Chef Fowke

Had a free hour this afternoon so I went over to 49th Parallel and had a small Americano (SP?). I am a drip coffee kinda guy - no cream, no sugar. Like espresso - do not love it. Will drink latte, but only when it is a meal substitute. Honestly - I have not endorsements with 49th Parallel, but I sat at the window seat and drank the best cup of coffee, hands down.....that I have every drank. The 12 minutes of pleasure were surreal - the people watching even more-so. Sorry Lavazza...our 24 year love affair is over. I know Barrett, he talks to me like Charlie Brown's teacher when he talks coffee. I recommend a solo trip to 49th Parallel for everyone. It is a whole other level of coffee pleasure. Make the first trip by yourself - enjoy the entire experience - its like the Last Tango in Paris...embrace the whymsical, skip the butter.

I love Oyster Po-boy sandwiches, I have not had one in 5 years - it is not on my menu, but anyone who wants to help me create one (eat one).....give me a ping!

Thats it!

...I guess you can 'seed' any oyster on the west coast. I found this oyster to be softer than the original. What other interesting oysters are they farming on this coast???

Had a supplier sell me Malpeque oysters that he guaranteed were raised on the Washington coast. He said it was a transplated Malpeque seed, tray grown. Looked like a Malpeque, but when shucked resembled a XS Miyagi oyster, being a little more 'milky' and a little less cuccumber'ish. Fact or Fiction? Anyone else see/hear of these oysters?

Do you mean MOTOMACHI SHOKUDO? It is owned by the Kintaro chef and offers a "healthier" alternative with only chicken-based broths, which might explain your reaction. I haven't been yet but have read several good reviews which commented not only on the quality of the soup and noodles but also on the attractive decor. ← Two things: At Kintaro you must ask what is the best today, never chose for yourself. On Saturday Kitaro does a special ramen (I think it is chicken based)....worth the hour wait in the winter rain with a hang-over.

I have to go back to Granville Island tomorrow!!! I bought some hothouse beefsteak tomatoes from a small producer in BC. I forgot to get literature - I have no information on them. They were sweet, juicy and had that brilliant summer tomato smell.

Rare is closing and re-opening on May 4th. Problem with the liquor license allowed us to close for an over-do clean-up and mini-reno. Pipes got fixed last week, vents this week. Paint, new glass tiles next week... Maybe new chairs, street front patio. Complete menu revamp.

Side note: the old greek guy behind the counter is the owner - The two model like goddesses you see are his daughters! GREAT pizza on the West Coast = hot offspring + $$$

My house, Sunday mornings has the best croissants! I start making them on Friday night - basically a puff dough pastry....but with a small amount of yeast. AMAZING. Anyone intersted, please ping me and I will send the recipe. I will try to post it on my website at Chef Fowke dot Com early this week. Croissants on the West Coast are tricky...are they puff dough based or yeast? I like both, but prefer my combination of the two (like a brioche, but flakey - just like the West Coast).

Twenty years ago, in a small town in Ontario I got my first chance at being an Executive Chef. High end fine dining in a very affluent suburb of Toronto… I smoked French cigarettes, 1 -2 packs a day. (This was only twenty years ago and the norm) While doing prep the French/Canadian cooks would have an ashtray at the end of the prep table and would ALWAYS have a cigarette going. They would only get 3 – 4 draws off of each cigarette. The smell of Gauloises permeated the entire kitchen during prep. During service…NO SMOKING; (LOL) except in the storage room off the main hot line. Every 30 minutes everyone would huddle and take a few drags. Ten years ago I moved to Vancouver, BC. If you wanted a break you needed to smoke. It was not acceptable to just go outside and have a breath of fresh air. It has been ten years since my last smoke, yet when I dream I am still a smoker… Weird. Now, you do not hire smokers. They suck the energy out of a kitchen and make it hard to have consistent seasoning/flavours in the new style of food that relies less on creams/booze and more on organics. (Vancouver is a city that does not allow smoking on Patios or within 15m (50 feet) of any entrance)

Classic debate…literally. I used to work beside (and watch in awe) a South American Chef who cooked in a cold pan that he added butter, white wine and herbs brought to a boil with the fish. When the wine has evaporated and the butter had clarified the fish began to caramelize. The flavour was marvellous. Tell a French chef that a dish was started with a cold pan, or that the oil was put into a cold pan…absolument pas ! Now, with that said – I was told that the ‘basting process’ was not truly a French technique, rather a Chinese technique that was adopted by western chefs around 1992. I have no data to collaborate this; hopefully someone else here will be able to expand this possible culinary urban legend. At my two restaurants we concentrate more on ‘seasoning the pan’ with grapeseed/olive oil, the appropriate herb and garlic when necessary. The aromatics are introduced to the pan and oil when it reaches temperature. The protein is then added. With fish we rarely baste as we tend to cook the fish unilaterally. With meats it is hard not to baste, it looks/smells/tastes so great. But the basting is not a continual motion. It is two or three spoonfuls over the protein, into the oven, another baste – out of the oven – rest the meat and finish with whole butter/olive oil. In the end, it is about style. I do not think basting is the end-all to great cooking, but it does add a very specific style of flavour to the food.

