A sight for hungry eyes, the chocolate fountain at the Jean-Philippe Maury Patisserie at The Bellagio
Published on May 13, 2009
Chocolate Fountain at The Bellagio
Last week I spent time in between meals, food conferences, tastings and interviews participating in one of the best Las Vegas pastimes: hotel roaming. I don't gamble, but I enjoy strolling through the casinos to people watch. What I love most, though, is glancing at all the restaurant menus, wild decor, and even staring at the meals being devoured -- some right in front of the slot machines.
French chefs speak, Flay signs, and the foodies come out in full force
Published on May 12, 2009
The Grand Tasting at Vegas Uncork'd
Bon Appetit's Uncork'd is a four-day food festival featuring Las Vegas chefs hosting restaurant meals, cooking demos, book signings and discussion panels. Call it foodie mecca.
The events are held in the city's top hotels including the Wynn, Encore, The Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand and Caesar's Palace. Participants buy tickets to select events to taste some fine food, see how it's made, learn to taste wine like a pro, and rub shoulders with some of the biggest names in the food biz.
There might be a better one lurking on the planet, but this croissant is downright amazing
Published on May 09, 2009
What a beauty!
Croissants are not a breakfast food I take lightly. I have been eating excellent Montreal croissants since my childhood (thank you Duc de Lorraine), and every time I'm in Paris, I buy one at every chic and not-so-chic boulangerie or pâtisserie I pass. I actually shudder to think of the number of croissants that have passed through my frame, or, to be honest, still lingering mid-waist somewhere.
Last October I headed to Las Vegas to check out the restaurant scene. I arrived cynical. Las Vegas, said the naysayers, was a city built on crime and prostitution. I expected scenes straight out of Martin Scorses's Casino. Instead I found jaw-droppingly beautiful restaurants, incredible food, and a whole cast of first class chefs, pastry chefs, and sommeliers.
Bon Appétit's event kicks off with show girls, Quebec foie gras and Robuchon!
Published on May 08, 2009
Showgirls flank chef Daniel Boulud and Las Vegas mayor, Oscar B. Goodman
After spending most of my time avoiding Montreal chefs, it was great to get some face time with some of Las Vegas's top chefs at the launch party for Uncork'd last night. Everywhere you looked between the scantily clad cocktail waitresses you'd see recognizable faces including Bobby Flay, Guy Savoy, Cat Cora, Daniel Boulud, Kerry Simon and Paul Bortolotta, the most genial of Las Vegas chefs who just last week picked up the James Beard award for best chef, Southwest.
As Laloux chefs head to Newtown, a replacement is announced
Published on May 02, 2009
The food world has been abuzz since the announcement came some ten days ago that Laloux chefs Patrice Demers and Marc-André Jetté were headed to Newtown. Now the new chef has been chosen. Thanks to chefdeck of eatwellmontreal.com who announced it through Twitter who heard it via Thierry Daraize on 98,5 fm. Phew!
Drum roll please...
International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards Announced
Published on Apr 05, 2009
Canadian cookbook authors Jennifer McLagan, Taras Grescoe, and Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid were announced last night as winners at the IACP cookbook awards.
A family member of mine (hi Lorraine!) told me the recipe section of this site needed some new additions, so I cracked out my home recipe book to find the dishes I rely on most.
Despite the number of recipes I test from cookbooks, few make it past a single supper. Every so often, though, I hit upon one that fulfills my home-cooking needs: easy, child-friendly, relatively inexpensive, and drop-dead delicious.
New Nespresso shop on Crescent St. brings quick-and-easy espresso to fashionistas
Published on Mar 20, 2009
Très Chic, the new CITIZ model
Are you a Nespresso user? Do multi-coloured pods crowd your cupboards? Are you tired of getting your coffee by mail? If so you'll be thrilled to hear Nespresso has just opened their latest boutique in Montreal.
