipity truffles, Dufflet’s Crackle & Liquer Tumbles, and Duchy shor tbreads perfect for stuffing stockings For a full list of holiday foodstuffs about town, visit www eatmagazine ca

Don’t forget to pick up a little extra; this time of year, Victoria’s food banks need donations the most The Mustard Seed St Church is Vancouver Island’s largest food bank Their goal is to pro vide good, nutritional food to people in need. With more than thir ty grocery stores across Victoria where you can drop off donations (most Thrifty Foods and Safeways, Oxford Foods in Cook St. Village, Fairway Market in Oak Bay), they’ve made it easy for you. Visit www themustardsee ca/Foodbank for a complete list of locations and a list of foods most needed You can also call director Brent Palmer at 250 953 1575 The Goldstream Food Bank also distrib utes donations, call 250 474 4443 for more info If hands on help is more your style, Habitat for Humanity is holding a Gingerbread House Par ty at Laurel Point Inn to raise funds for building safe, affordable housing for low income working families in Greater Victoria Local beer, wine, and nosh will accompany the gingerbread men. 250 480 7688 for more information.

At the time this copy went to print, concerned Victorians have raised $120,000 for Madrona Farm in attempt to secure its land in conjunction with The Land Conser vancy. Visit www.madrona farm com for status updates and upcoming fundraising events

Food and ar t meet in the cultural institutions of Victoria At the Ar t Galler y of Greater Victoria this Winter two exhibits highlight the role of food in culture The “Rice is Life” exhibit from Sept 19 to Nov 23, explores the traditional significance of rice in Asia The humble staple that sustains nearly one half of all humankind is rightly honoured here as a cornerstone of economic politics, re ligious traditions, and environmental balance. Also at the Ar t Gallery, the “Lot in Life” exhibit show cases the activities we perform to sur vive; food production is, of course, one of the main endeavours E xamine how labour and food have been depicted by ar tists over the centuries Sept 12 to Jan 4th Over at the Royal BC Museum on Jan 8th, the Thursday Night Café Series will

be discussing the relationship between culture and food The type of food we enjoy is strongly influenced by our cultural background or is it? Can you learn about your culture and history through food alone? www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca

In restaurant news, The Ambrosia Centre on Fisgard street has quietly opened the doors to its supper club. Seating only thir ty the club boasts an exquisite menu, live music and top notch ser vice in an intimate setting Meanwhile over on Government, Café Vieux Montreal has ser ved its last croissant The slice of Quebecois atmosphere will be missed in our very Anglophone city Wine guy Mike Sly has joined Beth Crawford at Mattick’s Farm VQA. Crawford says, “Anyone who knows Mike knows what a knowledgeable person he is when it comes to wine, and anyone who doesn’t soon will ”¡Orale! Spanish for “extreme excitement” is hoping Victoria will be ex tremely excited about its tacos, tamales, and pulled meats. The new Mexican eatery is on the cor ner of Johnson and Cook.

And not to toot our horn, but food enthusiasts may benefit from knowing EAT Magazine has a richer, fuller, website chok a block with the latest news, events, books, wines, seasonal recipes, and quite a lot more Stop by the site regularly like any good menu, it will be refreshed and up dated daily We hope you like it www eatmagazine ca Katie Zdybel

VANCOUVER

There has been no slowing down in Vancouver's food scene over the last two months, with several new restaurants opening and several more to bloom on the immediate hori zon Let's begin with those that are currently enjoying their first tables Andreas Seppelt (Go Fish) and Stephan G agnon (Jules Bistro) have opened Le Faux Bourgeois way out on East 15th The hear ty menu at this casual French bistro was designed by executive chef Tina Fineza, formerly of Bin 942 and on loan from West 4th's Flying Tiger.

