{"id":3534,"date":"2016-10-13T12:37:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T17:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=3534"},"modified":"2016-10-13T12:37:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T17:37:25","slug":"montreal-gold-medal-plates-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=3534","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Gold Medal Plates 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Gold Medal dish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2016 Gold Medal Plates campaign began in Montreal on October 12 with a triumphant drive-around quest to find our gold, silver and bronze-medallist chefs. It was a warm and sun-drenched early evening and excitement was high as the Montreal culinary judiciary made its rendezvous \u2013 Robert Beauchemin, the food and restaurant writer and Senior Judge for Montreal, together with food journalist and critic Gildas Meneu, culinary guru Mme. Rollande DesBois, last year\u2019s gold medallist, chef Guillaume Cantin, and yours truly.<\/p>\n

We taxied our way from the old city to the Plateau and beyond, visiting five restaurants and tasting some fascinatingly imaginative and very different offerings from chef Antonin Mousseau-Rivard of Mousso, chef Aaron Languille of Le Diplomate, chef Stelio Perombelon of M.Mme, chef Sophie Tabet of Chez Sophie and chef Jason Morris of Le Fant\u00f4me. The marks were close but we were left with a clear and unanimous winner \u2013 Sophie Tabet of Chez Sophie, a small, elegantly modern restaurant in the swiftly up-and-coming neighbourhood of Griffintown.<\/p>\n

The pinnacle of her dish, its crowning glory, was a veal sweetbread, perfectly tender inside a crunchy crust of fried batter and garnished with a flurry of microgreens. It lay on top of a jumble of lightly saut\u00e9ed mushrooms \u2013 miniature shiitakes, honey mushrooms and king mushrooms \u2013 all soft and supple but offering an intriguing variety of rich fungal flavours. Beneath them lay a perfect raviolo (thin, impeccably textured pasta) filled with pulled c\u00f4te de boeuf that had been slowly braised in a rich red wine reduction. Was there a fleeting hint of truffle in there or was it just an echo of the mushrooms? There were three sauces rubbing shoulders on the plate \u2013 a little of the red wine braise seeping out of the raviolo, a sweet-savoury foie gras cream, and an emulsion of Ch\u00e2teau Chalon vin jaune that brought its own nutty acidity to the occasion. Chef Tabet\u2019s technical marks were through the roof \u2013 it was impossible to find any fault with all these elements. And her wine match was a triumph. Vignoble de l\u2019Orpailler is a veteran winery in the Eastern Townships; we tasted its Cuv\u00e9e Natashquan 2014, a deep golden blend of Seyval and Vidal, aged in new French barriques that showed an intensity of apple, citrus and tropical fruit flavours that took me completely by surprise. They were vivified by a tangy acidity that cut through the richness of the dish and elevated the mushroom, beef and foie gras flavours in a delightful way. Congratulations to Chef Tabet \u2013 a worthy gold medallist, to be sure.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Silver Medal dish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our silver and bronze dishes were separated by less than a single percentage point. Taking the silver medal was chef Aaron Languille of Le Diplomate, a very cool, intimate spot in the Mile Ex area, beyond the Plateau. Customers sit at the long bar and can watch the chef and his team plating their orders. So we saw Chef Languille build his competition dish from the ground up, starting with a salad of diced Empire apple mixed with miniature cubes of tangy horseradish jelly \u2013 such different textures, such refreshing flavours! Chef used two teaspoons to form tiny quenelles of a bright green pur\u00e9e of kale and sunflower oil that adorned the white dice; then he broke small shards off a dark green, tissue-thin sheet of what was once kale but was now transformed by a series of molecular techniques into a brittle crisp. These were placed carefully into the diced salad, adding another level of texture and taste. On top of all this he placed a brown dome that looked like the bottom half of a roasted artichoke but was actually a modern take on pommes Anna made from very thin slices of blue potato brushed with butter flavoured with fermented garlic and honey. Crisp on the surface, soft and tender beneath, it tasted like the apotheosis of all potatoes. A scattering of salt crystals and freshly grated horseradish for peppery oomph, and the dish was complete. It\u2019s a bold chef who goes vegetarian at a Gold Medal Plates event, but we didn\u2019t miss the protein. The wine pairing was perfectly judged \u2013 Pearl Morissette\u2019s 2011 unfiltered Chardonnay from the Beamsville Bench in Niagara, its complex fruit reaching out to the diced apple on the plate.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Bronze Medal dish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We awarded the bronze medal to chef Stelio Perombelon of M.Mme (pronounced \u201cMonsieur-Madame\u201d). He chose to work with boned guinea-fowl thighs, turning them into a ballotine held together by the bird\u2019s crisp skin and cooked sous-vide at 68o<\/sup>. The meat was juicy, supple but firm and full of flavour. Three little drums of the ballotine were placed on the plate, each crowned with a peeled Pacific sidestripe shrimp. Dabs of a yellow ochre pur\u00e9e turned out to be thickened sweet potato bisque, emulsified with oil from the shrimp. The shrimp shells had been roasted, dehydrated and ground to a powder that chef mixed with a little cayenne and used as a decorative, spicy dust on the plate. Adding a clever acidic contrast was a mound of sliced pattypan squash \u2013 the last of the season \u2013 treated like bread-and-butter pickles with a quick bath in vinegar seasoned with sugar, salt, coriander seed and celery seed and just a suggestion of the house curry powder. We all agreed that the balance of delicately sweet and subtly tart elements was beautifully achieved. Chef paired his dish with another local wine that was new to me \u2013 a blend of Chambaudiere and Seyval grapes, fermented and aged in new oak and called Mirabel, the creation of Vignoble N\u00e9gondos in Quebec\u2019s lower Laurentians. Its peach and yellow plum notes were particularly in tune with the sweet potato pur\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

So we have our first Gold Medal Plates regional champion: Chef Sophie Tabet of Chez Sophie. Once the marks were crunched, we dashed back to her restaurant to tell her the good news, but she had gone home to spend time with her seven-month-old baby. Judge Beauchemin will give her the gold medal and trophy plate tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to all our Montreal competitors on what was a truly inspirational showing. The campaign has begun! Next week, Edmonton and St. John\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2016 Gold Medal Plates campaign began in Montreal on October 12 with a triumphant drive-around quest to find our gold, silver and bronze-medallist chefs. It was a warm and sun-drenched early evening and excitement was high as the Montreal culinary judiciary made its rendezvous \u2013 Robert Beauchemin, the food and restaurant writer and Senior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91,92,1],"tags":[972,970,971,973],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3538,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3534\/revisions\/3538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}