"He's a the latest superstar in France," said a prominent Montreal chef to me before I headed out to the Inaki Aizpitarte dinner at La Montée Thursday night. "He has a Michelin star already and John Galliano eats in his restaurant Le Châteaubriand all the time."
That image of the pirate-looking Dior designer dining at Le Châteaubriand made sense the minute the first dish hit the table. Talk about your wow factor, this two-plated amuse-bouche featured first, a plate of tiny cubed exotic fruit swathed in an intense curry sauce dotted with passion fruit seeds. Interesting. But the second dish, frozen raw foie gras shaved over a sort of couscous of cauliflower with a few pickled red onions was a knockout.
Chef Jean-Baptiste Marchand with chef Christian Constant and servers
The Festival dinners I have attended so far have been upscale intellectual affairs featuring luxury ingredients, miniscule portions and otherworldly taste sensations. But there's a whole other side of the program dedicated to bistros, those Paris originals whose chefs, young and old, have revived casual dining in Paris' outer arrondissements. Michelin-star-laden haute temples of gastronomy are fine for the flush (or for that rare occasion) but most Parisians spend their dining dollars in bistros, cafés and brasseries.
Chefs Gael Orieux (L) and Jérôme Ferrer in the kitchen at Restaurant Europea
Entering the Europea kitchen in their fancy new digs, I see 22 chefs giving it their all for this much-anticipated festival dinner. In the back left hand corner is the guest chef, Gaël Orieux of the seventh arrondissement Paris restaurant Auguste, who's hunched over a plate, squeeze bottle filled with coriander cream in hand.
Remember that nouvelle cuisine parody with the waiter lifting a silver cloche in front of a customer only to reveal two peas and a carrot on the plate? That image came back to me often last night at Laloux where Parisian chef Christophe Pelé presented a seven-course tasting menu to a sold out house.
Fire alarm triggers sprinkler system at Beaver Club bash last night.
Published on Feb 22, 2009
Fire fighters enter the Beaver Club dining room when the sprinkler system went off
While finishing the last morsel of my risotto and scallop dish, I turned around to see chef Alain Pignard in a downpour when the sprinkler system went off due to a heat surge.
The Tenth Anniversary Ten-Star Event at The Beaver Club
Published on Feb 22, 2009
Pretty or hokey?
I don't know if the negative vibes from the visiting Parisian journalists have started to sink in, but I find myself struggling to find anything nice to say about last night's gala dinner at The Beaver Club.
Parisian chef Alain Passard, Honorary Chairman of the Montreal High Lights Festival Wine and Dine Experience, inspects a cook at Toque! as he prepares the Nova Scotia lobster dish before it goes out at Toque! restaurant in Montreal on Friday February 20,
With his untucked jean shirt, tousled grey hair, and nifty white tour de cou, Alain Passard sure looked the part of star Parisian chef amid the crowds at Toqué! Friday night.
The Montreal High Lights Festival is off and running today
Published on Feb 19, 2009
Parisian chef Alain Passard at Toqué! this afternoon.
Alain Passard arrived in Montreal last night, makes dinner for 100 at Toqué! tomorrow, cooks up a storm at the Beaver Club on Saturday and heads back to Paris on Sunday. Check back here for updates on all the dinners. Well, some of the dinners...
It's stock making time! For the next few days, I'll be slicing, simmering, skimming, straining and storing.
Published on Feb 17, 2009
Chicken stock ready for the freezer
``What are you going to do with those?'' asks a man standing next to me, pointing at eight packages of chicken carcasses on the check-out counter at the grocery store.
``I'm going to make chicken stock'' I answer.
``What a good idea,'' says his wife. They turn toward the meat department in search of bones, but I tell them not to bother - I've cleaned out the store.
I'm always amazed when I see recipes that are unnecessarily rich as in too much butter, sugar, egg yolks and especially cream. When I worked as a pastry chef back in the nineties, there was a huge trend towards light cooking. Sometimes, as with the single-pea-on-the-plate spa cooking trend, it was ridiculous. But other ideas were smart.