The Irish Heather has opened in its new location across the street from its original G astown spot. With it came the Shebeen Whisky House and the Salty Tongue Deli. Housed in the same modern building (the Shebeen is separated by a shor t alley in the back, as at the original) with an interior design cour tesy of Evoke (Glowbal, Sanafir, Coast, FigMint, The Cascade Room, and more), it has been getting good reviews out of the gate with all praising chef Colleen McClean's (ex Rare, Feenies) gastropub cooking (lovely Guinness braised steak pies)

The new chainlet from Cactus Club co founder Scott Morison, Pinkys Steakhouse, has opened their second location on West 4th with little fanfare, adding more fat to a strip of Kitsilano that has become almost grotesquely overweight with new restaurants in just two years. Not far off, Mon Bella opened a few blocks down on West 1st Brad Roark's (ex Tapastree, CinCin) concept sees a mix of casual French and Italian food in an airy space that exudes freshness much bet ter looking than the location's two most recent incarnations, Vintropolis and the almost ridicu lously shor t lived Industr y, which came and went in a for tnight or two earlier this year.

In Coal Harbour, Voya at the Loden hotel has finally opened, a year behind schedule The fine dining restaurant showcases the graft of Marc Andre Choquette (ex Lumiere) in the kitchen and the bar stylings of Jay Jones, one of Vancouver's top tenders

On Davie, former Bin 941 and 942 operations manager Ed Perrow has teamed up with a pair of young German brother chefs to open the fetching hotspot La Brasserie, while fur ther down the street Romano's Macaroni Grill has shut down after 15 years in the old Keg Mansion loca tion Ironically, it will become another Keg Steakhouse (it's the circle of life, Simba)

As for restaurants opening soon, we have several more to look forward to At the time of writ ing we're still waiting for Piato on 4th, a modern Greek restaurant, though we're pretty cer tain they'll be good to go by the time this goes to print On Granville, Sip Resto Lounge has a new restaurant in the works on their second floor called MRKT (I assume this is a Klingon word that translates as "must destroy vowels") It too may very well have opened by the time this issue hits the streets, albeit with a possible change to their name. Why? Enter international celebrity chef Jean Georges Vongerichten, who will be launching his first Canadian restaurant in the up coming Shangri La Hotel this January Its name? Market Ouch The highly anticipated Cam pagnolo, the new Italian restaurant from the folks who brought us Fuel, should open this month on Main, as should the new Lumiere and Daniel Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne on West Broadway. December will bring a new wine bar into the Bentall complex at Pender and Burrard. The Wine Room, as it's being called, will see the sommelier talents of Keith Nicholson, formerly the wine guy and general manager at Whistler's high end Bearfoot Bistro, home of the Canadian Culinary Champion, chef Melissa Craig

In the closure depar tment, it was a benevolent autumn with no notable victims. Let's hope it stays that way through the winter Andrew Morrison

wines for great everyday drinking

THE WINES

WHITES

Marcel Deiss Pinot Blanc 05 France $38.00 42.00

by Larr y Arnold

The best often cost a little more but I can assure you the extra expense is wor th every penny Winemaker Jean Michel Diess lets his biodynamic vineyards do the talking and believe me this full bodied mezzo soprano virtually sings in the glass Peaches and apricots with a dense oily texture and powerful ear thy nuances! A super Pinot Blanc to be savored

Prum Urziger Wurzgar ten Riesling Kabinett 06 Germany $33.00 38.00

This is without a doubt the biggest Kabinett I have ever tasted in my 35 years of tasting wine! Beautifully balanced with superb concentration and lovely peach and mineral flavours Even though this wine is huge there is more than enough crunchy acidity to keep it balanced and focused!

Bastide de Garille “Cuvee Fruitee” Viognier 07 France $16.00 20.00

An absolute fruit bomb that must be tasted to be believed! Unfettered with oak, each sip is an explosion of vibrant honeysuckle, peach and apricot flavours. Straight forward, refreshing and absolutely delicious.

Meyer Family Tribute Series-Emily Carr Chard 06 British Columbia $38.00-45.00

About as Burgundian as you’re going to get this side of Beaune Rich and creamy with wonderful citrus, nut and tropical fruit flavours and a soft clean finish Who would have thought?

REDS

Ch Haut Vigneau Premieres Cotes de Blaye 05 France $25.00 30.00

Restrained black currant, spice and tobacco notes, medium bodied with a richly textured palate and a touch of vanilla on the long chewy finish Scoop them up because the 2005’s still on the market will not be around for long

Jaboulet Vercherre Bourgogne Pinot Noir 05 France $25.00 30.00

Good Pinot is unlike any other wine made. With its alluring bouquet and seductive texture it appeals directly to the hear t and for those that know its charm it is an experience not soon forgot. Full bodied with black cherry and plum flavours, a slight gaminess with some fine tannins in the long robust finish! Tasty.

Tollo Colle Secco Rubino 04 Italy $18.00-22.00

Deep garnet with delicious black cherry and ear th scents, black fruit flavours with a touch of bitterness, good acidity and plenty of soft ripe tannins to round off the finish.

Terra Andina Carmenere Reser va 07 Argentina $17.00 18.00

Big and beautiful, this hear ty red from the foothills of the Andes is concentrated and polished with intense berry flavours and fine grained tannins Excellent

Chateau de Rully Rouge 05 France $45.00-50.00

Whoa! If you love Burgundy you will absolutely love this fine pinot from the Cote Chalonnaise. Medium bodied and richly textured with complex layers of cherry, spice and barnyard scents.

Pinossimo Pinot Noir 06 France $16.00 19.00

Soft and silky with appealing aromas of red cherries, spice and warm ear th, nicely balanced with a long, juicy finish

SPIRITS

Victoria Gin Vancouver Island $55.00 60.00

Eye of newt, hair of dog are just a couple of the ingredients that may or may not be included in this charming but lethal elixir. The shiny new pot still on Old West Saanich Rd. is working round the clock trying to keep up with orders and though expensive this silky smooth dry gin is definitely wor th putting out for a bottle or three

Canadian

Festival: Victoria’s Place As BC Craf t Beer Capitol Is Still Secure

By Christopher Pollon

With more than 170 beers to choose from, including many cask conditioned I PAs, imperial stouts and other wonderful oddities, the 16th annual Great Canadian Beer Festival in September proved again that Victoria is the undis puted craft beer capitol of BC.

Scalpers were working the crowds outside Royal Athletic Park, selling and seeking tickets for an event that sells out every year leading up to the event, passes for the Saturday session were selling for $200 on Craigslist

The event draws brew masters from primarily Western Canada and the Pacific US, with one significant omission the major brewers who supply well over 90 percent of the beer consumed in Canada are not invited. In other words, there were no “cer tified ice cold” light lagers on offer here just pale and India pale ales in numbers, darker hued stouts and por ters, Belgians galore, and where lagers did appear, there was more flavour and less fizz.

For me personally, it was the unusual and experimental offerings that attracted my focus, and for those who think that fruit, herbs and even vegetables have no place in beer, there were ample oppor tunities here to prompt one to reconsider

My first stop was at Crannog Ales of Sorrento BC, which with this event retained its sta tus as a BC beer treasure: the Pookah Cherry Ale made with organic Shuswap bings was pouring, as was the cask conditioned Bansidhe Organic Fruit Ale Each cask of the latter was slightly different, stuffed with varying combinations of Saskatoon berries, currants, cherries, plums and crab apples produced organically on their farm.

Victoria’s Hugo’s Brewhouse offered up its ginger and ginseng infused “Super G” a beer which promised to “make for happiness, virility and long life,” but delivered only a strange medicinal burn on the finish I wouldn’t order a pint of it in the future, but I’m glad I tried it anyway Then there was Eureka California’s Tangerine Wheat Ale, which came on like boozy Tang, while Russell Brewing’s Lemon Wheat Ale was all citrusy bombast, wack ing the tastebuds with a syrupy sweet sledgehammer

Other fruit and vegetable experiments were more successful: Oregon’s famous Rogue brewery featured its Chipotle Ale, a beautiful golden ale with subtle smokiness and a slight chilli burn at the end. Tin Whistle Brewing of Penticton provided a pleasant surprise with their delicate and light Peach Cream Ale, powered by 100 percent Okanagan fruit.

When it came to Belgian impor ts, I was drawn to the Mor t Subite Kriek, a bubbly and sweet cherry infused lambic with a pink head, deep red colour, and a dry, slightly sour close Nor th American takes on various Belgian styles of beer were numerous, but Uni broue’s Fin Du Monde with its boozy composite of malt, fruit and spice was a par ticular treat, and the Granny Smith infused Ephemere Apple was another highlight

Amid all this beer bliss, there were some unexplained phenomena like the enormous line ups for both Dead Frog and Steamworks Brewing This might be explained, in the lat ter case, by the popular seasonal Great Pumpkin Ale: with powerful nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger flavours, drinking this beer is like drinking a slice of pumpkin pie. I was better able to justify lining up at the Central City Brewpub booth, where brew master G ary Lohin himself was pouring his fruity, boozy Thor’s Hammer Barley Wine, which was aged a year in advance of the event.

