jamiemaw

The trial menu for Chambar is also posted way back on 'Opening Soon'. We were also there last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The moules frites, steak frites, lamb tagine were all excellent and the room is a pleasure, as are the proprietors. We had come from the fundraiser at the newly renovated Robson/Bute location--they poured $2.1 million in. Coop, there's an opening party at Chambar there on Saturday night but any other evening should do you fine. It's great to see rooms opening like Pair, Cassis and Chambar--each a direct reflection of the chef/proprietor and very individualistic. Thanks for the insights on One, Mr. G. Sounds like you would give it a flashing yellow. Cheers, Jamie

Burning incensed, no doubt.

Hello Foodie, Heartily concur about Dottie and John in the weekend WSJ--they've taken some brave steps to demystify wine as opposed to say, the vestigial and often innacurate writing found in The Whine Dictator. One other writer whom I think you would enjoy (and who's been even more overt in taking the mickey out of the wine industry) is Lawrence Osborne in his book The Accidental Connoisseur. It has especially hilarious chapters on Robert Mondavi and Leo McLoskey, the founder of Enologix, who purports to be able to 'design' wine for vintners to order to qualify them for a Parker 92. Very good stuff. What makes it especially appealing is Osborne's self-deprecation (to the point of painting himself as the oenophilic equivalent of a stumblebum) when, in fact, he's clearly anything but. Between the lines, he gently instructs that irony really does require two audiences and is not quite as simple as a black fly in your chardonnay, as Alanis once had us believe. It should be required reading for any would-be whinie. Although I thought The Fourth Star was based on an interesting premise, I thought it went on a bit too long. I thought that some of the dynamic tension she built up about the pressure and stress of a NYT four star-rated kitchen such as Restaurant Daniel foundered later in the book. Do you agree? She certainly did capture the idiocy of that arseholed maitre d' who was particularly adept at castigating/humiliating the tourists during first (pre-theatre) seating. One of our favourite sports used to sitting in the bar at Daniel after work and watching him do precisely that while extracting fifties for an inferior table on the side of the corral. But, in what I think could only be described as very lazy reporting, I thought she got Thomas Haas completely wrong, painting him to be some sort of malevolent demi-monster. As anyone who knows Thomas (who even under pressure I've found to be pretty patient, even gracious) realizes, he's far from it. But maybe that attitudinal difference is one reason he moved back here to raise his family. You're absolutely right about how she wrote about the customers--those Type A's who only had kids so they could get pre-boarding. Foodie, last time I looked Barbara-jo had some copies of The Accidental Connoisseur--I think it's right up your alley. And for anyone out there who hasn't had the pleasure of reading Calvin Trillin, the collection called The Tummy Trilogy (which includes his classic Alice, Let's Eat) is also available there. Thanks again for your generous contribution to La Grand Bouffe. Enjoy. Jamie

Paul and Eric, Thanks for your proposed donations. Please send Arne a PM (although he may be away--I sent him one yesterday) with your name and the name of your guest (yes, we're doing name-tags). When you're confirmed with your donation, please confirm same with me, again by PM. And Paul, we'll see if Chef Neil can find a good home for those 'shrooms. Many thanks, Jamie

I note the press release was dated June 7th, Merlin. Does that mean they've been starving you with dignity all summer? Jamie

Great post, Steve, and not unlike many pre-Depression/WWII menus that we've uncovered. By the way, do you have a copy of the actual menu? Look as though it may have been from the Princess Marguerite and it certainly compares favourably to BC Ferries attempt to feed us. They should put a warning on their menus, "The Surgeon-General Warns That Fish Don't Actually Have Fingers." Jamie

Thanks very much Tofino, and please give Charles and Andrew our very best. A weekend at the Wick would be a superb donation. I am checking to see if Chefs' Table can offer tax receipts as it is now a registered society. These are more important for personal donations, as companies can simply write off any donation as a business/promo expense. Foodie in Vancouve is also researching her extensive cellar and has already proposed a vertical collection of Nota Bene for our silent auction. PS--We can assure you that the menu will be very local--to the point where we'll (that would be the 'royal we') be drying and bottling Stoney Paradise tomatoes and a few other items not still in season. And we've picked a fish that will be. Thanks all for your enthusiasm. Jamie

