In the photo: Bearfoot Bistro's Wine Director, Keith Nicholson (left), and friends sport t-shirts in support of Masquerave. Photo courtesy of Daenna Van Mulligen.
GETTING A CORONET FULL - CORNUCOPIA GOSSIP
Another
Celebration of Food and Wine at Whistler Resort has come and gone, eleven of them so far, and perhaps our perception of it was off, but this year’s
Cornucopia festival seemed quieter and not as well attended as it has been in the past. Although adding an extra day in which to spread out the events may have helped to create that impression.
No doubt
Tourism Whistler will put a
success spin on the attendance statistics, but if the numbers
were down it would be due to a number of factors beyond their control. The weaker US dollar would be only the most obvious, but other contributing factors could include: the passport requirement for border crossers, novelty fatigue, increased competition from other events in Vancouver, and last but not least, the cancellation of the raunchy
Masquerave party annually hosted by Whistler's
Bearfoot Bistro. Citing licensing problems -- as in, they wouldn't give him one -- Bearfoot proprietor
Andre St. Jacques not only removed his highly anticipated event from the Cornucopia roster, he also went so far as to close the restaurant for the duration – largely we presume, so as not to have to deal with industry types who might have tried to congregate in the place and revive the action with or without a license.
Many of the weekend's attendees, primarily non-industry types who were actually there for the wines, couldn’t have given a synthetic cork over one less party-animal magnet in the village. No so however, a fair number of the industry's workers, not to mention some of the younger locals (think
Britney clones), who did feel deeply deprived by its loss. So much so that at one luncheon, a number of them showed up wearing “Bring Back the Masquerave� t-shirts. (See photo above).
The two restaurants that attempted to fill the gap with burlesque type post-
Crush events utterly failed to warm up their audience, leaving it up to
Araxi Restaurant's
Jack Everensel to provide all the after hours excitement with his two popular annual events: a Friday night winemaker’s dinner honouring
Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estate Winery’s 25th Anniversary; and
Bubbles, Rhythm & the Deep Sea, a champagne and sushi cocktail bash on Saturday night. Not surprisingly, both of these turned out to be as classic and excellent as we have always come to expect from anything produced by the
Top Table Restaurant Group.
(We’ll have more on the Kendall-Jackson dinner coming up later.)
As for the days ...in a four day program packed with tastings, seminars, cooking exhibitions and edifying culinary chat fests, the biggest hit of the weekend turned out to be the “
Battle of the Sexes� blind wine tasting challenge hosted by
CFUN personalities
Anthony Gismondi and
Kasey Wilson. To the chagrin of the men in the audience this year, the “Wine Gals� wiped the cellar floor with the “Wine Guys�, although some protest was centered around the question of whether a late entrant for the womens' team, the ghost of
Julia Child, was playing for the right side of the table. Frankly, we never noticed it before, but it’s amazing how similar Julia’s big smile was to that of
David Scholefield’s. Although most people would agree,
her’s was prettier.
As usual with these events, the most interesting moments tend not to be the ones listed in the program, but the ones you fail to notice and only hear about afterwards. True or not, such observations included:
That actors
Keanu Reeves and
Tara Reid walked into the Araxi Bubbles event and had a look around (whether they arrived together or not wasn’t determined), but both left shortly after they realized they had been recognized.
Recent objects of controversy,
Lumiere restaurant owners
, David and
Manjy Siddoo, plus their entourage (including Chef
Dale Mackay), also swished up to Araxi’s front door expecting like Keanu to gain immediate entrance. But alas, rich they may be, but movie stars they are not. They were democratically told they would have to join the back of the entrance line up that had formed outside in the rain. Apparently they did this without objection, nor the need to issue any public statement explaining their actions via their Director of Operations,
Sebastien Le Goff.
The
House Wine girls also danced for the cameras at the Bubbles event, while dressed in matching red dresses, complete with their website address emblazoned across the hemlines in block, white letters. Which was cute. However, if a little opportune marketing was what the ladies intended, then the only mistake they made was that their outfits were much too demure. Girlfriends, lemme tell you, if you are going to go red, you ought to go RED!! Otherwise, you might get taken for nice tour guides at the Olympic Team Canada pavilion .
As for Julia Child’s outfit … according to her personal stylist, an energetic, petite, blond woman in a pixie haircut, Miss Child’s ensemble was a little something put together from the 2007
Value Village fall collection. Her biggest challenge -- obtaining Julia’s correct bra size: 44 Double D. Hmmm .. We think that's what Lucy Ricardo used to call an "over-shoulder-boulder-holder".
One of Julia’s opponents at the Battle of the Sexes event, good humoured
Shayn Bjornhom from Seattle, Washington, thought it was simply hilarious that after his team’s defeat, several men chastised him for letting down the male gender. He thought it was even more hilarous when he realized they were dead serious. No one however, wanted to assume that teammate
Mark Davidson was laughing. Indeed, we heard that all service staff at Whistler were issued a warning to give Davidson only the plastic knives at dinner for the rest of the weekend.
Oh nooooo, we were only kidding about that last one. Mark, are you smiling? ;-)
