Photos: left to right: top to bottom
Araxi 25th Anniversary Big Guns Dinner:
1) Wine critic Anthony Gismondi (Wine Access) orders a fill up. Seated next to him is Kate Colley Lo of Top Table Group.
2) Chef James Walt's kitchen crew prepares the next course.
Masquerave at the Bearfoot Bistro:
1) 2) 3) It's after midnight and everyone shows off their flashiest dance moves, perhaps sans underwear but never without a wine glass.
Whistler Snow Report:
1) 2) Thick wet snowflakes begin to descend on Friday morning and pile up over the rest of the weekend.
Glowbal and Beam Wine Estates Luncheon:
1) Guests travel to a private Whistler residence to enjoy the cooking of Chef Sean Riley of Vancouver's Coast restaurant.
2) Gregor Mowatt of Maxxium Canada and winemakes of Beam Wine Estates (California) pour a selection of wines from Clos du Bois and Geyser Peak wineries to match the menu.
Crush! Grand Gala Tasting:
1) A cool item for a hot room - a 10th anniversary ice sculpture
2) Mick Schroeter of Beam Wine Estates was one of the many visiting winemakers and their local agents who poured the wines.
3) A mouse's paradise: an array of cheese supplied by Comox's Natural Pastures Cheese
4) Chef George Graham of Rogers Chocolates and his popular chocolate fountain.
Bubbles, Jazz and the Sea:
1) A dessert lover's paradise: the six-tiered, 25th Anniversary cake created for Araxi by Chef Patissier Thierry Busset
2) Araxi owner Jack Evrensel shakes it up.
3) Jack's cheering squad.
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Best sights
Andrey St. Jacques of BearFood Bistro, dressed in top hat and tux, energetically pogo dancing out on the floor. And the next night he does it again at Masquerave.
The line up before the mirror in the women’s restroom of the Masquerave party. Yes those same young ladies you see garbed in wooly sock caps, jeans and logger boots and punching the township cash register keys during the rest of the year, … all hiking up, yanking down, toilet tissue stuffing, elastic snapping and otherwise tarting up and primping out their bad girl fantasy outfit for Whistler’s most debauched night of the year. Does their mother know?
The swishier ladies in their highest open toe shoes hobble picking their way through the piled up snow slush in Whistler’s Village Square on their way to and from the Crush event.
Can you imagine Fred Astaire wrestling with an alligator? That was a little like watching the dapper Jack Evrensel of Araxi struggling to remove the cork from a massive green glass bottle of Champagne that refused to co-operate. Sir Jack claimed victory when he finally slayed the beast with one deft stroke from his saber. And didn’t everyone clear out of the way pronto when they saw which way the cork would be heading. Now I have to say, this is totally a man’s world, but there are some times when a guy is on the spot in the way no woman would ever be, and this has to be one of them. Not that the entire Araxi kitchen crew that came out to cheer him on were applying any pressure or anything – only just a little more than was probably stoppered up inside the bottle.
The magnificient six-tiered 25th anniversary cake created for Araxi by CinCin Chef Patissier Thierry Busset. (More on this later.)
Best Stories
Wine writer Anthony Gismondi steps off the Whistler Village shuttle bus on his way to Araxi’s Big Guns Anniversary dinner, and while he is trying to maneuver over a large pile of curbside slush, he nearly puts his foot down on a man’s wallet that is lying in the snow -- business cards, credit cards and cash, all spilling out of it. As he bends down to retrieve the wallet, Gismondi thinks: “Wouldn’t it be something if I happened to know the guy who’s dropped this?� He pulls out a card and there’s the name …James…D….Maw. Hurrying over to Araxi, and passing about 50 street people along the way, Gismondi finds Maw, who is also attending the dinner, just starting to anxiously pat down his jacket and coat pockets. Whew! Lucky day, mate.
A group of visiting New York journalists who are well acquainted with the hip (
LA Confidential) and ironic (
New York Observer), are shown the most glamourous and sophisticated sights and tastes of Whistler. But when asked to name their favourite spots they admit to a liking for boarder haunts and in particular, the Amsterdam pub. Why? ...because it sort of reminds them of Brooklyn. In fact they think Whistler displays a great deal of the hip and the ironic. The irony coming into it because as one New Yorker said: In other resort towns, once it gentrifies, the hipper (read younger, poorer) elements get moved out of sight. Here rich and poor are all just co-existing together. Fine, sounds like New York to me, but I suppose we didn't tell them that the hipsters have to leave when night falls because they can't sleep here.
(more to come)