All in all, the festival was an enormously civilized affair people were friendly, jovial, with both sexes well represented; the police were present but very much in the back ground; and even though the event was outside, smokers were corralled like cattle into a small rectangular fenced pen on the periphery of the field

Most impor tantly, there were more great craft brews than you could sample in an after noon, which brings me full circle: I don’t know exactly why Victoria is BC’s beer capitol, but it most cer tainly is, and they have this event to prove it.

W i n e b y N u m b e r s

In an industry gone mad fo r p o i n t s c o re s , y o u r o w n p a l a t e i s s t il l t h e best way to rate a wine.

By Michaela Morris and Michelle Bouffard

Buying wine can be intimidating Even we feel over whelmed sometimes When selection was limited, it might have been boring but it cer tainly was easier Today we are spoiled for choice So, how do you pick a wine? Even if you narrow it down to a specific country or region, grape variety and price, you may still have plenty to choose from A shelf talker exclaiming 90 points for your $15 bottle seals the deal With a score like that, it’s got to be good, right?

Grudgingly, we will admit that points matter They matter to the wine producer who is trying to sell his or her wine They matter to the impor ter or wine store who in turn must flog the wine They matter to magazines, such as Wine Spectator, which proclaim on their front covers: “Inside, more than X number of wines over 90 points!” in an effor t to sell their pub lication And they matter to the consumer who is trying to make a quick and palatable decision about what to buy

The 100 point system is a brilliant innovation when it comes to scoring wine It is easy for us Nor th Americans to under stand because we were graded out of 100 at school Leading U S wine critic Rober t M Parker, Jr is credited with its incep tion He argues that the previously popular 20 point system didn’t offer enough flexibility to rate a wine accurately In his approach, wines in his Wine Advocate get 50 points just for showing up If only schools applied the same rule! Then a va riety of points are awarded for colour, aroma, flavour, finish and aging potential The immediate success of this system encouraged most other critics and publications to adopt it While Parker’s intention of giving guidance to us wine drinkers was good, he and his ilk created a monster: a world obsessed with point scores It’s not Parker’s fault that we have become fixated on scores and often ignore the review that ac companies them A number simply cannot convey how a wine will taste Do we buy ar t or music based on a score? Don’t we choose these by personal preference? The obvious difference is that you can see or hear before you buy, but with wine, you seldom get to try it.

Reading the comment that goes along with the score is a step in the right direction. If you aren’t a fan of oaky wines and the review reads “toast, vanilla and wood spice,” you probably won’t like it even if it did receive 92 points. Would you watch a horror film even though you can’t stomach the genre just because a movie critic said it was good?

Critics have their own taste and it won’t necessarily be the same as yours. Rober t Parker, known for his preference for big, opulent wines with low acid and high alcohol, tends to give these wines higher scores. Less well known but talented wine writer Stephen Tanzer favours wines with a bit more acid ity. When the same wine is reviewed by these exper ts, the re sult may be a very different rating. If you are going to rely on the critics, see how their tastes align with yours. “Gobs of ripe, jammy fruit” may not actually appeal to you whereas “a bright, crunchy elegant wine” may be more up your alley, even if the former garnered a higher point score.

To complicate matters, the 100 point scale is not the only rating system in use today. Some critics employ a 20 point or 5 star system. And one does not translate to the other very effectively. Seventeen out of 20 is considered good but only conver ts to 85. The star system fares even worse when a translation is attempted: 4 out of 5 equals a lowly 80. Even

within the same system, scoring standards vary Cer tain crit ics give away 90 points at the drop of a cork Others bestow such an honour on a relative handful of wines A score of 90 from a tough marker (such as Burgundy exper t Allen Mead ows) is quite an achievement In the words of one of our favourite wine writers, Jancis Robinson: “It would be much more convenient for everyone if there were a single objective quality scale against which every wine in the world could be measured, but I’m afraid I just don’t believe such a scale ex ists ”