Skip the predictable chocolates, flowers and lingerie and treat your sweetie to this pretty dessert
Published on Feb 05, 2009
Photo The Gazette
Coeur a la Creme with red fruit, circa 2000
Back in February of 2000, I was asked to write a story for Valentine's Day focused on foods that contain the word heart. Not my idea.
So after cooking up a bunch of chicken hearts, artichoke hearts, coeur de filet mignon and tasting every wine whose label featured a heart or a lover, I came up with this dessert recipe that made all that lame "heart" cooking worthwhile.
With a little extra time on your hands, crack out the flour and sugar and make yourself this weekend treat.
Published on Jan 24, 2009
Twenty minutes later, a delicious breakfast
Yes it's freezing outside, but I'm sure it's as warm and sunny in your kitchen as it is in mine. I'm not a big breakfast eater, but on weekends I like to bake.
Look no further for a delicious soup to warm your cockles
Published on Jan 21, 2009
My kind of soup!
I'm not one for cold weather. I have this serious hatred of slush, black ice and stupid hats. Yet there's one thing I appreciate about winter and that's the food. Stews, fondues, soups and roasts grace my dinner table these days and I keep reaching into my piles of cookbooks for new recipes to enhance the home repertoire.
In search of a fabulous cooking show to bring a few sunny recipes into your life? Well, you couldn't do much better than Josée di Stasio's new series, À la di Stasio en Espagne.
Published on Jan 16, 2009
Photo courtesy of Télé-Québec
Josée di Stasio with San Sebastian star chefs Juan Mari and Elena Arzak
Josée Di Stasio, Télé-Québec's reigning cooking-show diva, has run two successful series in which she visited Italy and France, so Spain was a logical progression. Follow di Stasio as she chomps back on grilled gamba heads in Majorca, makes a paella with rice farmers in Valencia, sips red wine in Priorat, visits tapas bars in Barcelona and savours pintxos in San Sebastian.
Looking for a last-minute Christmas cookie? Try this Belgian favourite.
Published on Dec 23, 2008
These Wieners are winners!
I can't get into the Christmas spirit this year. Don't know why. Maybe I've been too busy. Maybe it's all the shoveling. But I think it has a lot to do with my leaving the baking to the last minute.
Montreal is no pizza city, which means the best out there might just come out of your home oven.
Published on Dec 15, 2008
Freshly-baked pizza topped with arugula
As much as I love pizza, I cannot deny the homemade version is usually a big fat disappointment. I can never quite get the sauce right and the crust can be as floppy as an old house slipper. And then one day, James MacGuire’s pizza dough recipe came into my life and my pizza improved dramatically.
Always nice to hear directly from the folks in the restaurant world. Here's the latest to hit my in-box last night:
"Le Restaurant Le Paris is open again. Yes it's true. Mr. Frédéric Pagget the long time chef of the restaurant and his business partner Mr. Frank Laroche chef formely of the Caveau are now the new owners. Rejoice! You will find a fresh coat of paint and new floor but still the same great food and atmosphere. We have the same phone number 514-937-4898 Regards, Nadia Guillemette, Hostess."
Thank you Nadia and good luck to all!
Michel Ross, formerly of Brunoise and Brasserie Brunoise fame, will be opening "Mas Cuisine" officially to the public Wednesday, December 3rd at 3779 Wellington Verdun. For reservations call 514.544.3779.
Good luck Michel!
This retro French dessert is primed to make a comeback
Published on Nov 17, 2008
Photo Peter Martin, The Gazette
A luscious bowl of mousse
I remember, back in my pastry school days, making a mousse cake for a friend’s birthday. It was in the late eighties, and following the style of the time, the cake was as overblown as all get out. It consisted of a chocolate genoise split in half and layered with vanilla Bavarian and chocolate mousse, the whole surrounded by a cake wall made of alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla jelly roll cake glued together with apricot jam. Before unmoulding, my gateau was glazed with a chocolate “mirroir” and decorated with an almond paste banner with the words “Happy Birthday!” piped in brown decorating jelly. It was a triumph! And it took me all bloody day to make.
