VANCOUVER
Honourary Chair: Trevor Linden
Chairs: Arthur Griffiths, Tricia Smith, Joel Finlay, Steve Swaffield
Gold Medal Plates is the ultimate celebration of Canadian Excellence in cuisine, wine, entertainment and athletic achievement.
Gold Medal Plates VancouverFriday October 23, 2009 6:00 pm
The Westin Bayshore
1601 Bayshore Drive
or
Or contact:
Tina Oliver
Power of T.W.O
3219 West King Edward Avenue
Vancouver, BC, V6L 1V6
604-803-8813 - phone
604-730-9592 - fax
E: tinaoliver@shaw.ca
Angus An, Gastropod Catering & Maenam Restaurant
Andrea Carlson, Bishop's
Rob Feenie, Cactus Club
Don Letendre, Elixir
Dale MacKay, Lumiere
Tobias McDonald, La Belle Auberge
Pino Posteraro, Cioppino
Dino Renaerts, Diva at the Met
Vikram Vij, Vij's
James Walt, Araxi
James Chatto
Sid Cross
Andrew Morrison
Lesley Stowe
Barbara-Jo McIntosh
Frank Pabst
2009 COMPETING WINERIES
"Gold Medal Plates was founded to promote awareness in the excellence of Canadian cuisine and wine, while raising funds for Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes. My job is to put Canadian chefs and Canadian wineries in touch with each other and to ensure the Gold Medal Plates food and wine pairings truly reflect excellence. This program carries forward my personal goals expressed through the founding of Canadian Wine Awards in 2001 - to let Canadians know that a great industry is growing and flourishing under their feet. I first began to sense the potential and need for national wine pride based on quality as a wine columnist for the Globe and Mail in the mid-nineties, prompting me to make Wine Access a national publication in 1997. Gold Medal Plates is, for me, the logical next step in putting the idea directly on to Canada's tables."
David Lawrason
National Wine Advisor
Gold Medal Plates would like to thank the following wineries for their generous donations to the 2009 campaign:
| WINERY | WINE |
| Coming Soon |
2009 RARE WINE AND LIVE AUCTIONClick here for complete information.
The Vancouver 2008 Gold Medal Plates gala was another triumph. Almost 700 guests, chefs, cooks and athletes crowded the Westin Bayshore hotel looking to party and the event did not disappoint. Melissa Craig, chef of Barefoot Bistro and current Canadian Culinary Champion, was back on her home turf, showing her mettle with a delectable dish during the VIP reception. Jim Cuddy was joined on stage by local hero Barnie Bentall and the incomparable Anne Lindsay for several musical sets that had the audience on their feet.Last year's gold-medal wining chef, Pino Posteraro, owner-chef of Cioppino's, prepared dessert and served as one of the judges. Pino's involvement with Gold Medal Plates has been tremendous over the years in terms of both practical support and inspiration within the chefs' community and it was a pleasure to induct him into the Gold Medal Plates Hall of Fame. We also welcomed Daniel Boulud, renowned as one of the world's greatest chefs and now a gastronomic presence in Vancouver, as Honourary Chair of the gala. His generous donation of a weekend in New York including flights, meals at his restaurants there and in Vancouver led off a very successful auction.
The competing chefs' imagination and dedication to the competition was in particular evidence last night with a wide variety of dishes on offer. The judges has their work cut out for them and, as has often been the case during this campaign, marks were extrremely tight with less than one percentage point separating the gold and silver medallists' scores.Taking the bronze medal was Andrey Durbach of Parkside. He presented each guest with an individual pot au feu of game birds and wild mushrooms based on a sumptuously layered, dark, clear game consommé. Bathing in the broth were several items: here a soft-textured farce of duck confit and chestnut wrapped in a bright green cabbage leaf; there a slice of capon and truffle boudin blanc; beside them, a porcini mushroom-stuffed capeletto, the pasta darkened by the inclusion of powdered dried porcini instead of a measure of the flour; a torchon of quail and pheasant breast completed the dish. Chef Durbach paired it with Stag's Hollow Simply Noir 2006 from the Okanagan, a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir that worked beautifully with the many flavours and textures of the gamebirds.