Thanks Coop and Arne. Coop, we appreciate the donation of the wine and Arne, signing up dinner subscribers would be great. Although we're going to price the dinner as a breakeven in order to keep costs down, we thought a raffle or silent auction of donated goods and services would be useful. We propose that the winnings be donated to the Chefs' Society of BC Bursary Fund, which funds emerging local chefs. So please bombard me with what you'd like to donate--free accounting, a year's supply of commercial detergent, a new kitchen, control-top panty hose (the food critic's friend) . . . Les chefs and I discussed some local ingredients that would be interesting and available around Remembrance Day and have come up with some alternative courses that Neil is now pricing. There will be some starters upon arrival, another when we sit, a fish/meat alternative for the main course and a dessert. Budget allowing, Neil may be able to slip in an extra course. Maximum capacity is about 50. We'll post the menu in about a week and ask you to confirm with Arne. One thing we're all absolutely agreed upon--if you reserve tickets you're absolutely committed to coming and will pay for your dinner. That's simply being fair to our host and to your fellow eGulleteers. Stay tuned. Jamie

Howdy all, A few of us are meeting at Neil's gustatorium this afternoon to plot a menu for our inaugural eGullet Dinner. Right now the plan is to convene immediately after the Barbara-jo/Opus event--at a few minutes after 7 pm at The Hamilton Street Bar and Grill. We're then going to have a schmooze fest for about 45 minutes. Keith Talent has already volunteered to run the check-in table and fill out the name tags. Thank you Keith. We're also going to ask you to pay in advance and then relax and enjoy. Dinner will start at 8pm and we're looking at 4 or 5 courses. We plan to include in the ticket price a couple of cocktails/wine pours/beers at the reception and a pour for each course. Tomorrow we'll forward a budget inclusive of gratuity--we'll try to keep it to a dull roar. Of course you're welcome to bring a guest. In the interests of keeping our costs down, anyone with a line on local ingredients or wines (1 case minimum) pease respond by PM to me or Neil. I'm going to donate a few items as doorprizes, all others welcome. Coop, surely there's some interesting marine hardware that you could donate to this fine cause. Looking forward, Jamie

Wow. Thanks for the great wine post, Lancelot. By the way, do you know why Joshua Wesson's and Davis Rosengarten's Red Wine with Fish is so expensive? The story I've heard is that the two authors no longer see eye-to-eye. So despite its continued popularity, it's never been reprinted or updated. And Bloviatrix, thanks for the Fisher and Revel additons--both worthies to be sure. Jamie

Arne, Jim Harrison has an amusing story (about a 37-course lunch) in this week's copy of the New Yorker--the annual food issue. Enjoy! Jamie

Hear, hear Steve. A short and concise definition. Although gus_tatory seems to feel that Quebec ingredients doth a Canadian Cuisine make. What's become very clear on this thread is that any definition is ingredient-driven and somewhat local, i.e. as gus_tatory says, Canada has a more clearly defined cuisine for three or four months of the year. In the opinion of one of Toronto's most senior food writers, Toronto does not have a regional cuisine that could be clearly identified with it and it alone--is that just to do with a unencouraging climate? And not to create a red (tandoori) herring, so to speak, but what happens when, say, an Indo-Canadian chef uses mainly local ingredients to create a take on his mother cuisine that is specific to this region and not India--it couldn't be found there. Just wondering, Jamie

Following on the heels of recommending a dozen and a half food periodicals that continuously refresh the culinary landscape for a young chef, here's part two of our challenge: build a culinary library based in the history and sociology of food and drink. There are several reference volumes for deeper research too. Cookbooks are not included in this section--we'll get to that in a while. Here are some to begin the library; please add your thoughts . . . Hering’s Dictionary of Classical and Modern Cookery On Food and Cooking Harold McGee Between Meals and A Taste of Paris A.J. Liebling The Soul of A Chef Michael Ruhlman The Man Who Ate Everything Geoffrey Steingarten Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course Jancis Robinson The Invention of the Restaurant Rebecca L. Spang The Tummy Trilogy Calvin Trillin Much Depends on Dinner and The Rituals of Dinner Margaret Visser Food: A Culinary History Flandarin and Montanari Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen George Lang The Cambridge World History of Food Kiple and Ornelas La Bonne Table Ludwig Bemelmans The Man Who Ate Toronto James Chatto The Physiology of Taste Brillat-Savarin Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain Food Lovers’ Companion Barrons’ Editors Letters to a Young Chef Daniel Boulud Near a Thousand Tables Fernandez-Armesto A Chef’s Tale Pierre Franey Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child Noel Riley Fitch Food Waverly Root Salt: A World History Mark Kurlansky James Beard: A Biography Robert Clark The Oxford Companion to Food Alan Davidson

