Days of Disco: A party at Araxi Restaurant in the '80s. That's waiter Jorge Alvarez (centre), and Araxi (Mrs. Jack Evrensel) doesn't look a day older, but who's the dude in the Saturday Night Fever suit?



Aging with grace and complexity…Araxi digs into its Cellar

By Tim Pawsey


Restaurant longevity. It’s not as easy as you think. In fact, you can count the rooms that have remained seriously in our culinary conscience throughout such a time span on the fingers of one hand.

Picture this: when Araxi, the restaurant, opened in 1981, Whistler still felt like a village (not to mention that it WAS only a village). Owner Jack Evrensel ( Top Table Group) was barely out of bell bottoms, and ‘sustainable’ had more to do with paying the rent than sourcing ingredients.

Fast forward to 2006, as Araxi celebrates its quarter century with a bang—a Cornucopia ‘Big Guns’ dinner replete with flagship rarities from Champagne, Burgundy, Rhone, Colio, Napa, Walla Walla and Niagara.

To talk about the plans for the celebration taking place this weekend, we tracked down Araxi restaurant director, Steve Edwards -- a keen boarder, who returned to Whistler last August after working three years at CinCin, Araxi’s sister restaurant in Vancouver. Edwards, says that for him it was the right time—although he has no illusions about the challenges of running a restaurant in a seasonal resort town.

“The fluctuations in business here are incredible,� says Edwards, who allows that “the only really quiet evening at CinCin happened when the Super Bowl and Academy Awards were on the same night.�

What he is “really excited� about at present is the dinner to be prepared by executive Chef James Walt (another recent Whistler returnee, after his year long working sabbatical as executive chef at The Canadian Embassy in Rome).

After previewing the plates and pairings with Chef Walt and Evrensel, what was Edward’s favourite match? “The duck course with the boudain—the sausage itself is so right, but the intensity of flavours along with the lightness of texture with the wine ( ‘81 Beaucastel) are fantastic.�

Pulling out all the stops on wine for Araxi’s big bash is no impromptu whim. This soiree holds even more significance considering that it coincides with a deliberate focus on making the wine lists and wine service at all four Top Table restaurants a high priority.

“It’s always been our mandate to ask “where do we go next?,� says Evrensel—who once had an entourage of no less than seven sommeliers on the floor at Araxi. Now, with over 800 labels among 14,000 bottles in the cellar, he says, “The wine culture is already there—so how do we move forward?�

The answer? Bring in Vancouver Wine Academy co-founder, the Australian-born Mark Davidson, to implement a wine program that will “excite and inspire� both staff and guests,� says Evrensel.

“Finding and keeping good people is getting harder and harder,� says Davidson, who also detects a local “culture of wine enthusiasm� and says the appeal of a professional wine program is a “value added� reason for serious-minded wait staff to stay the course.

“Lots of servers take wine programs,� says the wine educator, who plans to conduct at least two sessions a month at the Top Table restaurants. “But the difference is, we’ll be doing specifically directed versions for each establishment. And, you can bet, we’ll have fun. We’ll address issues such as regions and coming trends, labelling (why it might contain everything from significant data about the wine to the name of the winemaker’s dog) and, of course, food pairings—specifically with regard to the menus.�

“Above all, the trick is to keep them awake. Make ‘em laugh while you educate them.�

Considering the high percentage of Whister service staff hailing from Oz, and with Davidson’s Aussie accent, at least at Araxi he has a fighting chance...


Targetting the Big Guns


Araxi has hosted a series of excellent dinners over the years, but this time wine director Chris Van Nus says it was time to ‘ramp it up’. It was also a real challenge to narrow the field.

“We didn’t look at just new releases but bottles that age and possess longevity—much like the restaurant. In the end, though, they’re wines that I’d like to drink...�

So how do you go about choosing such gems? We asked Van Nus to comment on his picks: