Top Table Restaurants On The Most Romantic Night Of The Year
March 11, 2010
Award-winning Top Table restaurants CinCin, Araxi, West, and Blue Water Cafe are celebrating Earth Hour
News from Scout supporters CinCin, Araxi, West, and Blue Water Café
Vancouver + Whistler, BC | Like yours, our Olympic memories are rife with wonderful individual moments and the spirit that celebrated excellence at every turn. We enjoyed a great mix of our regulars and locals at each of our restaurants – Araxi in Whistler, and Blue Water Cafe, CinCin, and West in Vancouver – along with many visitors, royals and celebrities of an extraordinary diversity. Read more
Top Table Restaurants Opening Doors And Corks To Medalists
February 5, 2010
Award-winning Top Table restaurants CinCin, Araxi, West, and Blue Water Cafe to pop corks for Olympic medalists
News from Scout supporters CinCin, Araxi, West, and Blue Water Café
Vancouver & Whistler, BC | Winning an Olympic medal is no easy feat. The road is long, the sacrifices many, and the support structures that enable athletes to reach the podium are elaborate. But ask an Olympic athlete the key to their success, and the reply is almost always, “My family and friends.”
Araxi in Whistler, and Blue Water Cafe, CinCin, and West in Vancouver, will salute winning athletes during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics by helping them toast family and friends at the restaurants’ bars with a complimentary bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne.
“We want to congratulate the bronze, silver and gold medalists from all countries, and give them the opportunity to toast those closest to them, that took them to the pinnacle of their sport,” said Jack Evrensel, proprietor of Top Table. “Top Table is all about teamwork, and so are the endeavours of Olympic athletes – this is a simple way to show our appreciation.”
Medalists: Reserve in advance through Top Table’s restaurant directors, bring your medal, and the bubbles will begin to flow. Read more
Top Table Cookbook Collection From Vancouver’s Top Toques
December 1, 2009
Purchase signed copies of all three Top Table cookbooks (West, Araxi, Blue Water Cafe) this holiday season
News from Scout supporters West, Blue Water Cafe, and Araxi
From the good folks at Top Table comes word of a gift set – “an inscribed collection of the year’s top cookbooks” – just in time for the holidays. More after the leap… Read more
Araxi, West, CinCin, & Blue Water Café Ready For The Holidays
November 26, 2009
Lunch service, cookbooks, private functions, gift certificates, and more from the Top Table group of restaurants
News from Scout supporters CinCin, Araxi, West, and Blue Water Café
Vancouver, BC | Araxi, Blue Water Cafe, CinCin and West offer delicious holiday gifts and entertainment for staff, family and favoured clients. Full details on what the award-winning restaurants have planned for the holidays after the jump…
Read more
Rob Feenie’s Great Big Comeback At The 2009 Gold Medal Plates
October 25, 2009
L to R: Dale Mackay of Lumiere (silver); Rob Feenie of Cactus Club (gold): Pino Posteraro of Cioppino's (bronze)
“Comeback” might be a bit of a loaded word, but it fits to an arguable degree. After Rob Feenie left his eponymous Feenie’s restaurant and flagship Lumiere two years ago and landed as the Food Concept Architect for the Cactus Club chain, it could have easily been assumed that he had bought a one way ticket to the wilderness of the restaurant world. But last night, at the prestigious Vancouver Gold Medal Plates cooking competition, he bested nine of BC’s greatest chefs and reminded this town of his incredibly refined talent by taking gold. And he totally deserved it. Read more
Random Photo #602: 58th Floor Sunset At The Shangri L’Araxi…
October 8, 2009
Looking west from last night’s Araxi cookbook launch | 58th floor of the Shangri-La
Highly Anticipated Araxi Cook book Soon To Hit Store Shelves
September 23, 2009
Araxi's elegant yet easily approachable cookbook champions the seasons and its locale
News from Scout supporter Araxi
Whistler, B.C. – From the pans of Whistler’s famed Araxi Restaurant and executive chef James Walt, to the pages of Araxi’s new cookbook, come seasonal recipes accessible to the home cook, and packed with regional flavours of ranch, field and sea.