Point G macarons score high on flavour, low on packaging
Published on Nov 12, 2008
tube o' macarons
Since my last macaron posting, several of you have contacted me to try out the macarons at Point G on Mont-Royal. Well it just so happens I was in the neighbourhood last night so I stopped by to give them a try...
At Bartolotta the setting is magnificent! And the food is even better.
Published on Nov 07, 2008
Unreal, the terrace at Bartolotta
In my last Las Vegas posting I mentioned two fine-dining favourites: one is Robuchon, the other is Bartolotta. Located at the oh-so-swank Wynn resort, Bartolotta is an Italian seafood restaurant like no other.
Does Sin City play home to North America's best French restaurant? I'd bet on it.
Published on Nov 04, 2008
A bus boy at Restaurant Joël Robuchon
During the three and a half days I ate my way around Las Vegas, I had the chance to dine in several superb restaurants. On the high end, there were two favourites. And when I say favourites, I mean two of the best restaurants I have ever had the pleasure to frequent. And I’ve dined in my fair share.
First on my list is Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand.
The economy is tanking yet the high end restos here are buzzing
Published on Oct 25, 2008
Bouchon's vanilla yogurt parfait
Walking through the shopping centers located in and around the top hotels on the strip, you're sure to spot a star chef’s restaurant every five meters or so. Lost in the bowels of the Palazzo last night, I came upon Carnevino, the new Italian steak and wine restaurant brought to you by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. Already at 5:30 p.m. half the tables were occupied with flush biz types indulging while tuning out the dire economic news blaring across every flat screen TV in Vegas.
I'm in Vegas this week, soakin' up the fine dining scene
Published on Oct 22, 2008
Crab cake sliders and fab fries enjoyed at The Country Club restaurant at the Wynn
When naming the world's top dining destinations, we speak of Paris, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Rome, Barcelona and New York. Dig a little deeper and you can add Montreal, Sydney, Lyon, Toronto, and on and on and on. Yet the one city I hear more and more foodies raving about is Las Vegas, where it seems every top chef is opening a satellite operation. And when I say top chef, I mean Robuchon, Ducasse, Trotter, Keller, Batali, Puck, Savoy, Flay and on and on and on...
The sexy little cookie that captured pastry lovers worldwide for two decades has finally made it our way
Published on Oct 16, 2008
flavours include pistachio, orange, chocolate, passion fruit, lemon, blueberry and a wicked pumpkin spice!
I can't remember when I ate my first macaron, but I can certainly remember the best. I was walking in the rain in Paris, eating a big chocolate one that I had just purchased at macaron mecca Ladurée. It began to pour, and the race was on to devour the delicate almond meringue-based cookie before it melted between my fingers. I've never scarfed something down so fast and with such glee.
Made yesterday in my kitchen by Naomi Duguid, from her new book (co-authored by her husband, Jeffrey Alford) Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (Random House Canada, 2008).
recipe follows...
When you cut open a pumpkin and scoop out the seedy pulp, the aroma is, well, special - earthy, pungent and rather off-putting. Let's face it, pumpkin is not everybody's favourite. We enjoy carving scary faces in pumpkins, but many of us run in fear from any dish made with this huge orange fruit, used mostly as decoration at Halloween.
Well maybe its time to take another look at pumpkin, which is not only cheap, but an excellent source of vitamins A and C, potassium, and beta carotene. But before you dig into your Halloween display, keep in mind that the smaller sugar pumpkins are more flavourful than the jack-o'-lantern field pumpkin you probably have on your doorstep.
