Vancouver Cooks 2 Wins Gold At The Canadian Cookbook Awards

Today is Scout’s 2nd birthday, and I could have asked for no better present than the news that has just arrived from Toronto. I am thrilled (and not a little proud) to announce that Vancouver Cooks 2 – the cookbook that I edited with Jamie Maw and Joan Cross for the Chefs’ Table Society of BC – has won Gold at the Canadian Culinary Book Awards. A billion thanks and sincere congratulations to the 70+ local chefs that contributed recipes, and to all the participating restaurants that have been pushing its sale, the proceeds of which go to financing bursaries for emerging culinary talents, culinary education programs in BC schools and sustainability events like the annual Spot Prawn Festival. Read more

“Vancouver Cooks” On The Short List For National Award

Well this is a very pleasant surprise!

The Chefs Table Society of BC’s new cookbook, Vancouver Cooks 2, which sees recipes from over sixty of this province’s top chefs (edited by Jamie Maw, Joan Cross, and Andrew Morrison), has been shortlisted in the Canadian Culinary Culture category of the Canadian Culinary Books Awards. Winners are to be announced in Toronto on November 5th, 2010.

Our publisher is pretty excited, and so are we. Wish us luck.

Jamie Maw Previews Granville’s Upcoming “Cafe Barcelona”

by Jamie Maw | Right in the belly (1049 Granville Street) of the town that gave North America small plates dining comes, finally, something decidedly more loyal to the tradición of tapas and pintxos (literally, the thorn, referencing the toothpick that both secures and facilitates). The lost translations of La Bodega and its bowls of indifferent olives and pitchers of cheap sangria can now be safely put to rest. As for other fused tapas houses, with the exception of Cobre, they are not fused at the lip.

The lovechild of co-owners Beatriz Gill, the former Spanish Consul General in Vancouver, and the suave Roger Creixams, Café Barcelona is unprepossessing; the warmth of the food, grace of the service and the heady selection of Spanish wines are not. Read more

Who Are All Of These Chefs And Why Are They In The Same Room?

How many of BC's top chefs can you recognise? Put names to the faces at the bottom of this post.

The other night at the Dirty Apron cooking school, the Chefs’ Table Society hosted a launch party for their new cookbook, Vancouver Cooks 2. Several contributing chefs served up samples of their recipes from the book using the school’s many stations, while dozens of guests from the media and the restaurant world sipped on Mission Hill wines, R&B Sun God Wheat Ale, and bottles of Chambar’s signature brew… Read more

Vancouver’s Top Toques Line Up And Sign At UBC Feast of Fields

Chefs Table Society president Pino Posteraro signs a copy of Vancouver Cooks 2 at Feast of Fields

Attendees at last weekend’s Feast of Fields on UBC Farm were given the first opportunity to purchase the new Vancouver Cooks 2 cookbook and have it signed by a dozen of its 70 chef contributors. The book, which features 120 recipes from BC’s best restaurants, “officially” goes on sale in mid-October, but can be purchased in advance at Barbara Jo’s Books To Cooks and those participating restaurants that have sequestered cases of their own (be sure to ask when making your dinner reservations this week).

Many thanks to Tiffany Soper for the following photographs. Click through to see who turned up… Read more

New Cookbook Featuring 70 BC Chefs To Be Released Oct 17th

I am very excited to say that the Chefs’ Table Society’s new cookbook, Vancouver Cooks 2, is at the printers with a release date set for October 17th. Edited by Joan Cross, Jamie Maw, and myself (with a great foreword by Vicki Gabereau), it features recipes from over 70 of British Columbia’s very best chefs. This project has been a year in the making, and we’re thrilled that it’s now out of our hands. Check after the jump for a full view of the cover and more information. Read more

Province To Screw Restaurant Business In Broad Daylight…

Premier Gordon Campbell and Minister of Finance Colin Hansen announcing their plan to engineer a projected $750 million drop in restaurant sales with their Harmonized Sales Tax (HST).

