What an extraordinary event that was, last night in Montreal! We began with an imperative – to find a worthy Gold Medal Plates champion to represent the city at February’s Canadian Culinary Championship in Kelowna. Our method was a new departure, reliant on a special partnership in Montreal between Gold Medal Plates and Joey Saputo’s Fondation Impact de Montréal, a charitable foundation with its roots in the Montreal Impact soccer team. With the invaluable inspiration and assistance of our friends at Deloitte, we gathered together 84 VIP guests, meeting for a cocktail at Hotel 10. Then we broke off into five groups and set out into the night to visit five restaurants, taste the chef’s dish and paired drink and find our champion.
Divided between the luxurious vehicles were seven GMP judges – Montreal’s Senior Judge, writer and educator Robert Beauchemin; someone who needs no introduction to the gastronomes of the province of Quebec, author and broadcaster Rollande DesBois; and, completing a quartet of scribes, writer, broadcaster and restaurant critic Gildas Meneu. Also judging were three renowned chefs, each of whom had also won Gold Medal Plates Montreal. First Mathieu Cloutier who went on to win the Canadian Culinary Championship in 2009; beside him Martin Juneau who won the Canadian Culinary Championship in 2011; and finally the mischevious Danny St. Pierre who won the Gold medal here last year. Also mingled amongst us were players from the Montreal Impact and the great Olympic speed skater, Isabelle Charest, lending a little dazzling star power to her particular posse.
So we set off into the chilly Montreal night. Weaving in a complicated choreography through the construction-choked city (a brilliant organisational job by event planner Leidy Ojeda) we visited each restaurant, a shortlist chosen by Robert Beauchemin and the judges that consisted of Impasto (chef Michele Forgione), La Famille (chef Simon Mathys), Barbounya (chef Fisun Ergan), Restaurant Park (chef Antonio Park) and Hôtel Herman (chef Marc-Alexandre Mercier) which isn’t a hotel at all but a cool little bistro. Four hours later, everyone reconvened at the Hotel 10 for an after party while we judges sloped off to crunch our numbers and compare notes. Here’s how it all shook down.
Taking the bronze medal by a tiny margin was Simon Mathys. His restaurant La Famille can only seat 12 so he hosted us in another property, a wine bar that he has recently purchased and is about to turn into a new restaurant called Le Beau Frère (definitely one to watch for). His dish was typical of his love for naturalistic presentations and vegetables. At its heart was a generous helping of thickly sliced raw Atlantic salmon, sweet and superbly fresh, the slices jumbled up together. Slivered coins of raw, crunchy pickled carrot were scattered onto the fish – almost the same colour – which had been set onto a base of silky pumpkin purée. Chef makes a fresh cheese in his kitchen using vinegar to curdle his curds and this was crumbled over everything along with a healthy amount of crunchy, nutty sunflower seeds. It was not a dish to dissect – it worked best with all elements crowded onto the fork; hence the presentation. Chef’s match was a dry, delicate hydromel, a honey wine called Envolée from a meadery called Desrochers D, with a honeysuckle nose and a subtle flavour that matched the taste of the salmon.
The silver medal went to chef Michele Forgione of Impasto. He chose octopus as his principal protein, pan-searing the thick but delectably tender limbs to a boldly dark degree then quenching the heat with a marinade of honey, lemon juice and olive oil. Slightly charred and sticky, it was an impressive and perfectly seasoned centrepiece. Beneath it, like a coarse purée, chef had spread a pillow of his house-made nduja, that gooey, spicy, skinless salami from Calabrian cooking, vibrant with chili heat. It was a brilliant counterpoint to the octopus. There were tiny seedlings strewn over the octopus for freshness, while plain white kidney beans, left al dente, contributed texture. A surprising addition were little cloaks of smoked cheese that had been melted over the octopus and allowed to harden into something chewy. It was a robust, rustic dish, well matched with a light, fruity wheat-and-barley beer called Cheval Blanc.
We awarded our gold medal to a chef who has twice won silver in previous years – Antonio Park of Restaurant Park. Though he grew up in Argentina, Chef Park is Korean and his dish last night was a highly refined translation of the signature Korean dish, bibimbap. Instead of rice and vegetables and egg and hot sauce in a bowl, Chef began by making a very precise roulade of finely julienned vegetables – moist zucchini, carrot, red pepper, nine-hour-braised shiitake mushrooms and cauliflower – all wrapped in spinach, the roll no wider than my thumb. This he wrapped in a chicken mousse to create a sort of boudin blanc with a vegetarian heart. Rather than squirting gochujang chili sauce over it, he took the sauce, merged it with agar-agar and turned it into tiny sheets of fine jelly which he applied as an outer layer to his roll. Then he painted the plate with a brushstroke of the sauce. He set three tomtom-shaped slices of this roll onto each plate as if it were the most elegant maki you ever saw. The egg component of bibimbap was similarly transformed into something rich and rare – a quail egg, slow-cooked for 2 hours at 63 degrees until it was a semi-liquid, semi-solid entity, was then insinuated into a second, raw quail egg that was quickly poached. Gilding the lily, perhaps, but every one of us went ooh and aaah… To finish, he scattered a crunchy mix of puffed rice – a mixture of basmati, wild rice, brown rice and quinoa – over the dish and shaved some gorgeous black truffles onto everything. It was an extraordinary creation that scored near-maximum points for technique and wow factor. The chosen beverage was a beer called Session Houblon from Le Castor all-organic microbrewery, an ISA, which stands for a style of beer called India Session Ale, and is like a (relatively) mildly hopped, less alcoholic IPA. I thought it was still a bit too hoppy for the dish, but last night no one was going to catch Chef Park. We look forward to his arrival in Kelowna next February with keen anticipation.