Home
James Beard Dinner: Meaty Beaty Big and Beardy
By Ivy Knight
Anthony Rose at The Drake Hotel
Normally when I think of American food I think of Little Debbie cakes, Frito pie, popcorn and hot dogs. American food is all about tailgate parties, county fairs and ballgames. Hordes of obese, ignorant loudmouths stomping around in sweatshop- produced clothes, a Flintstone-sized turkey leg in one greasy fist and a rifle in the other spread out across a land becoming crippled by diabetes and heart disease.
Of course, when I think of American food with James Beard added to the mix then I think about softshell crab, sand dabs, roast wild duck and farm fresh vegetables. While obese, Beard was not ignorant and he tried to teach his countrymen about good food. This was before the USA had a MacDonald's, Dunkin Donuts and welfare office on every corner. Beard was teaching slow, sustainable food before the situation was as dire as it is now. Now his lessons are more valuable than ever.
What do we know about James Beard? He was born in Portland, Oregon. He loved his mama. He championed and helped define American cuisine. He wrote lots of cookbooks and had a cooking school. In 1946 he appeared on the first cooking show ever televised. The James Beard Foundation is a great organization... blah blah blah.
Right now all I can think about is that he was gay, and used to fool around with Jeremiah Tower (who used to fool around with Saint Alice Waters)! The whole Beard story is a wonderful Capote-ish soap opera. What a great movie his life would make. Philip Seymour Hoffman could play him with Zac Braf as Tower kneeling at his feet (get your mind out of the gutter!) changing the bandages around his blackened legs - the veins choked with a lifetime of fine wine and foie gras... Why am I sitting here trying to think of the perfect actor to cast as Craig Claiborne for this movie that will never get made? (Incidentally, I think John Travolta could do a fabulous Julia Child.)
In Canada, food people all know who James Beard is and we revere him as much as Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. Many chefs I've worked for have had the honour and privilege of cooking for the James Beard Foundation and recently, it turned out, I would join their pantheon, albeit in a very subsidiary role.
Here's what happened. Anthony Rose is the head Chef, and my boss, at The Drake Hotel in Toronto. He's friends with Mitchell Davis, a former Torontonian and current Vice-President of the James Beard Foundation. Mitchell invited Anthony to come to New York and cook at the James Beard House. Anthony replied, "why don't you guys come here instead?" Mitchell agreed and that's how the JBF came back to Toronto, Ontario (for the first time in four years) for a fundraising dinner for George Brown College's culinary scholarship program.
So, here's this guy Anthony Rose - a chef I really know nothing about. He doesn't have a huge profile on the Toronto dining scene. He's been quietly working away at the Drake, building a kitchen garden, brining, smoking, pickling and preserving Ontario's bounty, organizing black box cooking competitions for his staff, championing sustainable seafood and local purveyors. He looks like a mischevious 17 year old skateboarder, in reality he's a husband and father who has paid his dues under Ming Tsai, Jonathan Waxman, Bradley Ogden, Mark Franz and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. He's also cooked at the at the James Beard House three times in the past.
Because I work part time cooking at the Drake I got to be in the kitchen for the big night. Years ago I would have wished to be in the dining room as a guest on a night like this. Now I know that the best place to be is in the kitchen. There's no small talk to make or table manners to worry about and most importantly, there's no bullshit to listen to. In the kitchen it's just a bunch of chefs and cooks and servers. It doesn't matter how big and famous a chef is, they will always be crude, lewd, out of control party animals whenever they get the chance. The kitchen may be hot and stressful and your uniform may be splattered with lobster juice but, for me, it's a hell of a lot more fun than having to sit with the adults.
Anthony invited a mix of purveyors and chefs from around Canada to give a broad picture of what our cuisine is all about. He invited Rob Feenie from Vancouver, who you may remember him as the chef who kicked Morimoto's ass and became the first Canadian to win Iron Chef America. In Canada he is revered as one of the greats and is well known for his British Columbia-inspired takes on classic dishes. Rob has recently been ousted from his award-winning restaurants by his former business partners and is forging a new path, consulting with the Cactus Club Cafés.
Martin Picard observes.
Martin Picard and Fred Morin were also invited and teamed up to do the main course together. These two Montreal chefs have been presenting their unique take on classic French and Acadian cuisine at their respective restaurants, Picard's Au Pied du Cochon (a favourite of Anthony Bourdain's, who wrote the intro for Picard's amazing cookbook, Au Pied du Cochon: The Album) and Morin's Joe Beef. At a recent conference on Canadian food policy, Morin suggested soylent green as a sustainable food source, and he and Martin Picard are both big, sexy, irreverent French maniacs who want you to get foie fat, steak juice and oyster brine all over your fancy clothes when you eat at their restaurants. Tobey Nemeth was the lone lady chef invited, she's been lauded in Toronto ever since she took the head Chef position at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar. Tobey is a tough chick with a lust for meat that would embarrass a zombie and a zeal for sustainability that would put the most snake-handlin' bible thumper to shame (she was also recently named the Sausage Queen of Ontario. As well as these chefs, Anthony invited some Ontario purveyors to provide oysters, cheese, chocolate and prosciutto.