By now our readers in the restaurant trade have likely heard about the provincial government’s promise-breaking plan to institute an HST, or “Harmonized Sales Tax”. For restaurant owners, it’s the taxing equivalent of a hard punch in the throat, translating to a new and absolutely absurd 7% levy on all restaurant meals. That means, come July 2010, customers will have to pay (with GST) a crippling 12% tax on restaurant food. And nevermind the liquor taxes… Read more

The BC Restaurant Scene Moves Online With Chefs Table Talk

The Chefs Table Society went Web 2.0 this morning with the redux of their website and the launch of ChefsTableTalk.com, a collaborative forum specifically designed for Vancouver’s professional chef and restaurant community and to further the society’s mission, which is to create “a foundation for the exchange of information between culinary professionals.”

As you know, the society supports “innovative and sustainable programs that will inspire, educate and nurture our chefs, our producers and our local food industry, all the while promoting standards of excellence with the aim of enhancing the reputation of our regional cuisine.” You can meet the board of directors here.

In addition to being a venue for the Board to keep everyone abreast of society events and news, Chefs Table Talk will be Vancouver’s primary conduit of information for those wanting to keep up to date with BC’s restaurant scene.

It is split into three forums. The first, dubbed “The Restaurant Scene”, is for industry news, while the second, called “In The Kitchen”, is specifically for cooking, and will be monitored by the best chefs in the province. The third is for technical assistance, should you ever require it.

Chefs Table Talk is designed to encourage its users to meet and stay in touch with friends, mentors, and colleagues from the trade. It is a social media platform, allowing members to create their own profiles with personal photos, web addresses, Twitter names, and all manner of contact information (you can also get society updates on Twitter by following us at VancouverCooks)

Moderating the website will be Jamie Maw, food writer, raconteur, and co-founder of the society; Neil Wyles, owner/chef of the Hamilton Street Grill and society treasurer; Owen Lightly, a cook at Au Petit Chauvignol and the blogger behind ButterOnTheEndive.com; Karen Hamilton, the new website’s chief architect and founder of TinyBites.ca; the team of gourmands at Foodists.ca; and little old me.

As of today, you can enter the forum here at Scout, at TinyBites.ca, or at ChefsTableSociety.ca. More sites are going to be joining this collaborative hosting project in the coming days and weeks. If you’d like to support the society by inserting a link button to Chefs Table Talk on your website or on your personal blog, email me at scoutmagazine [at] gmail [dot com] with the preferred dimensions and we’ll build one for you. Short of that, please add it to your blog roll.

The site officially launched at noon today, but we started letting some folks in yesterday. Whether or not you are a member of the society, please go on in, introduce yourself, and help us get started.

See you in there!

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PS. I’ve shut down Scout’s own food forum, Tablespotting, to accommodate the coming of Chefs Table Talk. Thanks to all who signed up and participated. Once you’ve taken the new site for a spin, I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a major step up.

Jamie Maw On The End Of Winter And Two Teens For $6

Guest-blogger Jamie Maw | ‘Why is it,’ I remarked to my daughter, who lives in Scottsdale, ‘that the older I get the faster the years whip by, but the winters seem to take forever?’

That was certainly the case this year, both on the coast but especially in the Okanagan, where in January it turned as cold as the Canucks, with weeks of –25 Celsius nights that would return again a month later. Now the vintners and orchardists have expressed concern about crop damage, as explained in this Read more

Jamie Maw On Drinking And Petty Thuggery

One or twice a week Scout poses 60 questions to a local who has made life in BC that much more interesting. They pick and choose which ones they’d prefer to answer, with a minimum response rate of 20. A Rorschach test, for sure…

Jamie Maw has spent the last year on sabbatical, but if his answers to all 60 of our questions are any indication, he’s revving up for more. Jamie will be inducted into the BC Restaurant Hall of Fame on March 30th at the new Convention Centre. He’ll join Chefs’ Table Society co-founder Sid Cross, and fellow directors Thomas Haas and Scott Jaeger at the podium. You pretty much know the rest–food editor of Vancouver magazine since the Crimean War and many places elsewhere in print and other media. In 2008, Jamie was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Vancouver magazine. He was the founding editor of The Eating + Drinking Guide to British Columbia and co-editor of the bestselling cookbook, Vancouver Cooks.

