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The tastier side of green

Chefs, restaurants and ranchers showcased at Whistler’s biggest food and wine festival
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It's often referred to as the "s" word in Whistler.

A dirty word spouted from the mouths of politicians in sound bites. A decorative ornament, sometimes bearing closer resemblance to a leech, attached to words like "Olympic" or "development" or "footprint."

No word in the English language can clear a room faster or be met with more rolling eyes. But Whistler's food scene is putting the 14-letter word back into the community's good books.

"Sustainability" can be uttered freely in the presence of children, and best done so with mouths full and wine glasses raised at Cornucopia celebrations showcasing the ultimate local green machines in chefs, restaurants and food producers.

 

Old MacDonald had a chef

Instead of chef's whites Maxim Ridorossi dons a snazzy vest and tie as he plates the Nicola Valley venison he smoked earlier in the week on freshly-baked oat crackers for canapés.

Miles Davis' jazz stylings filter into his busy kitchen at North Arm Farm in Pemberton. He cooks homemade soups for guests visiting the farm by day while by night his culinary creativity gives way to cooking classes, catering and supper clubs like this evening.

Dinner guests arrive in zoot suits and veiled hats paired with red-stained lips for the 1940s-inspired supper club. Partner and pastry chef Jenna Dashney greets time travelers with glasses of Pemberton Schramm Vodka, mixed with her own homemade crab-apple coulis.

Ridorossi and Dashney call themselves The Foodlovers, passionate purveyors of seasonal cooking and local ingredients.

After undergoing a six-hour braising marathon to enrich Ridorossi's Pemberton Meadows beef short ribs, farm-fresh vegetables are discarded into a waste bucket for the pigs.

Old MacDonald's barnyard friends never ate so well.

Pigs and chickens penned up on one side, rows upon rows of root vegetables stretching out on the other and in the middle The Foodlovers kitchen giving life to a weatherworn barn aglow in candlelight and friends' laughter.

This is the stuff dreams are made of: a newly created menu, local ingredients literally steps from his cutting block and gangsters filtering in and out of the kitchen with questions about crosnes and purple carrots.

"The farm is such an amazing location and to be able to work with fresh product like this is a chef's dream," Ridorossi says. "Supper Club. It's our creation. We decide everything. That is where I can play the most."

This sense of play in spontaneously creating locally-driven dishes inspired daily by his backyard is the secret behind his repeated success. He was crowned King of the Cooks at the inaugural Chef's Challenge at the World Ski and Snowboard Festival last Spring and he is ready to defend his title at this year's Chef's Challenge at Cornucopia.

The competition will feel familiar to fans of the Food Network's television show Chopped . Chefs will work with a single black box regional ingredient to create a dish in 30 minutes. Competitors will undergo a series of tests, cooking head-to-head in heats of two while commentators heckle on the sparing culinary masters. Only one chef will garner the title King of the Cooks.

"It was really fun. Almost an adrenaline rush," Ridorossi says of his first competition where he reinvented farm carrots three ways to showcase seared and cured sable fish. "You don't know what to expect. You have to go quick, but stay calm in the head."

Quick, creative thinking is nothing new for the Montreal native who moved to B.C. with the sole goal of working for the internationally acclaimed Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island. The entire menu is changed daily with all ingredients sourced locally.

"Eventually the same proteins and herbs come back, but you have to ask yourself, 'How can I do this differently?'" he says.

It was pretty much a black-box challenge every day. Farmers would drop off crates of vegetables. Fishermen stocked the cooler. The artist side of being a chef was called on every time he looked at a rutabaga and challenged himself to discover seven ways to reinvent it for the week.

"It's like you are going to paint a painting but you don't know what colour you are going to get," he says. "After three years of doing that I wanted to plan a menu, try a dish three or four times and then have that dish on the menu for three or four months."

His culinary expertise led to serving in some of B.C.'s finest kitchens, including West Restaurant in Vancouver, opening Après in Whistler and most recently at the King Pacific Lodge on Princess Royal Island in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Conde Nast Traveler magazine named King Pacific Lodge the Best Resort in Canada for the past two years and fourth in the world. Dining was one of six factors taken into consideration.

Ridorossi is the lodge's white knight behind the accolades. His round table of daily-changing gourmet menus focusing on local and regional products provided a different kind of adventure in the resort's remote wilderness.

