Tinhorn Creek, Le Gavroche, Zin, Passion Has Red Lips, Evian, Peter Lehmann Wines, Taste BC 2008, Sutton Place Wine Store, Anthony Sedlak, Diana Becker, Peter Robertson
MEDIA HOUND - THE LOCAL INK
Sit down, set a spell, take yer shoes off ... your weekend reading is up-to-date at the newsstand, and it's full of fibre.
Links updated by Nancy Lanthier.
This Weeks Highlight:
In the MEDIA section (see tab at the top of the page), you will find a new category called "The Outside World" where our contributors have left links to their reading picks for the week. All readers are welcome to have their choices posted as well. Just emai the link to us at contact (at) cityfood (dot) com.
For example, this week Nancy Lanthier chose a review in the Times of London of British restaurant reviewer A.A.Gill's new forthcoming book. The review clips some of Gill's most prickly and hilarious comments as he rails on such subjects as restaurant reviewing, country pubs, durian fruit, organic labelling, and how to perform a legal "dine and dash" from a restaurant. Here's a quote from the last category where Gill is in typical find form:
" ... The point of all this is that you’re not revolting enough. The modern, sophisticated packaging of restaurants makes customers feel that it’s uncool to complain, as if it showed you, like – duh! – cared. But a restaurant isn’t a teenage boyfriend, it’s a service. Shrugging and saying “Whatever� isn’t putting it in its place. If you don’t like it and if it’s not what was promised, don’t pay. Don’t be cool, be magnificent. And if they go to the mat, offer to return the goods there and then."
Note: Links to local publications will be added to the bottom of the current weeks's Newsstand Page under the "Local Ink" category.
More telescopes are sold in Vancouver's West End than anywhere else in the province. Yet no one has been able to see the stars at night there since the blackout in the 1960s. Why would this be?
A couple of newsworthy items came out of last night’s sold out dinner for Tinhorn CreekWinery at Le Gavroche restaurant.
The first is that Tinhorn Creek has started plans for a restaurant at the winery. The blueprints (once given the green light by the building authorities) will have room for approximately 65 seats inside the restaurant and 65 on a patio outside. It will be located near the area that now houses the winery's outdoor amphitheatre.
Tinhorn Creek will own only the property and the facilities. The restaurant operation itself will be run by Le Gavroche owner, Manuel Ferreira, making this Ferreira’s third BC restaurant after Le Gavroche (Vancouver’s West End) and Sonova (in Kerrisdale).
There is no word yet on whether Ferreira plans to do a Portuguese-style menu for the winery restaurant or if he has something else in mind. Perhaps he is still reeling from the collision he experienced only a few days ago with a large stag on the road outside of Osoyoos. ... CONTINUE READING ...
WINE OF THE WEEK PASSION HAS RED LIPS BY SOME YOUNG PUNKS
Ah, those cheeky Aussies, what WILL they think of next? Proving that ideas for crotch, er, attention-grabbing labels haven’t been exhausted yet, Some Young Punks took their inspiration from pulp fiction pot boilers to create the label for this Cabernet/Shiraz blend.
Wine gal, Daenna van Mulligen managed to purloin a bottle away from Jamie Kowan at yesterday’s Landmark Selections wine tasting at the Shore Club. According to Jamie, one of the Punks is a yeast doctor, and by that we are sure hoping he means of the wine kind.
Anyhoo, if you are health anxiety prone, the warning note on the back label clearly states: “Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability. Side effects may include, dizziness, incarceration, erotic lustfulness, limited motor control and delusional misrepresentation of one’s self importance.�
The latest trend for serving bottled water in restaurants is not to serve any.
Alright, it’s an “eco� thing. However, the marketeers at Evian haven’t heard zippers about this. For them, more is still fashionably more.
In fact, the launch last year of their luxury “Palace� bottle (same water, fancier bottle) was so successful, it’s encouraged them to come out with two more limited edition designer lines.
Both play on the theme of high fashion and winter, and both were drawn up by non other than the “exhilarant� French couturier, Christian Lacroix.
First up is the "Haute Couture" bottle, an iconic version of the Prêt-à -Porter, personifying Evian natural mineral water as “a majestic and immensely feminine Ice Queen�. Despite what this may imply about Lacroix’s relationship with his mother, the couturier apparently conceived this as a celebration of and tribute to women.

 Indeed, you can almost see the contestants on Project Runway receiving the challenge to sew up a little outfit for it right now. ... CONTINUE READING ...