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Scout Q&A

Three things about your neighbourhood that make you want to live there: Well, we live a few blocks north of ForMiCa (Fourth Avenue between Milestones + Capers), chiefly because Jason is the barman at Quattro, we can almost stick our toes in the bay without getting out of bed, and there are only two Starbucks within a one-kilometre radius. I regularly commute to Kelowna, where the reasons are essentially identical, except the barman is Hank and it’s a lake.

The thing that you eat that is bad for you that you will never stop eating: Cold cuts, which food snots now call charcuterie, which of course is baloney.

Default drink of choice: I forget. Seriously though, I’m switching teams as Official Brand Ambassador because Heineken have been unstintingly frugal with logo-wear and green patio umbrellas recently, and the fine folks at Grolsch gave me a lovely pen for Christmas and promise a lifetime supply of shapely salad dressing bottles.

Drink you’ll never have again: Anything tinctured Curaçao blue.

The one place you’d move to: Buenos Aires.

Favourite wine varietal: Lager, chased with Malbec (see above), if the company’s any good.

The person you can imitate: Michael Caine.

One thing you’d like to change about Vancouver: Excerable table manners, i.e. the dreaded Kitsilano ‘droop and scoop’.

Bartender who could sell you anything: David Wolowidnyk at West and Mark Brand at Boneta. David should name a drink after himself; no doubt it would tatse great but ordering it could double as a useful sobriety test.

Cheap place for dinner: Phnom Penh

Book you’re reading: ‘The Young Stalin’, by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. It’s about a highly successful bank robber.

Last place traveled: Los Angeles—to be a judge on Hell’s Kitchen last week.

Biggest fear: Charity Dinners, or anywhere excess cash flow is caught chasing social validation. Remember excess cash flow?

Cliches that you use too often: ‘You are an unmitigated and indeed unnecessary paroxysm of delight, dear heart.’ ‘Life should be of a seamless sensuality interrupted only by brief bouts of commerce.’ ‘Tip Top’. ‘Well done’. Etcetera. ‘Etcetera’.

Dead film actor you wish was still making pictures: Michael Caine

Best sneaker in the world: The aptly named Bernie Madoff.

Place in BC that you love escaping to: K-Town.

Under what circumstances would you join the army: Only if Rob Feenie were made Chief Menu Architect and Pamela Anderson redesigned the summer uniforms.

Your paternal grandfather’s personal story: Head of Pepsi Cola in Quebec between the wars—pretty solid branding there.

Best bar stool in the city: I suffer stools gladly. Even after that last, compelling salmonella attack—the bane of all food writers. So the short answer is the stool next to the love of my life, if not counter intuitive bi-valves just yet.

Dumbest purchase ever: A warmish beer on the evening of August 30th, 1979. I learned a good deal from this bitter experience and have worked tirelessly never to repeat it.

What are you proud of: Our daughters; the love of my life; our lovely, lively friends.

The thing that makes you the angriest: False sense of entitlement. I’ve always preferred benevolent dictators.

Saddest thing about Vancouver: Gangs that can’t shoot straight; the homeless.

Most challenging part of owning a business: Changing drill bits at minus 25 degrees.

Best fine dining restaurant in the city: I can only be candid in my silence. But take faith: There are many more good ones out there than there are good food writers.

Your nickname growing up: Jim-Bob and other Scottish diminutives.

Talent you wish you possessed: I often wish I could write. Especially after reading the John Updike retrospective in The New Yorker this week.