Zee, if you want to start a blog, just do it! Not until you're actually doing it will you know if this is something you like and are able to keep up. Just start a blog, put the blog in your sigline, and post on eGullet... I get a lot of traffic to my blog through my eGullet signature, all though for most people, only one post (the one my signature links to) will be of interest, because it's the only post in English - the rest is in Dutch! But, I often click on the link in someones signature when I read interesting posts by that person. ← I beleive the key to a good Food/Restaurant Blog is enjoying the experience as a Blogger. With that said, 4/9th of the fun/enjoyment/experience is actually sharing with the reader (like a chef sharing his food with the guest), 1/9th is seeing new readers sign on, 1/9th is banning your first (being god) abusive poster, 1/9th is seeing the maximum # of readers on at one time, 1/9th is 'editting off all the porn' and the final 1/9th is when your friends and family call and tell you how much they enjoyed sharing your day with you, through the blog. Once you are comfortable with why and how you are doing the blog, people will come - like posted above - put the blog address in your signature. I have not advertised my blog anywhere other then linking it to articles and my signature - locally I am up for a restaurant blog award - traffic has jumped from a few hundred to thousands. It is an amazing superhighway, this thing they call the internet. Brian Sounds corny...but true! Enjoy the sharing and the geekiness equally.

I just ran across this in a google search - the phone # is a Vancouver #. Has anyone heard/read/know anything about this site? Brian.

I do a shop with the chef at Granville Island once a month - a tour of the market then back to the restaurant to cook what we found. More info at Edible BC or at my website.

Oysters were non-exsistent this year in Whistler for me, had my two year old daughter with me and she was not interested in any fine dining restaurant. Earls did well for us, no surprises - good staff and nice meals. After all I have heard and read about Monk's Grill in the upper village I did not want to go - even when invited....Best meal I have had in six months. Braised short rib was perfect with a reasonable Cote d'Rhone. Our server was a 10/10 but the timing, as always was messed up. After all these years you would think they would be able to get a dessert out in 30 minutes (and have it fresh, not stale). If we had stopped after the mains we would have experienced our best meal of the year...but again, the server was as good as any I have meet in Vancouver. I look forward to going back.

Dine out really is an iconic event for Vancouver. I am pleased to see that Rare is 95% sold out and Metro is over 60% sold out. (We are going to have to offer a simular menu for the couple of weeks before and after the event to meet the demand) Somehow it slipped when we wrote the menu for Metro that Dine Out Vancouver was in the dead of winter. We have had to make a few 'seasonal' changes to the menu. The Metro Dine Out Vancouver Menu v1.20 is posted at Chef Fowke dot COM and will be updated with the Metro Dine Out Vancouver Menu v1.25 early this week. With that said, I am glad to see that over 30% of the menus this year really represent a seasonal Vancouver Menu. A huge increase over last year. Brian.

...you can get Dim Sum at dinner time????

Cool Thread! I am up here in Whistler right now (last minute thing) with camera in hand. I am going to try out all the places listed and post photos. First, I need 36 oysters and a cool drink...

I had dinner at the Sutton Place Hotel a few years ago. The best $45 I ever spent. Really well done; and very busy ~ but not crowded.

Never let him know that I told anyone that he makes these pies/and sells them to friends; but I buy my tourtiere from Bistro Chez Michel in Lonsdale! It is the closest to the Montreal style I have tried on the west coast. Just need to get a bottle of green ketchup and all is good.

A lot of the chanterelles you see on local menus are from Saskatchewan, not sure how many BC chanterelles make it on plates here. The mushrooms from Sask. tend to hold up better than our BC ones (they are drier). That being said theres nothing like a saute pan of fresh picked chanterelles and coho salmon to get the juices flowing. Colin ← I made the trek out to Northern Sask this summer! YES...they are amazing and the industry is well put togeather. As I understand; most of the mushrooms do not remain in Canada.

Great comments, everyone here have helped me a lot. I really appreciate everyone taking the time and effort to help me with my food information highway. I am just a chef who enjoys the internet; and is beginning to realize its potential. Since I started this project the traffic to my site has increased a 1000 fold and the reservations are up 200% at the new restaurant and strong at Rare. I must be honest, I am using a professional web designer for www.cheffowke.com and he has delivered on everything I asked for. The first criteria was a 'portal' that was ME...not contrived. I thought that if I launched with something slick and polished it would be viewed as ‘just another marketing scheme’. I want a site that was ME!!! A Chef of twenty years who has bad grammar and takes poor photos but has a passion for food and the hospitality industry…and loves to share everything he knows about food and wine. Really! Call me tomorrow ~ ask me to take you on a tour of the local docks or markets; I will be there! Tomorrow my web designer and I are going to take all the information you have supplies and make the 'portal' internet Savvy. Like I said, this was a Beta test. I needed a venue that I could randomly and with fun post to - the response has been astronomical ~ way above the traffic I expected. Now we will tweak, and make it perfect. BTW...I guess no one else on this board was involved with the Google IPO: LOL, big brother is a good friend to know!

Thanks for all the great comments....to take this site a little further, spend some serious time playing with it. Click on the Forum button. That is were the staff of Rare and Metro are actually starting to have fun. PS. the reservation buttons do work, check your level of MS Security, LOL...Try the crtl key, or read what the pop message says. PPS. Google ads, I am not sure what I am going to do...I am personally enjoying reading what they upload each day. Thats enough for me to keep them. They can be very good AND very amusing.

I have an all women brigade at Rare right now. Not intentional, but brilliant! Here is a recent article....some may be offended by the language; others will enjoy; The Women of Rare!