"I did not know Rob Feenie, Fred Morin or Martin Picard at all. I wanted Rob to know that we supported him during this time in his life. I was into Fred because of the simple delicious food he does. Martin's food is over the top, delicious theatre and I never thought he would say yes, that was a amazing surprise. We needed a great woman to anchor the whole dinner and Tobey Nemeth is the best." Says Anthony.
The night before the event the Drake's kitchen crew did a regular service with three events thrown in. So, not only did they have to be on top of regular menu prep and execution, they had to put out h'or d'oeuvres for a cocktail party and two different sit down menus for two other parties. They also had special event menus for the next night as well. Remember too, that while all this was going on chefs were arriving from Montreal and Vancouver with their crews and the product for their dishes. It was a total madhouse, the Drake staff were still prepping and organizing things until 1:30 am. The next day I arrived at 2pm to a kitchen that looked like a Volkswagen packed with circus clowns. Sous chef, Darren Glew quickly put me to work making a thyme-scented applesauce, then cracking and portioning a bunch of lobsters with fellow cook, Renee Bellefeuille. Luckily we got to clean the lobster across the counter from the French guys. Everything is better when Frenchmen are around. Hugue Dufour and Mehdi Brunet-Benkritly, Picard's sous chefs, were straight out of a Godard film, leaving Renee and I slightly breathless. Fred Morin is a born comedian, tossing out bon-mots as he moved around the kitchen. Walking by some wild leeks he gave some accented advice "Wild leek eh? When you eat those and drink a lot of beer, don't piss into the wind."
As he passed our station he yelled over his shoulder, "Oh, Anthony Rose you are such a great kisser!"
While all this was going on, the regular Drake crew were setting up stations outside to feed the regular guests who'd be coming in that evening. The Drake had closed it's main dining room for the James Beard Dinner but the Café and rooftop Sky Yard would remain open with limited special event menus to customers. Did I mention these stations were outside? It's May in Ontario, which means you could sunbathe nude during the day but have to wrap yourself in fur in front of a blazing fire at night. It was freezing that night, the cooks wore sweaters under their chef coats.
Inside it was time for Renee and I to start sending out Anthony Rose's contribution to the dinner, the h'or d'oeuvres. We had duck sausage with wild leek relish on mushroom foccacia, foie gras doughnuts with rhubarb compote, house-smoked ham with applesauce, Atlantic lobster with ramp aioli and rabbit confit with onion foam. (The rabbit was cooked in duck fat then the meat was coated in panko and deep-fried. It was the best a rabbit has ever tasted.) While the platters of h'or d'oeuvres circled the dining room, guests were also tempted with Mario Pingue's Niagara prosciutto which he carved to order and Oyster Boy's St. Simon oysters from Shippagan, New Brunswick and Malpeques from Prince Edward Island which Geoff Meikle shucked to order.
Soon everyone began to take their seats and it was time to help Rob Feenie plate the first course. We set up 97 or so plates along the Drake's bar and starting placing the components one by one. The base of the dish was a Qualicum Bay Scallop Tartar (the scallops were harvested the day before in B.C. and flew on the plane with Rob) topped by a Kumamoto oyster (also harvested the day before), which was topped by caramelized onion foam. (Rob caramelized some onions then deglazed them with cream, this was then pureed, chilled and whipped. The end result tasted like biting into a cloud of French Onion soup, gorgeous.) All of this was garnished with micro cilantro greens and the plate was finished with a spoonful of vanilla-scented trout roe. As the plates went out (to be paired with a 2006 Cave Spring CSV Riesling, Niagara Peninsula) I had a chance to look around while a jazz violin ensemble led by Ed Vokurka played "La Vie en Rose". The room was twinkly and shadowed, velvety and sleek in all the right places, it didn't look like it was in 2008 Toronto at all. It looked more fantastic, like a scene from some luxurious European ballroom of the early 1900's, the Drake's incredible art collection making it all the more sexy and surreal.
Now it was time for Tobey Nemeth and her crew to get the second course started. She was doing seared Lake Huron trout over a Berkshire bacon and spring vegetable chowder. (She makes her own bacon at the restaurant. I once saw a picture in Saveur that showed a tattoo of a heart with the word "Bacon" in the centre of it. If you eat Tobey's bacon you will go out and get this tattoo.) All of her ingredients came from within 100 kilometres, her chowder included fiddleheads, lovage, asparagus, green garlic, wild leeks and trout lilies and was finished with crème fraiche made with goat milk from Ruth Klahsen (the Mennonite Mama of artisanal cheese in Ontario) at Monforte Dairy. Tobey's dish was paired with a 2005 Malivoire Moira Vineyard Chardonnay, Beamsville Branch. Her chowder was a warm Chinook wind, just perfect after the cool breeze of Rob's plate.