I left off two important entries: BC Restaurant News and Wine Access. Jason McRobbie, the editor of BCRN, is an intrepid and fairminded researcher of the provincial culinary landscape and reaches beyond the industry to elaborate. Wine Access is a useful Canadian manual, and has lots of event and tasting content from the West via Vancouver Sun columnist Anthony Gismondi. Saveur, Gastronomica, The Snail and Sante are some more sound choices, as proposed by Carolyn Tillie--thanks. I'll have to agree to disagree about her proposed exclusion of Cook's Illustrated and WineX from our list though. In the case of the former, there are many pros (especially emergent ones) who use it regularly. And although it can be pedantic (especially with niggly in-kitchen tips and techniques), I continue to find its "master recipes" worth the price of admission. As regards WineX, I say ignore this demo at your peril. And although I didn't realize that Justin Timberlake is involved with its publication, local boy Jason Priestley is--but I don't much care if it's the 90210/FHM of wine commentary. A number of wine buyers/directors we know use it as a predictor for what comes next and its value-driven articles and reviews. In short, the received opinion is that it educates a younger age group, ready to move on from RTD coolers and flavoured-vodka martinis. And that can't be all bad. Cheers, Jamie

I was interviewing a young, clever and ambitious chef the other day. He quickly turned the tables and began to interview me. His curiousity ran far outside the preoccupations of most young chefs; he wanted to know what extracurricular reading he should be undertaking both to enhance his knowledge and to keep current. In addition to reading the greats (McGee, David, Trillin, et al—perhaps that’s another thread) and the obvious monthlies, I suggested the following periodicals. In exchange for a mainly modest investment, they return much: 1. This week’s New Yorker (Sept. 6), which is the annual food issue, with an article on pasta by Bill Buford, the snoek by Calvin Trillin, ketchup, lettuce anthropology, and a 37-course lunch eaten by Jim Harrison. 2. The weekend edition of the London Financial Times, which has excellent food and drink writing, including the formidable Jancis Robinson on wine. 3. The weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, for similar reasons. 4. The Wednesday (food) editions of The New York Times and LA Times, and London’s Sunday Times, each available on-line. The London Sunday Times features the remarkable AA Gill and the unremarkable Michael Winner. 5. Food Arts, which is published in New York and features a lot of industry goings-on, new openings and design. 6. Nation’s Restaurant News, which covers the gamut, from fast food to fine dining and a lot of very big stainless steel things. 7. Cook’s Illustrated, which covers a lot of fundamentals but offers fastidiously-tested methods on the best way to prepare them—it removes the trial and error and there are many applications for commercial kitchens. 8. Australian Vogue and Vogue Traveller. Australia has one of the most emancipated culinary scenes in the world. Here’s how they do it. 9. EAT magazine from Victoria, a monthly, is tightly edited and brimming with information from across the province. 10. Spain Gourmetour, an excellent compendium from Iberia. 11. Wine X. Begun in Aussie, now the US version pronounces wine trends amongst the 20-28 age cohort. 12. Cuisine, the glorious monthly bible of New Zealand food, wine and travel and perhaps the best produced of the lot. 13. EAT magazine from Tokyo, which tours the world, touching down on common themes. 14. Olive, from London, which will shortly feature an article on Vancouver Many of these are available at Barbara-jo's Books to Cooks. Any you would like to add to the list?

beans, Well, yes. I mean, c'mon. Cruise cuisine. jbonne threw a great link up to the NYT earlier in the thread. It's about an Alaskan woman who, when she runs out of staple foods, takes a 600 mile round trip to Anchorage to go grocery shopping, in this case for flour and eggs. But I must share a guilty secret with you. A couple of weeks ago, when I first saw this article, I was lying in an extremely comfortable hotel bed, eating rather creamy room service shirred eggs, rashers of double-smoked bacon and croissants with broad smears of sweet butter and disturbingly good raspberry preserves. The coffee was strong, the company not unpleasant. I felt it important to share with you that culinary journalism isn't always just the plain hard drudge that so many make it out to be. Of course I damn near choked when I read she'd gone that distance just for some flour and eggs. What could she have been thinking? You see when we're confronted with 600-mile grocery expeditions, what we typically do around here is just ask the Domino's guy if he wouldn't mind picking the eggs up on the way. And then when he finally turns up the next day it's all free. Cheers, Jamie

