This past Novembers Gold Medal Plates BCs most prestigious cooking competition set a dozen of the provinces top chefs against one another. It was a close-run thing, with edging out Ensembles Dale Mackay by a hair for the gold medal. Feenies success advanced him to the Canadian Culinary Championships (CCC), the gruelling, vicious, altogether unkind contest that just took place over the weekend in Kelowna.
Gold Medal Plates competitions take place in eight other major cities across Canada to establish who will compete in the CCC, which is our cooking equivalent of the Stanley Cup finals, although instead of seven games, its all a sudden-death shootout. Matching Feenies win were Michael Dacquisto of Winnipegs Wow Hospitality Concepts; J.P. St. Denis of Montreals Kitchen Galerie Poisson; Jan Trittenbach of Edmontons Packrat Louie; Anthony McCarthy of Saskatoons Saskatoon Club; Michael Dekker of Calgarys Rouge; Marc Lepine of Ottawas Atelier; Jonathan Gushue of Torontos Langdon Hall; and Mike Barsky of St. Johns Bacalao.
Each gold medalist landed in the Okanagan on Thursday, and together with judges from each of the regions represented (myself among them), they gathered at Quails Gate Winery. Here, they were reminded that there were actually three competitions in one a mystery wine battle, a black box contest and the grand finale.
To start, they were each given a bottle of unlabelled Canadian wine (Ontarios 2008 Chateau des Charmes Riesling), $500 cash for ingredients, and 24 hours to come up with 350 identical plates that pair with the mystery wine. Im also the national referee, so I had to go over all of their receipts to ensure the expenditures were within the prescribed limits. (If they go over, theyre docked major points.) The spread was wide, with the chef from St. Johns returning with over $200 and the chef from Montreal having spent $499.87.
Marc Lepine of Ottawa stole the show with his citrus-ash-dusted, avocado-wrapped roulade of lagoustine. Feenie came a distant second with his butternut squash gnocchi mounted with parmesan foam and sauced with complex, bacon-licked chicken reduction. The rest were far back. Feenie would have to pull a rabbit out of his toque if he was to catch up with Lepine, and Lepine would have to fall flat on his face.
Early the next day, one by one, the chefs were given a box containing a set of ingredients that had to be incorporated into two dishes each replicated 12 times in under an hour. This year, they were given wild rice, cloudberries (aka bakeapples), goose breasts, parsley roots, Lake Diefenbaker steelhead, and Rassembleu blue cheese. Im happy to report that no one went over time, but not all chefs managed to impress. There was a lot of basic searing of the goose (a lot of blood rare renderings), and very few knew what to make of cloudberries or had an idea as to what to do with wild rice. Again, it was Lepine coming out on top (his dishes were almost without fault), followed a ways off by Feenie, with a battle shaping up for bronze.
At the end of it, everyone was bone tired, but the grand finale was only a few hours off in the ballroom of the Delta Grand Hotel. In a way, holding two huge competitions on the same day mirrors the workload and stress-levels of a busy Saturday service at a top-tier restaurant (with a table of several hungry restaurant critics at both lunch and dinner), so if youre a champion, you stand tall and lean into it. St. Denis of Montreal won the night with an inverted Vitello Tonnato (veal tongue over a carpaccio of tuna), which elevated him from the middle of the pack to secure the bronze medal. Feenie, again, did exceptionally well this time with rabbit bacon presse and foie gras boudin but so did Lepine, who nestled a beautifully seared (and truffle surrounded) Quadra Island scallop next to perfect little croquettes of chorizo under a snow of bacon powder. He was and am Im not exaggerating here the most poised and professional chef Ive ever seen in action, and it was amazing to watch from close up. He won the gold medal with remarkable ease, and made me seriously consider a stopover in Ottawa for the short flight back to Vancouver.
My takeaway? Id like to say how magical it was to see so much money raised in ticket sales and auction items to help fund Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes heading to London this summer (truly wonderful), or that it was really awesome seeing Ed Robertson perform with Barney Bentall on stage at the finale (it certainly was), or how cool it was that the Similkameens little Orofino Strawbale Winery took home the Best Wine nod from some of this countrys top oenophiles. But what really impressed me the most was the state of Canadian cuisine, especially the hands that are currently responsible for it.
I write plenty about how far Vancouvers food scene has come in the last few years, but the same can plainly be said of cities across this country.
The evidence, however fleeting, was all kinds of delicious.