The silver medal was awarded to the inimitable Hidekazu Tojo, who has stepped onto the podium each time he has entered Gold Medal Plates.In honour of the season, Tojo decorated his plate with a real maple leaf and pine needles topped with a paper parcel tied tightly with raffia. Inside the parcel was a remarkable offering: a juicy chunk of supple poached pine mushroom; a panko-crusted shiitake mushroom with its own slightly different texture; a gloriously plump West Coast mussel taken out of its shell and topped with a morsel of lobster. These elements were wrapped in a cloak of soft, warm, golden smoked sablefish and shared their parchment prison with a green chili of the most subtle capsicum heat stuffed with a delicate mousse of ling cod. Outside the package was a small dish of crunchy sweet-tart Japanese pickled vegetables that provided a delightful and refreshing contrast. Tojo chose an excellent wine as a partner to his dish - the 2007 Riesling from Mission Hill Family Estate winery in the Okanagan.Our Vancouver gold medallist was Frank Pabst, chef at Blue Water Café. His dish was a bold one, involving the (for some guests) challenging flavour of local red sea urchin. Chef Pabst mitigated the pungency by turning the urchin meat into a mousse blended with sweet Qualicum Beach scallop, glazed with a fine ponzu jelly. Beneath the mousse was a crunchy, refreshing salad of chopped wakame seaweed and leek. Beside it was a cloud of cucumber vichyssoise foam, its ethereal texture in contrast to the distinctive cucumber flavour, and on top of the foam lay a semi-translucent white pearl of sake and yuzu liquid jelly. A nori crisp. Brittle and tissue-thin, provided a different texture. The judges felt the wine match - Sumac Ridge Winery's sparkling 2001 Pinnacle from the Okanagan - was one of the most successful in all the years of competition.
Chef Pabst now goes on to compete in the Canadian Culinary Challenge in February 2009 - three days of gruelling gladiatorial gastronomy to be held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.
November 14 saw the 2007 Vancouver leg of the Gold Medal Plates campaign soar into history at the luxe Westin Bayshore hotel. The buzz in the room from the sold-out crowd was palpable and the welcome given to our speaker, triathlete Simon Whitfield rocked the ceiling. As did Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo who was easily coaxed into an encore before the national anthem. Appropriately, the calibre and passion of the cooking from every competitor in the first half of the evening set a new standard for this campaign.
Taking the bronze medal (by a difference of less than one percentage point over David Hawksworth of West) was Chef Scott Jaeger of The Pear Tree. Poised over a stripe of celeriac purée, his little slab of B.C. Berkshire pork belly was impeccably textured, so tender it parted at the touch of a fork. The sweet flavour of the meat was beautifully enhanced by a miniature puck of cipollini onion jelly and a tiny crunchy tube of pastry filled with pear butter. The accompanying wine, cutting valiantly through the fat, was Inniskillin's 2004 Malbec from the Okanagan.
The silver medal also went to an out-of-town chef - Melissa Craig from Barefoot Bistro in Whistler. Her presentation was exceptionally refined - four dainty treasures from the sea set out on a small wooden block. Here was a Cortez Island Black Pearl oyster - one of a new breed of East Coast oyster being farmed in the Pacific - dressed with a pickled daikon and cucumber mignonette that tasted intensely of cucumber and had a lovely sweetness to contrast with the oyster. A stiff mousse of B.C. spot prawn was cut into a tiny drum wrapped in a membrane of sesame jelly and topped with what looked like caviar but turned out to be a molecular doppelganger of miso and squid ink. Albacore tuna sashimi was dressed with a yuzu bonito mayonnaise and topped with soy-flavourd "pop rocks". A crunchy cone of cured wild salmon was dressed with horseradish cream. The matching wine, a 2005 Riesling from Tantalus Vineyards, was perfectly chosen, its acidity and intensity of flavour dovetailing with the many tastes on the plate.
The gold medal for our Vancouver event this year was awarded to Chef Pino Posteraro of Cioppino's. The banner above his station described the dish simply as a "porcini mushroom and chestnut soup" - and indeed it was, served in a coffee cup like some kind of cappuccino. But the texure was profoundly enriched and the layers of mushroom flavour were dramatically deepened by melted foie gras and a scattering of crunchy truffled brioche croutons. In a ceramic spoon set on the saucer of the "coffee cup" was the other element of the dish - a square of chilled mushroom jelly and a roasted mushroom salad served at room temperature, the supple textures and contrasting temperatures working beautifully in the mouth. The judges were unanimous in awarding the dish maximum "wow factor". As an accompanying wine, Posteraro chose a Niagara Chardonnay that proved an inspired match - Pillitteri Estates Winery Chardonnay Sur Lie 2006.
Chef Posteraro will now be competing in the Canadian Culinary Championship, our gruelling three-day finale to the competition, to be held in Toronto from February 7 to 10, 2008. So far his opposition consists of Anthony Walsh of Canoe in Toronto, Martin Ruiz Salvador of Fleur de Sel in Lunenberg, and Roland Ménard of Manoir Hovey representing Montréal. Tonight we do it all again in Calgary!
James Chatto
National Culinary Advisor
Gold Medal Plates