Of Cities And Mountains

Here’s what’s new in my life:

Victor Benjamin and I. Just happy to be alive.

So, here is a brief update: I’m leaving the city and going to work in the mountains at a great  restaurant called Araxi. I bought a car and moved into a cabin in the Squamish woods yesterday – a scary, but altogether exciting idea. I grew up on an acreage, surrounded by trees, so it will just take a bit of readjusting. When I was moving in yesterday, all I could hear was the neigbor’s cows mooing. It all happened really fast and it kind of seems like a dream, but I am definitely ready for a new challenge.  I feel slightly bad that I’ve moved around so much lately – this is my fourth job in a year- but I am only searching for the right fit, and I feel confident that this is it.

Before starting up there though, I am going to Toronto tommorow to do a charity dinner with my old chef David Hawksworth. It’s called the Grand Cru Culinary Wine Festival, and it is a fundraiser for the Toronto General Hospital and the Toronto Western Hospital. What happens is: loads of chefs descend on Toronto, go into peoples houses, prepare a great meal paired with crazy wines, the people pay an outrageous sum for the dinner and all the proceeds go to charity. Should be fun. I’ll try to do a few posts while I’m there.

Last Friday, I did my first work for Chef James Walt of Araxi at a friendly little cooking competition called the Gold Medal Plates. We did not prevail that night,  but had a fun time nonetheless. Here are some pictures of the night for your enjoyment.

Chef James dish: Qualicum Beach scallop soup, dungeness crab stuffed scallop, beef consomme pearls, harvest roots.

The new guy always gets the shitty job: two hours in the fridge putting caviar on the stuffed scallop.

Each chefs dish at the competition was paired with a different B.C. wine. Ours was Joie Farm’s Reserve Chardonnay. It was delicious and we hit it pretty hard.

The chefs waited through hours of speeches and auctions before the verdict.

Peace.

Wait for it.

Araxi sous chef John Ferris.

Peoples filth.

The hotel life.

Lumiere and their pâté en croûte.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I thought you should see it.

More posts shortly.