He still holds the title of executive chef at the lodge - this September he returned to the floating island for a short stay to create the new menu and hire kitchen staff - but The Foodlover has set up permanent residence in Pemberton at the North Arm Farm kitchen.

A guest looking fresh off a Casablanca movie set asks Ridorossi about the sable fish dish he prepared for the Supper Club. The seared-golden nugget swims in a clear broth almost invisible to the eye. But taste buds see what a first glance does not - the juice of smoked heirloom tomatoes hung in cheesecloth over a bucket for three days.

Ridorossi won't be afforded the luxury of three days at the Cornucopia Chef's Challenge. The competition clock stops at 30 minutes.

But if Ridorossi can figure out a creative set up like this to optimize a tomato could you imagine what he might do with a scallop?

Like a Ukrainian wooden doll, the flavours in Ridorossi's plates deceivingly unstack themselves to reveal layer upon layer of character.

Something you would never expect from local ingredients waning with the first chill of winter, nor from a humble kitchen situated in a rustic barn touted by a fine-dining chef as the ultimate dream.

 

Green Table for one

Spray bottles stocked with a mixture of water and vinegar are used to sanitize countertops at Players Chophouse in Whistler. A small sticker underneath every light switch directs guests, "Please turn off light when leaving the room". Menus boast terms such as "ocean wise." Farm-fresh produce is showcased on plates while hallway lights turn off and on at their own accord like magic.

It hasn't always been this way. These are the signature marks of a new food force in town, The Green Table Network spearheaded locally by Astrid Cameron Kent.

"We were very aggressive," says director of operations Travis Talbot of the dramatic changes to Players Chophouse made in only 60 days after signing up with The Green Table Network.

He chuckles and adds, "If you've got Astrid on your tail, you don't have much choice. We changed the menu, changed some vendors, signed up for Whistler 2020 sustainability initiatives, signed on with Go Blue, educated staff and joined Slow Food Sea to Sky. We made it a priority."

Look for The Green Table Network certified sticker when opening the door to the Fork and Vine after party at Players Chophouse at Cornucopia celebrations this year.

The party celebrating the organic and biodynamic practices of vineyards from around the world is just another instance of a green fingerprint being left more readily behind in restaurants throughout Whistler, thanks in part to the Whistler 2020 Task Force.

Cameron Kent, a self-described "slow food wrangler," is one of many food producers, distributors, restaurateurs and health specialists totting a Food Task Force badge as part of Whistler 2020.

The Whistler 2020 document is a comprehensive sustainability plan created by the community in partnership with the Resort Municipality of Whistler. The document outlines five priorities of what the town aspires to be in the future, followed by 16 strategies and task forces to put those ideas into action. The objective of this living document is to integrate social, economic and environmental concerns into all decision-making processes.

Cameron Kent felt The Green Table Network would be a good fit for the plan.

"We just launched the program in Whistler about a year ago," she says. "We have 15 businesses who are interested. It's a process. Green Table is a huge, comprehensive program."

The Vancouver-based company provides consultation services to help restaurants reduce waste and pollutants, conserve energy and water, and adopt more eco-friendly products and services to the benefit of the local economy. Professional consultants perform a number of audits on participating businesses. Naughty storage hot water tanks will not survive. Composting bins will be the only ones left standing.

Not many businesses would welcome an audit, let alone pay for an ongoing microscopic look into daily operations.

"You throw in some dollars, but the investment will be long term" Talbot says.

Once a restaurant becomes Green Table certified, the business undergoes an additional audit every year whereby consultants provide numbers on how much energy and water was saved - and ultimately how much money.

"At the end of the day, they show you how your investment now is going to have a long term savings. If you switch out these bulbs, or find a more efficient way to (get rid of waste), these will amount to cost savings over time," Talbot says.

Green Table members receive on-going support with updates on new environmentally friendly products and programs as well as the chance to network with like-minded businesses. As more restaurants sign on, the more opportunity there is for change in how Whistler's food scene does business. One restaurant may be unsuccessful in asking a fish supplier for an alternative to Styrofoam packaging but a recognized group will lend a greater voice.

"Unfortunately to be green or blue, it can be more costly," Talbot says. "For example dishwashing chemicals: it is more costly to use eco-friendly products, but when you join a group like Green Table, they can say, 'Hey we represent this many accounts, are you willing to do bring the price point down?' They are willing to do some of the leg work for us."

And it's not just guests and managers who are excited about the program.