WINE EVENTS: PETER LEHMANN VINTAGE LIBRARY TASTING
It’s not often that the media are stunned by vinous volume, but shoehorned into the Koi room at Goldfish Pacific Kitchen on October 23 were a couple dozen gaping wine writers from all over BC and Alberta -- wedged shoulder to shoulder for a rare vertical tasting.
PeterLehmann’s chief winemaker from Australia, Ian Hongell, had lugged in 24 back vintages of Shiraz (starting from the very first 1980 vintage) for the only Canadian visit on an international tasting tour. Vancouver was the last stop for this educational library tasting following similar events hosted in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Singapore. ... CONTINUE READING...
DOWNTOWN: Chef Dino Renaerts is cooking up appies in the lobby of the Metropolitan Hotel (and every Wednesday thereafter) (5 - 6 p.m.)
Chef Mark McEwan and his kitchen team are reducing stock for soup, rolling lamb kibbeh balls, and whipping up the white chocolate ganache for the pyramid desserts in preparation for the "Egyptian" menu which starts tonight at Sanafir Restaurant and Lounge. UBC:UBC Farms is selling squash, garlic and potatoes on the SUB concourse. (Until 3 p.m.) YALETOWN:Taste of Yaletown continues for four more days.
LIBRARY/STADIUM:Kolachy Co. has turned on the new neon sign in their shop window and set up tables on the sidewalk.
WESTSIDE:Select Wine Merchants is unveiling their new website, logo, and latest wine portfolio to the trade at the Shaughnessey Golf Club. (2:30 to 6 p.m.) PORT MOODY: Andrew Starritt of Cask Strength is matching Scotch to chocolates. (7:30 to 10 p.m.)
Nothing got your goat lately? Go here. On November 8th, New York is throwing a Goatstravaganza to celebrate, you got it, all things goat.
Chocolate. How far will one man go to get the ultimate cocoa fix? Apparently Bill Buford (author of Heat) will go to Brazil. The latest issue of the New Yorker describes Buford's quest to Bahia for the Food of the Gods, and there's a slide show too. (The New Yorker - October 29, 2007)
Wine has the staggers. One of Italy's oldest and most-prized wines is on the verge of extinction because of the back-breaking labour involved in producing it. (The Age - October 21, 2007)
Whole Foods Market has colonized London, only their windows are decidedly homier than ours. (The First Post - October 24, 2007)
When mixologists wore muu-muus. Salon interviews a historian of Tiki Drinks. (Salon - October 23, 2007)
Glass, brushed chrome, recessed gadget drawers, and a built-in, high tech audio-video system. If the 'guy' factor was any higher, the fridge door would come with a remote. Porche designs a kitchen for Germany's Poggenpohl.
Speaking of that, what do you do when you're bored? Why go look in the fridge, of course. Now you can check out someone else's. Here's a site where people from around the world post photos of the contents of their refrigerator. There's even one from a South African game lodge. www.fridgewatcher.com.
Don’t expect next year’s BC Wine and Oyster Festival to be anything like it has been for the past thirteen years. In fact, in 2008, oysters may only play a small role in it. The organizers, Liberty Wine Merchants, say that next year’s fest (to be called Taste BC 2008), will be a much larger proposition, including a wider category of edibles that will feature many kinds of local food products. The qualifier being, that the foods must be of artisan quality and must originate from BC – the better to match the BC wines, of course.
According to Liberty, as the Oyster Festival grew in popularity, it had become increasingly difficult to find a reliable supply of oysters that would be of sufficient quantity to feed the crowds. Opening up the event to other food producers will take the pressure off that situation as well as address the fact that since the festival was launched in 1994, our local food scene has expanded in many interesting directions, other than just the seafood that our province is known for.
Negotiations with the Hyatt Regency Vancouver Hotel over the booking date are still taking place, but it is expected that Taste BC 2008 will continue to run in January (possibly January 22, 2007), although it may no longer be essential to hold the event in that month. Mid-winter had originally been chosen in order to coincide with the peak of the local oyster season.
BC Children’s Hospital - Oak Tree Clinic will remain as the charity beneficiary,and CityFoodwill continue to participate as a print sponsor for the event. Ticket prices will be in the $50 range. We will have more details on the Festival later.