Once Tobey's dish had gone out the French guys started getting their serving dishes set up. They had brought turkey roasters to present their course in, you know those black tin roasting pans speckled with white dots. Chef Rose came in to the kitchen to tell Picard and Morin that the second course was being cleared.
"A winery guy is going to talk a little, then you guys can start plating." To which Picard responded, "Do you know a winery guy who talk a little? It's blah blah blah until everyone fall asleep and then he stop."
Fred Morin in action.
Luckily this winery guy, Norm Hardie, didn't talk too long and soon the paired wine was poured (his 2006 Norman Hardie Pinot Noir) and we were plating the main course. This was described on the menu as "Head and Shoulders". Picard, Morin and their team had roasted pork heads, pork legs and lobsters together in oven. For plating each roaster got carrots, peas, spring onions, new potatoes and lobster meat. Then a broth made from pork and lobster stock enriched with lobster tomalley was poured over top. The broth boasted morels, clams, fava beans and cockscomb. The finishing touch was one whole pork leg and some halved lobsters, then on went the lid and the whole thing was whisked off to the table to be shared by the awed guests. A plate with some silky sous-vide foie gras and crumbled saltines (real homemade saltines from the Drake's pastry chef, David Chow) was placed in front of each guest, over which they could pour the broth from the roaster.
I almost forgot the pig's heads! Each table also received a whole roasted pig's head on a board garnished with a little mound of pink pickled ramp bulbs. The pig was set up according to a drawing on the French team's prep list that depicted a pig head with a knife jammed to the hilt in it's snout and a carving fork poked between it's eyes.
I think Beard would have approved. In "Theory and Practice of Good Cooking", he writes, "The pig is by far my favorite meat-yielding animal, for he is edible from snout to tail and provides an enormous variety of eating."
These guys are stars, in a giant 'fuck off' to pretension they are doing unapologetic food fit for an army of peasants and people are lapping it up. As soon as the final roasting pan went out Chef Rose called for beer and we were soon chugging back some cold ones while the pastry team set up for the finale.
The dessert, described on the menu as 'The Bake Sale' and accompanied by a 2006 Inniskillin Cabernet Franc Ice Wine, Niagara Peninsula, was a cornucopia of treats from David Chow and his assistant Ashley Davis. Toiling for something like thirty hours over two days they presented piles and piles of fudge, chocolate chip cookies, caramel corn, snickerdoodles, Rice Krispie squares, chocolate cupcakes, devil's food cupcakes, the list goes on. But that wasn't all, David Castellan and Cynthia Leung from Toronto's Soma Chocolate (the only place in Canada that makes it's own chocolate from scratch in-house) brought a huge assortment of truffles, from an Arbequina Olive oil Truffle and a Lemon- Ginger Truffle to single origin truffles from Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Madagascar. The servers put take out containers beside the embarrassment of riches so that guests too stuffed with pig face meat could take some dessert for later. There was also a table so overloaded with artisan Canadian cheeses from Cole Snell at Provincial Fine Foods that it fell over.
In the kitchen, we finished our beers and started cleaning up. The guest chefs stowed their equipment and headed up to the Sky Yard to get loaded. I wrestled with overflowing garbage bags while Renee re-stocked the dessert table. Our hardy cooks, Marko Skof, Emile Francis and Will Wetmore, broke down their outdoor stations and brought everything inside to be sorted, labelled and put away, while our sous-chef Kevin Gilmour started punching fries. That's when you stick a potato in a contraption pull down the lever with all your might and the potato goes through to come out as french fries. "It was a good day, all I ate today was pigskin and scallop tartare." He said while he punched his way through 150 pounds of potatoes, because lunch service the next day would still be going on and they would need fries. Just because we'd had some of the greatest chefs in Canada in our kitchen didn't change anything, service would still go on and the work had to be done.
I asked Mitchell Davis what he thought of the night, "I think that Canadian cuisine has definitely come into its own over the last few years. This is due in part to Canadian chefs who have chosen to emphasize local ingredients and flavors, and also to Canadian producers and purveyors who make those ingredients available. I think the Food Network and other food media might also have helped to assert a Canadian identity through food by bringing the vast and diverse country together in people's living rooms. The increasing interest in and quality of Canadian wines have also brought more attention to Canadian food. Whatever the reason, it's great to see chefs coming together and proudly serving such wonderful food."
I should also mention that two of Toronto's brightest lights were hosting that evening, the eponymous teacher and author, Bonnie Stern and the man speeding up the membership drive for Slow Food in this town, Paul de Campo.
So, there you have it, it was a great night but I've got a Friday lunch rush to get ready for tomorrow, where I'll grill hundreds of burgers, fry a shitload of french fries and plate Cobb salads like an automaton. I don't mind, it still beats sitting with the adults.
[Photo credit: Justin Adam.]
Comments