The obsession with point scores has seriously influenced the wines that are being made today Many winemakers have altered the way they produce wine to appeal to specific influ ential palates Imagine if the technology existed to guarantee a high score In fact, this isn’t far from the truth; producers are already taking advantage of that technology Hello ho mogenization and goodbye individuality

It comes as no surprise, then, that the amount of highly rated wines has increased Ninety point wines used to be ex ceptional; today they are a dime a dozen Anything below 90 has become unacceptable even for wines that are less than $20 Most of us would deem 85 a good test result at school

For a wine, it’s the kiss of death But if you happen to read the fine print of Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar newsletter, he states: “Wines rated at least 85 are recom mended bottles that should provide pleasurable drinking ” According to him, 80 84 represents wines that are “good” and while the Wine Spectator uses this range for “a solid, well made wine ”

Most critics award extra points for the wine’s ability to age Do those extra points really matter if you’re popping the cork immediately? A wine may be favourably reviewed but not par ticularly friendly when young Wine Spectator’s ratings “are based on potential quality: how good the wines will be when they are at their peak ” If you aren’t drinking the wine at its peak, the score becomes meaningless, if it wasn’t already

It is quite possible that many of the unrated wines we enjoy would fall into the category of “solid and well made ” Do we really care that someone might attach a numerical score of 80 84 to them? Would this have an impact on our enjoyment of the wine? Often the girl next door is more approachable, friendly and charming than a supermodel It’s more than OK to dislike a wine that received 95 and love a wine that scored 85

Tasting for a living is not easy Yes, we can hear you chuck ling It’s true, though While we’re not looking for sympathy for the wine critic or for ourselves, just consider trying 50 wines in a single day and endeavouring to assess them prop erly Your palate eventually gets tired no matter how practised a taster you are In these rigorous circumstances, the high al cohol fruit bombs stand out and often end up receiving a higher score In a normal setting, it may be almost impossible to enjoy more than a few sips of a fruit bomb before craving something more refreshing and food friendly

The atmosphere and company you are with will trump any point score The whole industry of rating wine is contradictory to what wine is all about Wine is meant to be savoured not scored Your enjoyment is paramount Even Rober t Parker says: “There can never be any substitute for your own palate ”

T a s t i n g N o t e s

*The references to other critics’ scores is not to dis credit them. After all, rating wine is subjective.

WH ITE

2007 J.J. McWilliams, Chardonnay, South Eastern Australia, $10.99

No rating for this wine We aren’t going to give it a point score, but we are going to tell you that this wine offers great value for money. Perfect for those who like a riper, new world Chard that isn’t oaky. Ripe pineapple and but tery flavours but still food friendly.

R E D

2007 Bodega Cavas del 23 “Beviam” Cabernet Sauvi gnon, Mendoza, Argentina, $13 75

We reviewed this wine several times and our notes are al ways positive and consistent. Appealing nose of focused dark fruit and bloody notes. Dry tannin; definitely in need of a juicy steak. What more do you want for this price? (70 points, Anthony Gismondi)

2006 McWilliam’s Hanwood Estate, Shiraz, South Eastern Australia, $14.99

Don’t think about the point score here, especially if 85 isn’t enough for you Well made and fairly priced Aussie Shiraz lovers will be satisfied without breaking the bank. Classic baked plums with hints of caramel. Mouth filling. (85 points, Wine Spectator)

2005 Telmo Rodriguez, Dehesa Gago, Toro DO, $19.99

Rober t Parker calls this wine “a stunning value.” We have to agree. Yet it hasn’t achieved the 90+ point score that really grabs consumers’ attention. Too bad. This serious, masculine wine really shines next to a piece of lamb (89 points, Rober t Parker, versus 84 points, Wine Spectator)

2006 Chono, Cabernet Sauvignon, Reser va, Maipo Valley, Chile $21.50

Pungent aromas of green bell pepper and tar; there is no mistaking that this is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile Honestly made with good acidity that begs you to take another sip. (While past and current vintages have never scored more than 88 points, it’s still wor thy of your hard earned dollars.)

