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Food and Drink

Rolf Gunther, the man behind the kitchen door at Rimrock

There’s a chef in Spain who is the Mick Jagger of the cooking world. Chefs swoon in his presence and await his next move with parted lips and bated breath. Customers wait for years to pay hundreds of dollars for meals that include gold-plated egg yolks, cherries wrapped in ham fat, crepes made of nothing but milk, and foamed beetroot.

There are the TV personality chefs and big-time authors, bamming this and bamming that, or suggestively licking the sauce off their fingers and transforming cooking demos into escapades that are more about eroticism and bedroom goings-on than anything you can find in your fridge.

Then there’s Rolf Gunther.

Rolf is the chef/co-owner and creative force in the kitchen at Rimrock Café. It’s a 25-year-old success story that, despite or perhaps because of, its out-of-the-way location has become a Whistler icon. For in some inexplicable way, Rimrock has distilled and captured a quintessential essence of “Whistler” while delivering a mighty fine dining experience at the same time.

Touted by many as the best restaurant around, including Pique readers who have voted it “Best of Whistler” four years in a row, Rimrock has been commended by culinary bastions like Bon Appétit and Zagat for its overall excellence. Movie stars hear about it and try to squeeze in a visit, even when the place is sold out. Sometimes the likes of Bill Murray and Danny DeVito get in — and sometimes they’re just plain out of luck.

So Rolf has every reason to start his own show on the Food Network or pump out designer cookbooks and go on cross-country tours. After all, he has all the credentials: culinary training at the four-star Park Hotel in Germany’s Black Forest region, and experience in fine restaurants from Basel, Switzerland to Berlin before delivering the goods here.

But he can’t. Because Rolf is the original anti-celebrity chef.

You likely know somebody like him yourself — one of those people who hates putting him- or herself in the spotlight, even in a modest, neighbourly kind of way. As his business partner Bob Dawson puts it, some people don’t even know who Rolf is, and he’s been around for decades.

“We just don’t care about a lot of the things that are going on out there. We just keep doing what we do,” says Rolf on a crisp autumn afternoon before leaving on a holiday to Maui.

“I feel uncomfortable putting myself in the front of anything — I don’t really like it. I would not go out there and promote myself because it’s just not in my nature.”

In fact, he admits that he doesn’t even like doing this interview. On top of that, he barely recognizes how good his work and the entire Rimrock experience is.

“I’m too close to the forest to see the picture, if you know what I mean,” he says. “To me it’s all about work. In a restaurant, you have some highs and some lows. Sometimes I feel okay about what I do and sometimes I don’t, and if I don’t, I try to do better.”

To Rolf, the twinned concept of achievement and success is an on-going dynamic — you can never really rest about what you’ve done or what you’re going to do. So he keeps an eye out for what’s going on out there, but he definitely shuns fads.

“You have to have a look at what other people are doing, right? In case you are missing something in the big picture here,” he says. “You could do something radically different, but then I go, no, because most of the stuff you see out there just plays on things everybody else is doing.”

Like the “foam” fad that’s been kicking around the past few years with everybody riffing on the foamed pumpkin, foamed beetroot, foamed mushroom concept that the aforementioned Ferrán Adrià kicked off at his famed El Bulli restaurant in Spain.

As for the growing phenomenon of celebrity chefs, “I find it really odd,” Rolf says as we poke fun at the likes of Nigella Lawson and things like the presentation of food so lasciviously that the term “food porn” has popped up.

“It’s pretty to look at, maybe, but that’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for.”

So what is he looking for?

“What’s not over the top, what real people buy — that’s what I look at. Not novelty for the sake of novelty,” he says, “but what I would I like if I go to a restaurant. What do I want to eat? That’s the way I look at it.”

And that can be whatever you’re in the mood for. A lot of people go out because they have to. They don’t know how to cook or aren’t willing to spend the time doing so — a trend Rolf laments — so they go out somewhere cheap.

“But if you want to go out somewhere special, spend a little money and come to Rimrock, you probably want to eat something you don’t eat everyday, something you can’t necessarily pick up at the grocery store, or, if you do, you don’t know how to cook it,” he says.

One thing he really has a pet peeve for is anything that’s not fresh. And that’s where the concept of the three-course special in shoulder season comes from.

Since Rimrock is focused on seafood, freshness is ridiculously important; Rolf would rather sell something at a discount and move it than have it sit around and try to make something out of it days later.

I ask him about a tip I heard from New York celebrity chef/bad boy Anthony Bourdain. Ever see those “specials” in restaurants and wonder what’s up? Could be they really are based on seasonal ingredients that are plentiful and at their peak. But if you’re in a seafood restaurant, especially in the U.S., Rolf agrees that you should ask your server just how fresh the fish really is.

However, don’t worry at Rimrock. If the halibut is chalky, back it goes to the supplier. And if a piece of fish is overcooked, Rolf gets really annoyed, especially if he’s the one who did it.

Overall, it reminds me of something very familiar and far removed from celebrity — my own mom’s approach to cooking. Quietly behind-the-scenes, taking care and putting great thought and effort into it. Coming up with pleasurable new experiences using fresh ingredients and interesting combinations. Avoiding novelty for the sake of novelty and anything over the top. Checking to see if everyone is enjoying it, and not doing it again if they’re not. Feeling satisfied when it works; trying harder when it doesn’t.

Sounds like a recipe for life to me.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who hates delivering a half-baked story.