Canadian Gold Medal Plates Competition

[Okanagancook]

The annual Canadian Gold Medal Plates Competition gala finale is scheduled for Kelowna, British Columbia in February of 2011. For those of you not familiar with this event visit: http://www.goldmedalplates.com/ccc.html for details.

The Winners entering the finale are:

Vancouver: Rob Clark from C Restaurant

Edmonton: Andrew Fung from Black Hawk Golf Club

Calgary: Duncan Ly from Hotel Arts Raw Bar

Saskatoon: Dan Walker from Weczeria Food and Wine

Toronto: Frank Dodd from Hillebrand Winery Restaurant

Ottawa: Michael Moffat from Beckta Dining and Wine

Montreal: Martin Juneau from La Montee de Lait

St. John's: Jeremy Charles from Raymonds

At the finale the chefs prepare their signature dish for the attendees and the judges' table.

We have not been to one of these events before and are wondering how it all works. It looks like a fabulous event.

[Mark Donnelly]

There is a TV series on this. Watch it and you'll quickly realise this is just mass catering dressed up as fine dinning. I understand that net proceeds go to Olympic affiliated charities, but $250 to eat mass produced catering food standing up is not my idea of a either a good time or money well spent. This event is volume over quality.

[C Simril]

"catering dressed up as fine dining" was not my experience in the two events I attended. In the first, Chef Pino's soup won the gold medal and it was one of the best things I've ever eaten in this city (and that says a lot). It also introduced me to Chef Pino, whose restaurant I've eaten exceeding well at ever since. My 2nd event's gold medal winner, from one of my favourite restaurants, unfortunately was based on sea urchin. I can no more tolerate sea urchin than I can flap my arms and fly to the moon. But I had the impression that all the chefs brought their "A" game. I had dined on somewhat unfortunate food from Chef Tojo at the Doctor Peter fundraiser not long before attending the 2nd golden plates event, and Tojo's gold plate dish was vastly superior to the Dr. Peter preparation. I told him so, and he agreed.I think competition in food is unaesthetic at best, but if it inspired Tojo to take it up a notch, I can't complain. My only interest, as a Vancouverite, in the Olympics, was that the Simpsons got a good episode out of it, so contributing to the Olympics is about as appealing to me as contributing to the Pickton defence fund. But it wasn't "catering" food, for sure. Some of it was vile. But not all.

http://seemrealland.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html meal 2

http://seemrealland.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html meal 1

[Okanagancook]

Good information, thank you. Wondering if it's difficult to get to the food or are there enough stations that you make your way around in a leisurely fashion and take the plates back to your table to eat them. I'm quite excited because dining in Penticton/Kelowna is quite limited so it is nice to see something like this coming here.

[Mark Donnelly]

"catering dressed up as fine dining" was not my experience in the two events I attended.

Your blog is hardly a ringing endorsement of this event. Of course it's catering: there is no choice offered (other than different chefs - but they just cook one course) and 200 - 300 people attend. If that's not catering I don't know what is.

Nice blog btw. I've added it to my favourites.