Welcome intraining, Here's a start, as painful as it is to quote this guy: I realize these are ingredients rather than finished dishes, but it is they that, as unfettered as possible, when they collaborate on the plate define the notion. If you want to really examine locality, and all its permutations, bend your palate towards Raincity Grill, Mission Hill, Fresco, Sobo, C, West, Chef Bernard's, Fifty Two 80, Feenie's, Lumiere, Diva at the Met, Parkside etc. Cheers, Jamie

jbonne, We call that spawning down here. Cheers, Jamie

Steve, Is a Tofini one of those new-fangled girlie drinks from up your way? And now wait just a second. That's a really cheap shot. Keep making remarks like that and I won't introduce you to my other personalities. Some of the best cooking in the known universe comes out of Kitsilano at Darby Dawe's, Bimini and The King's Head. Chatters is even rumoured to being investigating leasehold premises here. We even have a Cobbs Bakery for those who like their bread on the woollen side--just in time for winter. Surely these are all places that we can frequent frequently and take joy in being Canadian. And even comment on Mr. Cherry's haberdashery without fear of Zell Miller making us enlist. Finally, we see your true colours, Steve. Jamie

Good points Steve. So now I get it, hard on the heels, so to speak, of naming the esteemed Chef Fowke's new restaurant (by the way Shaving Brian's Privates was the runaway peoples' choice) we have to come up with a name for our regional cuisine. Hmmm. Let's see. I live in the neighbourhood called ForMiCa (Fourth Avenue between Milestone's and Capers) so how about, instead of PNW or Modern Canadian we call our brilliant coastal cooking LINOLEUM . I'm sure you'll agree it's quite snappy and I'm pretty sure that it hasn't been taken yet. Even better, it stands on guard for thee, and what we all believe in: L ocal, I ndigenous, N ative, O ceanic, L ine-caught, E galitarian U nderwater M eats. And if we agree to pluralize it, we could add S ustainable too. Surely that's a message that Tourism Vancouver could really work with, and even Governor General Clarkson could promote on her boondoggles to major markets like Iceland. Can't you just hear her? "You really must drop by Chemainus for some authentic LINOLEUM. It's really rather tasty, just like John Ralston." As for inland cuisine branding in the wine country, how about Usually-OK ? I'm sure that there will be many other suggestions too. Cheers, J.

Thank you Steve . I don't recall anyone disclaiming Edmonton (as not owning a local cuisine) so let's agree that it does. If my error was one of omission, forgive me. Besides, wasn't it, amongst the other culinary milestones that you point out, also the birthplace of Earls? Thanks for pointing out his roof-top garden Montrachet--can't get much more local than that. Hiro may think he's cooking Tuscan, but I could have sworn that what he was cooking for us was more on the French/Japanese axis: puree of potatoes and celeriac, crab Louis, salad with a sherry vinegar and Dijon vinaigrette, duck in a fig demi, panko-crusted lamb rack in a miso demi. But it doesn't matter. There are about 150 cultures and their cuisines converging here. And in the hands of someone like him, that convergence tastes good. Cheers, Jamie