A great place to sleep it off…
Did you forget that The Sutton Place Hotel had plans to operate its own private wine store? After public announcements made last year, talk about the project appeared to have been sidelined while the hotel’s developers contended with various city permit and construction hurdles (some of them concerning the public sidewalk which physically bordered the shop's foundation area). Like many others in similar circumstances, these set backs to the target completion date resulted in longer delays than usual thanks to the city’s civic workers strike.
However, it would appear that the wine shop will be open soon -- perhaps in only a couple of weeks. We’ll soon have more details about this update as well.
Your Dream Boat?
Love him or hate him for the sheer impertinence of coming from “nowhere� to star in his own Food Network cooking show, but Anthony Sedlak, Canada’s “Hot New Dish� (the Food Network’s words, not ours), aired his new series “The Main� today at 3:30 pm Pacific Time. (Check the scheduling for rerun times at www.foodtv.ca.) If you’ve missed your chance to ogle (or gag), you could always try to win the chance to meet Anthony aboard The Caribbean Odyssey luxury liner via a contest the Globe and Mail is currently running for a 10-day “meet the Food Network celebrity chefs� cruise at www.globeandmail.com/sailaway.
Sure he's a rebel without a cause, but can he cook?
Speaking of the newly media-groomed Mr. Sedlak, just a question here, but why is it when they get their hands on a baby-faced chef, the first thing the stylists want to do is give him a little Rufff-rufff-ness by putting him in jeans, t-shirt and a black jacket and photograph him slumped loutishly against an exterior wall? Sedlak in particular looks like he's waiting to join a rumble between the Sharks and the Jets, while Sam Stern tends to give the impression he's just dodged his babysitter ... Oh, never mind.
Say …. "Mont d’or at $6 per 100 grams!!"
If you’ve been around the food scene for a really long time, you might have recognized Diana Becker, one of the founders and former owners of the Dubrulle Cooking School and now a culinary tour operator, smiling from the pages of Sunday’s New York Times. Becker was illustrating a story about Vancouver’s booming condo construction scene by posing in front of her new $900,000 apartment in Vancouver’s downtown Jameson House.
She was smiling broadly so we have to assume that her home's resale value must have gone up another 100 Thou or so since the shutter snapped.
RAINCITY GRILL ANNOUNCES NEW CHEF DE CUISINE - PETER ROBERTSON (Edited from the press release.)
Vancouver, BC…Harry Kambolis is pleased to introduce Peter Robertson as the new Chef de Cuisine at Raincity Grill.
Robertson advancement within the company has been rapid. He begin as sous chef at Raincity Grill's sister restaurant, C, within one week of Quang Dang's arrival at that restaurant as Chef de Cuisine, and moved on to the position of Chef de Cuisine at Raincity Grill only two weeks ago.
Robertson originally hails from Sydney, Australia. ... CONTINUE READING ...
WHO'S GOT IT - THE BUZZ METER For - October 26 , 2007
(The most requested information on the site as measured by Google keyword counter.)
PEOPLE:
1) Chef Dale Mackay - Chef, Lumiere 2) Jason Priestly - Actor and Winery Investor, Black Hills Winery 3) Giani Picchi - Chef 4) Scott Jaeger - Chef, The Pear Tree Restaurant 5) Rob Feenie - Chef, Lumiere and Feenies (?)
PLACES:
1) Cascade Room - Restaurant, Main Street, Vancouver 2) Pala Lago - Restaurant, Cultus Lake 3) Boneta - Restaurant, Gastown, Vancouver 4) Stage - Restaurant, Fernwood, Victoria 5) Suvai - Restaurant, Kerrisdale., Vancouver 6) Transcontinental - Restaurant, Gastown, Vancouver 7) Phoscao Cafe - Cafe, North Vancouver 8) Me and Julios - Restaurant, Commerical Drive, Vancouver 9) Fuel - Restaurant, Vancouver 10) 49th Parallel Coffee Roaster - Cafe, Kitsilano, Vancouver
THINGS:
1) Araxi's Winemaker Dinner at Cornucopia 2) Evian Palace Bottle 3) Tantalus Riesling 4) Black Hills Winery 5) My Last Dinner Book
MOST INEXPLICABLE CONNECTION:
espresso warning
NUMBER OF COUNTRIES LOGGING IN (visiting during this year): 129 NUMBER OF CITIES WORLDWIDE (visiting yesterday): 79 Number 79 was Sisters, Oregon - named after the towns view of the nearby Three Sisters Mountain range.
MEDIA HOUND - THE LOCAL INK 
DINE AND DASH