2004 Villa Antinori, Toscana IGT, Italy, $24.95

I F we were in the score business, we’d probably rate this wine higher than the numbers it currently gets. Aromas of grilled herbs and pine forest take us directly to Tus cany Slatey and savoury on the palate with integrated oak Bring on the puttanesca! (80 points, Anthony Gis mondi)

Mitolo, GAM Shiraz, McLaren Vale, Australia, $54.00

Obviously, the 95 point score from Rober t Parker will be used to promote the wine rather than the 88 points from Wine Spectator Unless you do your own research, you may not be aware that another publication gave it a lower score. If you did discover this, would you buy it as willingly? Hopefully you are buying it because you love it. This hedonistic and bold wine is a consistent performer. (95 points, Rober t Parker, 88 points, Wine Spectator)

Qupé and Au Bon Climat

Then there are those wines that always wow us but re peatedly receive less than stellar scores From California, Qupé’s Syrahs and Au Bon Climat’s Pinot Noirs fall into this category In our humble opinion, they definitely war rant a frequent place on your dinner table

by Treve

It was nearly the end of my long, hot day in the valley sun, and after talking to am bitious folks for hours about their sweet beverage plans, I was ready for a drink So I was very happy indeed to come across Beau fort Vineyard & Estate Winery, open since May and happily pouring tastings with visitors like me. Owners, winemakers, vineyard labourers, marketers and tasting room pourers Susan and Jeff Vandermolen were already 60 percent sold out when I visited them six weekends after they opened their doors In addition to the above titles, Susan and Jeff are also bonafide globetrotters (60 countries and counting), hold degrees in chemical engi neering and business respectively, and have a combined 40 plus years of business experi ence. Their motto is “work to live not the other way around!” So lifestyle was a huge consideration when they were deciding to set up shop in Comox They looked at more than 100 sites before purchasing 85 acres of land in 2006

Not adverse to hard work, within two years they’ve conver ted eight acres from cattle pas ture to groomed vineyard; purchased all vineyard related farming equipment (tractor, ATV, trailers); improved site drainage; designed vineyard layout, trellises, drip irrigation and fencing; selected and sourced grape varietals; planted 7,500 vines; drilled a water well; renovated their family home and grounds to accommodate tasting room, wine production and storage; and sourced, processed, fermented and aged 16 5 tons of grapes as well as 2 5 tons of black currants/blackberries And they’re still constantly smiling!

The smiles persist because the hard work has paid off in the form of three recent awards they picked up at the 2008 Nor thwest Wine Summit in Oregon (Pinot Gris silver; Or tega bronze, and their for tified Black bronze) Or it could be the overwhelmingly enthusiastic suppor t they’ve received from local restaurants and residents. While they wait for their vines to mature, they’ve sourced their grapes from the Saanich Peninsula and Oliver, and, with the help of well known consulting winemaker Todd Moore, have seven inaugural re leases. When their own vines are ready for har vest in fall 2009, they’ll be picking mildew resistant hybrids specifically chosen for their cooler climate: Marechal Foch, Leon Millot, Cabernet Foch X, Or tega (Riesling X) and Siegerrebe (Gewürztraminer X) And their dis tinctive label? On the eve of the millennium, they experienced the giant Moai statues of Easter Island and fell in love with the serene beasts When it came time to consider an image for Beaufor t Winery, the Moai (and its great “nose” for wine) won out They sought out local car ver Stan Skuse from Campbell River and commissioned him to car ve the Moai from a giant fir tree on their land. The final result: a striking, 14 foot, four ton guardian of the grapes looking out over the vineyard in the geographical direction of Easter Island.

Beaufor t Vineyard & Estate Winer y

5854 Pickering Rd., Cour tenay, 250 338 1357, www.beaufor twines.ca

Mad for Merlot

Finally, the Sideways silliness is over and we can get back to enjoying bottles of good merlot And why not? BC may have found its signature red grape in this appealing vinifera that ripens nicely in the Okanagan sun This fine example from Pentage, a winery high up overlooking Skaha Lake, avoids the cloying style of so many overripe new world merlots delivering instead a dry, medium bodied, food friendly sip that made me think Italian in its structure. I loved the mild tannic grip, the acidity and the nose of cherry, spice and mocha. Recommended with wild mushroom risotto. G H

In the Comox Valley, a new winery is making this u p - a n d - c o m i n g r e g i o n e v e n m o r e a p p e a l i n g .