Beans, Neat reply--Pacific Northwet might just be the monker we can all live with. Just look at the alternatives: I suppose if we were to be geographically correct (and not just politically correct), we might define ourselves thusly: Hawaii = Mid Pacific Oregon and Washington = Pacific North Western British Columbia = Pacific South Western Alaska = Pacific Far North Western I'm just not quite sure where that leaves Tofino. Outboard Western? Or Italian restaurants using local ingredients? Spaghetti Western? Stovetop has also raised some interesting points about pigeonholing cuisines and the coded shorthand that the food media depend on to save words while imparting Great Thoughts. Interestingly, Pacific North Western was one such term still used here in Vancouver to describe regional cooking until just a few years ago. Now you're more likely to see 'regional', 'contemporary regional', 'Canadian', 'Modern Canadian' or some variation to describe a restaurant or style of cooking that is pushed by the local larder or the pan-Canadian one. The term 'Cascadian' (which sounds so much better than 'in the style of the Coast Mountains', which is what we call the northern extension of the Cascades) probably grew more out of the wine business than food in that the wine growing areas of Oregon, Washington and BC share a common soil and climate (and unlike humans, grapes don't recognize human-imposed boundaries). But in some cases, the descriptor 'Modern Canadian' might work equally well, if not better, than any of the above to describe what goes on in some of the kitchens at the vanguard. I'll get to that in a moment. I don't believe there is an identifiable Canadian Cuisine, per se. Mark me down not as an atheist but as an agnostic. It seems to me, as noted in earlier posts, that any notion of a nascent national cuisine looks more like a necklace (with the occasional gem of identifiable regional or local cooking dialects) strung largely across the 49th parallel. But there's certainly a case to be made for a restaurant, located anywhere in the country, that cherry-picks the very best of Canadian products and promotes them onto their menu. Take Feenie's, for example, which now bills itself as a modern Canadian Brasserie and uses, where possible, only Canadian ingredients. So Quebec foie gras, cheeses and summer micro greens are found next to BC coastal halibut and sable, Pemberton tomatoes, golden beets and fingerling potaoes, Okanagan stone fruits, Fraser Valley duck, Alberta beef, Okanagan wines and cheeses and . . . well, you get the point. Are these various brand names--'PNW', 'Cascadian', or 'Modern Canadian' important? I mean, beyond the journalistic shorthand? Probably, because restaurants are increasingly dependent on culinary tourism these days and those culinary tourists (if you look at the 'three days in Vancouver' pleas on this forum) want to eat, according to their budget, a combination of meals that almost always requests local. Of course those meals might well be influenced by or (increasingly) even interwoven with some of the founding cuisines that got us here--especially Asian and French. What doesn't seem to work anymore are words like 'fusion'--people run in the opposite direction because it describes little except a time in the late 80s of unfortunate home ec experiments--when the reach of young, local, underapprenticed chefs far exceeded the grasp of their pans. You can probably use the word 'merged' more legitimately, especially when you examine the local phenomena of style and ingredients: take izakaya dining, small plates, ponzu, miso, soy or other strong Asian influences (they're almost ubiquitous) in occident-waiting-to-happen restaurants. Umami, a small plates room on Davie Street, is owned by a Japanese-Canadian, has a Japanese name, cooks equally Japanese-and French-influenced (and according to the chef Tuscan-influenced) dishes but with local ingredients. So there's just one strand of the DNA of our local cuisine. But wait, there's less. Any culinary history of the coastal cities of the PNW (say Portland, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver, Ketchikan, Juneau etc.), has to mention the fact that a century ago (in the case of most of them), what our ancestors ate was predominately local. By default, they were dependent on the product of the ocean, fields and forests. Before reliable refrigeration and economic transcontinental shipping, what was local was, by default, the daily special. A Christmas season menu from the Leland Hotel in 1898 featured "gollops of salmon", "roasted haunch of venison" (shot by "day hunters" in nearby Stanley Park) and oysters and . . . on it went. The only imported items seemed to be some spices, citrus, coffee, tea, and wine. The beer came from the Stanley Park Brewing Co. And going back still further in time, and long before the white man despoiled this coast, the same held true. After all, had not the ocean and forests been so profligate, how else to explain the extrordinary indigenous art that continues to speak so powerfully to us? Because the artisans could knock off after lunch. Too bad about the period from the 20s to the 80s, when canned foods (thanks to WWI), frozen foods, 'luxury foods' from far away (thanks to Ike and Mamie), and then convenience foods and draconian liquor legislation conspired to keep us from eating from just outside our back doors. It would take us more than 60 years--two generations--to return to where we live, to prove, ultimately, that you can come home again. Cheers, Jamie PS: For anyone wishing to explore the notion of a Canadian Cuisine, there's information on Northern Bounty, being convened in Kelowna later this month Northern Bounty

Frustrating, eh, Brian? But two cooler, more patient heads I've never met than Karri and Nico. The room looks terrific too--all it needs now are some happy drinkers up front and diners in the back. Let's hope the inspector calls tomorrow. Cheers, Jamie

Bernaise, One of the best meals we've taken in France recently was at L'Arnsbourg , about 40 minutes northwest of Strasbourg, up the A4. You can find their website here Don't be put off by the three Michelin stars--it's a relaxed and modern room (set in a lovely field) with a relaxed and modern menu. And at about 55 to 110 Euros for the prix fixe at dinner, a relative bargain. There are often special value cards at lunch. Jean-Georges Klein, the chef-proprietor, and his wife Cathy (who speaks very good English) are a pleasure. We were there for the Relais Gourmands convocation; Cathy booked us into a nearby inn that was just fine. It's closed Tuesday-Wednesday. I hope you can make it. Cheers, Jamie