Top city chefs strut their stuff
Eight chefs let their culinary imaginations run wild at Gold Medal Plates competition
Growing up in Manila, chickenegg ice cream was an oft-eaten food for David Vinoya.
With his version, the Hilton DoubleTree sous-chef won the Gold Medal Plates culinary competition in Regina on Saturday, a literal gold-medal plate as his trophy.
“All the competitors are having proteins on the plate; what is something that looks like dessert but it’s not?” Vinoya said following his win.
He spent a month perfecting the flavour, getting his colleagues to taste-test the creation, following a month of preparing the eggs: burying them in salt for 30 days.
“My ancestors do that,”
Vinoya explained, “and it lasts for decades. You can eat those, no expiration date for (a) salted egg.”
Savoury ice cream was only part of Vinoya’s dish.
Titled The Nest, the ice cream was an orb amid chicken liver mousse, rotisserie chicken tuile, beet soil, catkin flowers and a bright green watercress gel stencilling a forest on the plate.
It was unlike anything you’ll currently find at the Hilton’s restaurant, Wild Sage. However, Vinoya plans to launch a new bistro-style menu in January, before heading to Kelowna for the early February Gold Medal Plates national competition.
This is Vinoya’s third year working at the Hilton, and Saturday marked his third appearance at Gold Medal Plates. He assisted Geoffrey Caswell-Murphy in 2015 and Curtis Toth in 2016.
“I said to myself, ‘I need to go to the podium,’ ” said Vinoya, whose first job in Canada eight years ago was at The Keg in
Banff.
“That’s my dream, because I really want to get back the gold medal for Regina. It’s been a while.”
Milton Rebello won the bronze at nationals in 2013. Louise Lu, his wife and business partner at Skye Cafe and Bistro, took bronze in the 2017 Regina competition.
Her dish included a dehydrated pear chip, a slice of foie gras and a candied pistachio.
Joel Williams of The Capitol won silver with his Duck Three Ways, all presented on a wave of golden butternut squash puree, decorated with fennel greens and magenta harukei pickled turnips.
The first piece of duck was a rillette mixed with pork shoulder, which he described as “pureed pre-pate, so it’s not fully smoothed out like a normal pate.” Its companion was an arugula tapioca crisp, like crackling green bubbles all conjoined.
The second was a chunk of lightly smoked duck breast cooked sous-vide — boiled in vacuum-sealed plastic.
The third was a foie gras mousse and coral-like beet tuile.
“Everybody knows about foie gras,” said Reda El Ouardi, chef de partie at Wild Sage.
“So we tried to come up with a new idea. Why not go with chicken liver?”
It’s comparatively cheaper too — $3 for chicken liver compared with $25 for duck, he said.
“We want to show other people that they can do some very great food and very fancy food with less money,” said El Ouardi, one of Vinoya’s six team members.
Teams were crucial to each chef in the competition. No one could do it alone.
Among Williams’s helpers were Kim and Robert Hambley, chocolatier brothers from Calgary.
Other local competitors were Jssel Hysuik (Sprout), Michael Zech (Evraz Place), last year’s silver medallist Toth (now of the Hotel Saskatchewan).
Beyond Regina, Joel Fitzpatrick (of Maple Creek’s Star Cafe and Grill) and Chad Forrest (of Mortlach’s Little Red Market Cafe) also competed.
With eight chefs, Gold Medal Plates is an amazing showcase of creativity — but it was no small feat to try all eight plates and their specially paired wine (or beer in Fitzpatrick’s case, or whisky in Forrest’s).
The Delta Hotel ballroom was packed full as could be, but there were few tables to rest a wine glass or a plate. Anyway, those tables were cocktail style, not designed for dinner plates.
With a wine glass in hand and a plate in the other, concurrent eating and drinking was next to impossible — unless one resorted to pie-eating-competition-style ingestion.
Gold Medal Plates, which takes place in 11 Canadian cities this year, was founded in 2003 as a fundraiser for Olympic athletes.
Today, said event co-founder Karen Blair, it is the largest expo of wine in Canada.
A new initiative this year, Gold Medal Pints, featured a few local brewers, namely Regina brewers District, Pile O’ Bones, Bushwakker and Rebellion, and Black Bridge of Swift Current.