Available at fine booksellers on October 3rd or online now, Araxi: Seasonal Recipes from the Celebrated Whistler Restaurant, champions its locale in Whistler’s two distinct seasons: summer and winter. Read more
Chefs To The Field Competition Fierce, Soaking & Totally Rad…
August 12, 2009
Jonathan Chovancek, stoked at a rainy then sunny Chefs To The Field day in Richmond
Instead of going home after getting off the plane from my Okanagan Summer Wine Festival trip (see here), I went directly to Richmond’s Terra Nova Rural Park to judge the annual Chefs To The Field cooking competition in support of the Terra Nova Schoolyard Society.
chef Neil Taylor of Cibo Trattoria making tagliatelle by hand, quickly...
On hand and plating wonderful bites for the many hundreds of foodies who braved the rain were several of Vancouver’s cooking schools and chefs from Cibo Trattoria, Raincity Grill, Diva, Goldfish Pacific Kitchen, Wild Rice, and many other Lower Mainland restaurants. Joining me as judges were Barbara Jo McIntosh of Barbara Jo’s Books To Cooks (interview), Araxi executive chef James Walt, chef/restaurateur Manny Ferreira of Senova and Le Gavroche, and chef/restaurateur Bruno Marti of La Belle Auberge.
Chef Vicente Mabanta of Steveston's Blue Heron presents his dishes to the judges
It’s one of my favourite events to judge because it’s split into two competitions: one between culinary students from across the city, the other between the pros. Both are given basic larder eseentials (vinegars, olive oil, spices, flours, etc), 90 minutes in the garden to choose the freshest ingredients possible, 1 secret ingredient for the students with with they must prep one dish, and 2 secret ingredients for the pros, with which they must prep an appetiser, a main, and a dessert.
Javier Alarco (standing left) with the judges and his crew...
Javier Alarco’s crew from The Sheraton Wall Center won for the pros. To be honest, I ate from 30 plates of food so I can’t remember what he and his team prepared. I do remember that their secret ingredients were goat’s cheese and agar agar (whoever dreamed up that bit of delicious cruelty is a gorgeous bastard), and that I had a four way tie for 1st on my score sheet between The Sheraton, Raincity, Diva, and Cibo Trattoria.
Event organiser Ian Lai reveals the mystery ingredient: land-based aquaculture Coho salmon from Agassiz
The mystery ingredient for the students was land-based aquaculture Coho from Bruce Swift’s awesome farm in Agassiz. I’ve been amazed at how well the students have done in the past, and this year they all performed exceptionally well. There was one really young guy from VCC who totally knocked us out. He came 2nd, but probably would have won the thing had he not been just a little too conservative with his seasoning. His fish was so simple and so flawlessly presented that when we later found out he’d been cooking for just six months we sought him out afterwards just to shake his hand. His name is Chris Sinclaire. Watch for him in 10 years.
And that was that. It rained and then it got sunny. My kids likely destroyed at least an acre of perfectly good farmland between facepainting, card-making and drum circles, and I gained enough agar agar, goat’s cheese and coho to spawn a new genus. Rain or shine fun, as befits a Sunday in August.
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Field Trip: On The Two Best Meals To Be Served This Summer
July 23, 2009
It’s taken us a couple of days to decompress and find the time to make sense of all the stills and clips taken while attending the two outdoor Outstanding In The Field dinners (previewed in last week’s Westender). There is something to be said for great food, great wine, and great people all tabled in devotion to great atmosphere, especially here in BC during the Awesome season. I hope some of that saying gets said in the video above and Michelle’s photo gallery below…
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Chef Job At Araxi For Gordon Ramsay’s “Hells Kitchen” Winner
June 24, 2009
We hinted at this back in February, but it’s now been made official. The winner of the upcoming season of Gordon Ramsay’s TV cheffing schadenfreude extravaganza (aka Hells Kitchen) will be rewarded with the Head Chef position at Whistler’s venerable Araxi restaurant, working alongside the masterful James Walt (keeper of the mountain awesome). From the soon to be distributed press release:
In each episode, Ramsay will eliminate one chef while the rest remain to fillet their way toward the grand prize of a Head Chef position at Araxi Restaurant in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 1981, Araxi continues to raise the culinary bar in Whistler. The winning contestant will have the added privilege of joining executive chef James Walt in welcoming the world during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
Not a bad gig at all, and quite the PR coup for Top Table. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, et cetera…
The full Fox Network release after the leap, yankee hyperbole and all. The first line is Tuesday nights will sizzle this summer when Chef Gordon Ramsay blah blah blah. I’m really sorry about that. Read more