A staff member interrupts Talbot's office work to propose the restaurant sign up for a Climate Smart Program, a way to explore ways to offset the restaurant's carbon footprint.

"The staff drives it and keeps it moving. Our staff is very aggressive in making sure management and business is accountable," Talbot says. "They are proud when they go to the tables. They know the food is clean. They know the farmer's name and where the vegetables come from."

And they know each table they visit is a green one, all the way from field to fork.

 

Here's the local beef

A winemaker dinner. It's that rare moment when wines take centre stage.

Usually a Beaujolais or pinot gris will play a supporting character on a culinary night out, reduced to only an afterthought on ordering a scallop appetizer or duck confit entrée.

Menus eagerly whisper into the ear of a sommelier to guide a guest while wine bottles remain silenced in a cellar dungeon, waiting in the wings for their entrance in the second act.

So when Long Shadows Vintners were promised a spotlight at Araxi's Cornucopia winemaker dinner, the convivium of internationally acclaimed vintners came out swinging with syrahs, merlots and cabernet sauvignons.

Brash. Big. Bold.

White linens would be stained blood red that night.

The red-carpet-royalty line up will have the starring role in the appropriately named evening, Casting Long Shadow, while the menu is put out to pasture 30 minutes north of Whistler.

Executive chef James Walt's menu is reduced to a supporting credit, although like Sherlock Holmes ' Doctor Watson or Batman 's companion Robin it's all on how you look at it.

"Definitely the local food is the star," Walt says. "I am most excited about the second course. It's beef head to tail. Six different cuts prepared six different ways each with an individual garnish."

The award-winning chef's star-studded vision of a five-course red-wine rendezvous began on the farmlands of ranchers Don Millerd and Bob Mitchell in the Pemberton Valley.

Walt was first introduced to Pemberton Meadows Natural Beef four years ago but the quality of the cattle finished only on oats wasn't up to standard when operations first began. Barley was later added to the cattle's diet and the farm's single "A" grading grew to Triple A, and with it a recurring role on the Araxi menu.

"They are in pasture for most of their life," Walt says of the product he highlighted in this month's "Shop with a Chef" spotlight in Vancouver Magazine . "The last 90 days they are brought into pens... where they are strictly fed grain. It soaks up the oil in a way and kind of redistributes the fat through the meat and you get marbling. Now it's fantastic. We use it a lot."

All of the farm's homegrown hay is in the barns, barley and grain stored in silos. The green pastures of summer are over and the cattle will be sent to harvest in December.

Pemberton Meadows All Natural Beef ranchers have closely followed the entire life span of their cattle from birth to butchering to delivery of their product to a restaurant's front door.

Rancher Don Millerd explains most B.C. cattle ranchers send weaned calves to feedlots in Alberta for the grain finishing stage at 15 months old before harvesting. The aging process happens somewhere between being trucked from an Alberta slaughterhouse to a B.C. grocery store.

Millerd and Mitchell wait two years before harvesting the cattle. The meat is then butchered, aged and distributed by Millerd's son in law, Jason Pleym. The co-owner of the Vancouver-based Two Rivers Meats company takes pride in only sourcing animals raised naturally, free from hormones and antibiotics.

Approximately 100 Pemberton Meadows cattle are sold each year with 80 per cent of the product shipped to restaurants in Whistler and the Lower Mainland.

"Because we are raising in small quantities, we need to find homes for different cuts of meat," Millerd says. "We don't just produce t-bone steaks, so it's very important to find different restaurants that use different cuts."

With a captive audience of veteran foodies expected for the winemaker dinner at Araxi, Walt didn't shy from planning a menu with unusual cuts.

"I serve beef heart, tongue and ox tail. They are all beautiful when prepared properly. You shouldn't be scared to try tongue. It's not an organ meat," he assures. "It's a muscle so it has an interesting flavour profile."

One he is confident will stand up to the evening's almost all-red chorus line kicking its local way to centre stage.

 

Side Dishes

 

Whistler Chef Challenge

Cornucopia

Friday, Nov. 13

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Whistler Conference Centre

Free Admission

 

The Foodlovers Supper Club

By Appointment

North Arm Farm in Pemberton

Thefoodlovers.ca

 

Fork and Vine Party

Cornucopia

Thursday, Nov. 12

7 - 11 p.m.

Players Chophouse

Tickets $45

Long Shadow Winemaker Dinner

Cornucopia

Friday, Nov. 13

6:30 p.m.

Araxi

Tickets $195

 

 



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