The city's top tea house celebrates a decade of fine brews
Published on Oct 02, 2008
Photo The gazette
Co-owner and Darjeeling specialist, Kevin Gascoyne
At Camellia Senensis, a hot pot filled with wet leaves isn't so much a drink as a religion. Partners Kevin Gascoyne, Jasmin Desharnais, Hugo Americi and François Marchand travel the globe yearly in search of the best teas, resulting in a list of 160 varieties from countries such as India, China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Kenya and Tanzania. Gascoyne alone tastes close to 1,000 varieties in Darjeeling before selecting a mere 10 for the store.
I haven’t had a good dessert in ages. Why is it that so many Montreal restaurants can’t do this course justice? Seriously, it’s a world of crème brûlée and molten chocolate cakes out there, and if I taste another dreary tiramisu, I’ll order a shot of Amaretto and pour it all over the dessert right in front of the waiter.
Thing is, with the warm weather behind us and the economy tanking at a rapid pace, I’m suddenly yearning for something sweet. Instead of reaching into the office drawer or kitchen pantry for that austere chunk of 70% chocolate, I’d rather put it to good use in a recipe. And if you’re after something easy, pot de crème is it.
Montreal's beloved French bistro closes its doors after 52 years of service
Published on Sep 24, 2008
Photo The Gazette
Opened March 15, 1956 by Maurice and Madeleine Poucant and Théo and Lucette Dalemans, two couples from the Vendée and Dordogne regions of France, Le Paris debuted with dishes like veal blanquette, brains, and boeuf bourguignon. Those same dishes remained popular under the sole ownership of the Poucant family, as the downtown bistro became the choice of affluent Montrealers looking for French cuisine bourgeoise in an unpretentious setting.
Enjoy now or freeze for later, pesto offers a true taste of summer
Published on Sep 11, 2008
Bunches of basil at the Jean-Talon Market
The last time I made a serious batch of pesto was back in the fall of 1997. I picked out the most gorgeous basil, the firmest garlic, the priciest Parmigiano-Reggiano, the creamiest pine nuts, and forked over serious cash for top-of-the-line Tuscan extra virgin olive oil. No surprise, the pesto was gorgeous. I ate some and froze the rest. Boy was I happy.
Then the ice storm hit in January of 1998 and one morning I found a pool my precious pesto festering in a Ziplock at the bottom of my freezer. A tear rolled slowly down my cheek…
Terrine of Hudson Valley Moulard duck foie gras, green peppercorn crisp, roasted Marcona almonds, fennel bulb relish, and Royal Blenheim apricot coulis
Published on Sep 01, 2008
From the nine-course, Quebec Gourmande 2008 dinner held at the Relais & Chateau Auberge Saint-Antoine, 30/08/08
The drop-dead delicious Tomme de Maréchal from the Chèvrerie du Buckland at the Jean-Talon Market
Published on Jul 31, 2008
Run -- don't walk -- to the market to get a taste of this fantastic goat's cheese. Another must is their fresh cheese, which you'll also find on the dessert menu at Milos.
With summer berries looking sharp this year, now's the time to preserve their flavour
Published on Jul 07, 2008
I just spent two hours barking out orders and yelling at everyone around me while making jam. With jam there’s no cutting corners, no room for error, no bit of this or that. Jam is all about discipline, mise en place, and quick thinking.
After a year in the planning stages, with much procrastination and angst along the way, this website has finally come to life.
Published on Jun 26, 2008
Having written two restaurant guides and a cookbook, I welcome the flexibility of the internet for offering readers current information on everything from restaurant news to recent foodie finds.
This classic "burned custard'' really is the ultimate vanilla dessert. Though I have eaten hundreds, it's still a thrill to break through the caramel crust and see all those aromatic black specks suspended in the velvety golden cream.
This is a rich dessert, but this time of year, it's really something paired with a bowl of the season's first strawberries or raspberries. It's also a cinch to make. It's even good without the vanilla bean.
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