Ring

Susaan an d Je ff Van de rmolen at Beaufor t Vin eyard & E stat e Wine r y

Alberto Pozzolo

The Italian Baker y 250 388 4557

My wife Janet and I were in Montreal for my friend's wedding and after lodged with them in their quiet cot tage in the Laurentian Moun tains The couple headed into town while we made them a romantic dinner with the newly picked chanterelles (Au gust wet showers and my keen vision) All was going smoothly, until I turned around and saw flames coming out of the oven. The croutons were on fire In no time the cottage was engulfed with smoke as the outside fire alarm horn star ted to blare which was connected to the fire depar tment. My friend was able to respond to my call and instruct me on how to quiet the blaring horn I still remember well the sound carrying through the peaceful valley and how the neighbours must have been rudely awakened from their leisurely afternoon naps

Ken Hueston Smoken Bones Cookshack 250.391.6328

I got a good one! When I was the chef up Island we were open on Christmas day for a wedding A cake was brought in that was custom made by a family down in Mexico and flown to Van couver then delivered to our door After inspecting this exotic cake my sous chef put it on a table Minutes later we heard a huge crashing sound. Goodbye cake! I have never improvised so fast I wonder if the bride and groom noticed the subtle dif ferences?

Tak ashi Ito The Empress Room 250.389.2727

My worst experience was my first turkey dinner experience. New to Canada, my wife and I were very excited as you don't see whole turkeys roasted on Japanese dinner tables My friend's mom cooked a turkey but it was cooked to very dead! It was painful to swallow that turkey and a lot of gravy and cran berry sauce were needed As a chef I can't leave anything on the plate or people will ask me, "was anything wrong?" Some times it's painful

Peter Heptonstall Restaurant Matisse 250.480.0883

It was Christmas day My new bride had invited her parents and mine for the family turkey diner All was going well Cocktails and warm conversation, house filled with an atmosphere of sage and onion, and a Turkey that had slow roasted for hours We settled down to an opening dish when the background of soft festive music was blown away with a very large thud, fol lowed by a slobbering happy munching, tail waging kind of sound coming the kitchen. Yes, Tiger our family pet, a large shepherd lab cross who was indifferent to Christian (or any other) celebration, had found a fine turkey resting on the cut ting board.

Cory Pel an Ristorante La Piola 250.388.4557

A few years back at a different kitchen, my crew and I were prepping for one of many 200 plus person Christmas banquets. I decided to take on the task of cleaning, seasoning and truss ing the turkeys. I made a nice rub with fresh herbs, pureed shallots and garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper I then stuffed the cavities with lemon wedges, onion, whole shallots and fresh herbs. We had proudly sent out the turkeys with all the trim

mings to the eager crowd and were tidying up when I realized, looking down at my left ring finger, my wedding ring was miss ing I had the team scouring the kitchen for what seemed like an eternity, to no avail It then dawned on me the ring must have slipped off while stuffing the birds. I like to think that one of the guests may have received an early Christmas present, but more likely the ring was in the local landfill The real disas ter occurred later when I told my wife and yes we're still to gether

Jonathan Smid Bon Rouge Bistro 250.220.8008

I was in culinary school during Thanksgiving and my instructor trusted me with the turkey ballotine I was told to sear the 25 lb. bird in a shallow pot filled with searing hot oil. I got one end down nicely, then my tongs slipped While I was diving out of the way, I noticed to my chagrin another student looking in tently into the pot. Horrified and screaming, he proceeded to rub his face with a rag, dispersing the hot, napalm like oil all over his face. A quick trip to the hospital, and about a gallon of burn cream later, he only carried a slight resemblance to the elephant man I apologized profusely into his fully bandaged face, he murmured, “Accidents happen, we are here to learn after all” I haven’t bothered to recreate the dish, though I’ve re membered that nightmare every Thanksgiving since

Markus Weil and Markus’ Wharfside Bistro 250.642.3596

My biggest holiday disaster was on our first Valentine's day five years ago. The rare time that I took a holiday booking (as the reser vation book is a science in its self!) was for Valentine's day, and I ended up over booking us by one table!