Al a mode Restaurants/Classic Cookery

[Chef Fowke]

In my training, in a large hotel, six months of my life was spent in the butchery department. If I remember correctly we received 300 whole chickens each on Monday & Thursday, veal was Wednesday and Friday, primal cuts of beef arrived every second day, etc. There was a lot of work to do, everything came in unprocessed. The strips and tenders were aged on site.

Then the 90’s hit and ‘value added’ became the catch phrase of every vendor in Canada. No longer do you have to order your tenderloins as a 189a, 189b or your striploins as a Y4. The meat is trimmed, and at no extra cost you can get it portion controlled and frozen.

The labour shortage has crushed the apprenticeship program for chefs. Construction wages start at $18, while a first year apprentice in the kitchen can expect to make $8/hr.

With that background….

In Vancouver we are lucky, for such a small city, to have 8 great al a mode Restaurants that use a mix of modern cuisine, micro gastronomy…but more importantly all these restaurants have mastered Classic Cookery skills. I am seeing ‘nose to tail’ tasting menus, a real push for sustainable fisheries and restaurants ordering from small producers and breaking the product down on site at the these restaurant.

What brought this reality home is when I walked into Rare Restaurant and my Chef de Cuisine was covered in blood and entrails and breaking down a whole pig. What was really cool is what she plans to do with the animal; following is a repost of our thread from our website:

Chef de Cuisine Colleen McClean: On October 12th, Rare received a side of pork from Sloping Hill Farm. It was fed apples, and was as beautiful a piece of meat as I have ever seen. Here is what it looked like:

One hour into the butchery I am sawing the backbone off this amazing rack of pork.

Two hours in, we have pig parts!

We took the belly and cured it in bourbon and birch syrup for bacon.

The leg was cured in salt and is now hanging to become a prosciutto.

I made Chorizo and Finocchiona out of the shoulder. Turned out fantastic!

Finished chorizo.

Finished finocchiona.

Finished bacon. You have never had good bacon until you make it yourself!

And in our spare time, we also have made some duck prosciutto.

All of these items (except the prosciutto, which requires another 8 months of aging) have been featured on Rare's menus recently. The girls and I are very pleased with the effort. Who's hungry?

I will post pictures of food produced from this animal as the menu items are produced.

With over 95% of the restaurants in this city using pre-packaged meats and sauces it is good to be part of a small and growing movement towards classic cookery. Interesting that we are seen as ‘modern restaurants’.

[mexigaf]

Its wonderful to see the process that goes into making this individual meat products. I wish i had the raw materials to make my own of everything you have. For now i will just have to settle with getting individual cuts and working from there.

Speaking of which, Does anyone know if its possible to get a hog that size or half in the long island area? Id love to work with some good quality pork

[Dave Hatfield]

Chef de Cuisine Colleen McClean: On October 12th, Rare received a side of pork from Sloping Hill Farm. It was fed apples, and was as beautiful a piece of meat as I have ever seen. Here is what it looked like:

All of these items (except the prosciutto, which requires another 8 months of aging) have been featured on Rare's menus recently. The girls and I are very pleased with the effort. Who's hungry?

I will post pictures of food produced from this animal as the menu items are produced.

With over 95% of the restaurants in this city using pre-packaged meats and sauces it is good to be part of a small and growing movement towards classic cookery. Interesting that we are seen as ‘modern restaurants’.

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Good for you! what a great report.

I did a similar thing last February here in France. Did most of the same things except that we made Toulouse sausage, sauisson and copa. We also did 3 kinds of pate with lots of the bits. These we canned using some incredibly old equipment.

My ham won't be ready for another three months. Can barely wait.

Next yeat I'll try to take pictures.

Congratulations again.

[jayejo]

Thank you so much for sharing this post and these pictures! They are absolutely beautiful, and I'm green with envy right now.

I can only hope that more and more people join the movement to source, use and eat local animals who've been treated well and without hormones and antibiotics. Kudos to y'all!

[miles717]

Thank you so much for sharing this post and these pictures! They are absolutely beautiful, and I'm green with envy right now.

I can only hope that more and more people join the movement to source, use and eat local animals who've been treated well and without hormones and antibiotics. Kudos to y'all!

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Fantastic stuff!