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He left his taste buds in Vancouver
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer It has been more than a month since I got back from the Canadian northwest, and I still can't get the taste of Vancouver out of my mouth. There's no question that the city is beautiful, an island of silver towers set among sparkling seas and skyscraping mountains, but the regional flavor of its food and wine was just as memorable and instructive. It is as enviable as any West Coast cooking is to folks in the Tampa Bay area. Vancouver is young as a dining destination, but it has already achieved great sophistication and leapfrogged ahead of most of Florida. I tasted all this innovation during the annual Association of Food Journalists convention. Vancouver's best restaurants delight in local, seasonal ingredients, and they are lucky that it's a bumper crop of luxury tastes, including fresh berries, wild mushrooms, salmon and sablefish (black cod), Dungeness crabs, sea urchin and fine wine. That sounds like the woodsy, salty taste of Washington and Oregon, but British Columbia cooking adds twists and surprises worth savoring, thanks to the infusion of flavors and talent from the Orient and the classical French tradition of their compatriots. Here's what's on the plate in a corner of the continent diametrically opposite from us (geographically and otherwise): -- Dim sum, sushi and noodles. Heavy migration, particularly from Hong Kong, has made Vancouver the nearest city to Asia with a full menu of Asian food, including dumplings from every cuisine. The city's Chinatown is almost an anachronism, for you can eat fresh and authentic Chinese, Japanese, Indian and more from the sophisticated city center to the suburbs. One shopping mall I visited filled its food court with 14 stands of different cuisines -- all Asian, no pizza or Cajun fries to be seen. The Asian equivalent of fast food, small shops serving $5 meals of noodles a la the movie Tampopo, dim sum or gyoza dumplings are everyday eating for British Columbians of all heritages. And the finest Asian restaurants take advantage of the Pacific bounty, putting white tuna on sushi bars and saucing Dungeness crab with fermented black beans and garlic. -- Salmon and more (or less) salmon. British Columbia chefs not only insist on freshness but local origin in fish. Robert Clark of C Restaurant, for instance, argues at length about its production and method of harvest and seeks out boats that can supply "live-caught" fish. Good restaurants such as Blue Water Cafe have a half-dozen oysters on hand every day from an oyster list of 18, most of them local. The big battle is over wild versus farmed salmon. Though U.S. diners see this as a choice between Pacific and Atlantic fish, B.C. chefs and fishers know that plenty of salmon are farmed off their coasts as well as in the north Atlantic. Most in the farms are Atlantic salmon, but some are Pacific breeds, too. Critics complain that salmon farms pollute the environment and that escapees interbreed with wild stocks. Cooks insist that wild fish that jump up river spawn taste. The catch -- and this is the big plus for salmon farmers -- is that large salmon runs in the Northwest occur only in mid summer and early fall. If you want to eat wild salmon the rest of the year, it'll be canned, frozen or smoked. Fresh salmon in December has to be farm-raised. -- Local ingredients. The garden calendar is different, but temperate climate is mild enough to keep the produce basket full until well into the fall. The Granville Island Market brags about local tomatoes into October. Traditional orchard fruit, potatoes and winter squashes are strong, too, and the big surprise may be that a fresh butternut squash is not just for chucking in the root cellar. B.C. butternut succeeds in soup, pasta filling and, dressed with mint, the best and most colorful salad I had. Beef comes from Alberta and the plains, lobsters from Nova Scotia and foie gras from Quebec. -- B.C. wine. Canadian wines are not oddities here; top restaurants serve plenty of them. The locals are seriously proud and legitimately so, and most wine lists contain dozens from the lakeside vineyards that line the Okanagan Valley east of Vancouver. I expected only ice wines and Oregon-like pinot noir, but Canadian grapes cover a much greater range. Almost all California and French grapes manage here, with the best showings in pinot blanc, cabernet franc, crisp gewurztraminers and rieslings, as well as dessert wines and ports, especially of hybrids such as Vidal and Marechal Foch. (In the right hands, such as Quail's Gate, Foch still makes fine red wine). Few are shipped here, but if you're in Canada, don't pass up a chance to sample Mission Hill, Sumac Ridge or Cedar Creek. -- Bar food. As in much of the Northwest, Canadians enjoy being outdoors despite a less hospitable climate, and "patio" drinking and socializing have always been popular, even if there are only six seats and a standup bar. They are perfect places for Vancouver's smorgasbord of Asian finger food. A trend is to set a broad menu of edibles, too, especially at the bar section of top restaurants, where eating at the bar is cheaper and lighter. It's almost impossible to get a table at Lumiere, a Relais Gourmand spot run by Rob Feenie, Vancouver's top chef and a Canadian TV star. If you can score one, the only choices are eight-course tasting menus that run from $50 to $80. But you can walk in without a reservation and sit in front by the luminescent bar. The bar food comes out of the same painstaking kitchen that can make pureed cauliflower taste like creme fraiche. Yet, halibut cheek and lobster knuckle soup, ravioli of red kuri squash, and boudin, smoked salmon and the best free-range egg of your life at the bar cost $10 a plate or less. One clever everyday spot is Zin, which has fondues, cheese fries, empanada, pierogies, noodles, samosas and more for munching with 80 wines starting at $4 and sharing. They're served under the best motto I've heard since restaurants started adopting them: "It's not always about you . . ." Actually, I wish it were about us. -- Tea. Vancouver knows about tinctures and tisanes, and not just the proper sort. A few Canadian gourmet chefs are partial to "tomato tea," a pale pink broth with the delicate flavor of tomato, as a palate cleanser. But the municipal drink is bubble tea, chai in a rainbow of flavors and served with tapioca grains that require special fat straws to suck up the soggy marbles. An import from Taiwan, it's a staple in Oriental groceries, health food stores and coffee bars, a classic taste of East meets Northwest. -- Food critic Chris Sherman writes about dining and restaurant news in the Nibbler. He can be reached at (727) 893-8585.
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
