On Tuesday night, West Hastings’ award-winning Wildebeest hosted a Visa Infinite that was definitely one for the books. Chef Wesley Young was joined in the kitchen by Chef Justin Leboe of Calgary’s famed Model Milk and together they served up six courses of seasonally inspired dishes paired with some ridiculously good cocktails from the likes of Josh Pape of Wildebeest, Shaun Layton of L’Abattoir, Ben de Champlain of Boneta, and Jay Jones of KillJoy. Model Milk also brought along their top bartender – Stephen Phipps – and the whole lot of them worked together with predictably awesome results.
Leboe started the evening off with a beautifully arranged plate of steelhead in buttermilk vichyssoise (Fig. 4) that was paired with “The Honey Badger” by Layton (Fig. 11 – Plymouth gin, Aperol, Parallel 49 saison, amontillado sherry and drinking vinegar). This was followed up by Young with a dish called The Garden (Fig. 1). It saw radishes, baby beets, mascarpone, malt soil, and carrot sorbet next to the smooth “Honey Trap” from De Champlain (Fig. 9 – Genever, Yellow Chartreuse, lovage sorbet, Huilerie Beaujolaise honey vinegar). Next up, Phipps tied his “Bonita Applebaum” (bourbon, apple, sage and smoked chili) to Leboe’s uniquely delicious Rabbit Bologna (Fig. 10). Arriving on its heels was a tidy slab of Wildebeest’s famous short rib (Fig. 3) alongside a porcini mushroom carpaccio (Fig. 5) and a stemmed glass of Pape’s Horseradish Sour. Leboe then presented a tender breast of milk-fed veal to go with Jones’ Desruction of Sennacherib” (Fig. 2), and the evening was finished with Wildebeest cheesecake and a coddling Cognac West from Pape. Get the background on the supper here.