The trend you wish you never followed, but did: Mutton chop sideburns in the early 70s. I do recall having to be more respectful of the upper reaches of the nubility. Mind you, when you’re 19 but look like Sir John A. Macdonald, anything remotely nubile would scatter fairly quickly. Fortunately, most of us shave now, even if The Globe still wanes and waxes.

Musical instrument you long to play: Actually, I’d like to play that annoying alpenhorn on the Ricola cough drop ads—on foggy days from the Lions Gate Bridge.

Sport you gave up: Rugby, Extreme Curling

Foreign politician you most admire: Carla Bruni

The game you’re best at: Attentively ignoring my peer-demo extol their golf exploits

Best gallery in the city: The VAG/No. 5 Orange

Somewhere within an hour of Vancouver that is worth checking out: Pasley Island.

The number of fist fights you’ve been in: Countless (see No. 31, above); my right hand is essentially shattered, now held together by baling wire, which might explain this slow response tonight.

The scariest situation you’ve ever been in: Please see No. 38 ‘Cougar Night at the Hotel Eldorado’, immediately below.

Three things of no value that you will keep until you die:

Badges of Honour:

1. Several binders of letters from outraged restaurateurs, chefs, bus girls, neo-Nazi food punks et al, neatly divided into sections such as ‘Cease and Desist’, ‘Semi-Literate’, ‘Shocked and Appalled’, ‘Pre-Postal’ and my favourite category, ‘Post Nuclear—Over to You VPD!’—should I publish some of the better ones?
2. A T-shirt custom made for Friday (Cougar) nights at the Hotel Eldorado Bar in Kelowna that reads ‘I’m Broke and I’m Hung Like a Hamster’;
3. My fab collection of Duco cigarette lighters that just might reinvigorate The Festival of Light.

Local person you admire most: Shell Busey narrowly over Dr. Art Blister. I find Shell’s tips and techniques on home improvements and product referrals invaluable. Perhaps on second thought though, Vicki Gabereau, Barbara-jo McIntosh and Shannon Belkin, three of the wittiest observers and dining chums around.

The thing you’re ashamed of: Remaining chaste until I was 15.

Best concert experience ever: Long John Baldrey in our old barn—back when a thrill was a thrill, even in Paradise.

Aspect of your personality you wish you could change: Micro Management, a trait common to Virgos. I attend a weekly MM 12-Step program now, but it quickly morphed into a 96–step program.

How you waste time at work: Pretty much standard issue—drinking, petty thuggery, researching gout cures on the internet.

The thing you wished people cared more about: Offal.

The dish you’re most proud of: People tell me that my truffled scalloped potatoes are eerily reminiscent of the first time they made love properly.

The thing that makes you the most nervous: Nervous people. Decaffeinated coffee. They are not mutually exclusive.

Town you were born in: Vancouver. With the fuselage of an Airbus, they called me ‘The Miracle on the Fraser’. I was the better part of 11 pounds (‘turkey for four!’ shouted Linda Meinhardt), then Dad took me straight up to get my driver’s license but didn’t actually speak to me for several years.

Old television shows you can tolerate re-runs of: Leave it to Beaver, Californication (Season 1), The Red Shoe Diaries—sorry, but I’m sensing a theme here, Ward.

First memory: Age three, crossing Canada on ‘The Canadian’ streamliner with Dad.

Quality you admire most in yourself: Unusually shapely calves.

Album that first made you love music: Dionne Warwick helped me find my inner San Jose. More love: Ive Mendes – ‘Baby Please Don’t Go.’

Default junk food of choice: Curbside hot dogs. With snappy skins like Ive’s drummer.

The career path you considered but never followed: Advertising. ‘Mad Men’ hasn’t helped—January Jones please copy.

The one country that you have no interest in ever visiting: Mississauga.

Your top 3 films of all time: ‘Burnt by the Sun’, ‘La Grande Bouffe’, and ‘Willing Coeds 13’—they finally got it right.

The first three things you do every morning: Four, actually: Morning ablutions, check oxygen bottles, NYT, then French press coffee of a viscosity admiring the La Brea tar pits.

The thing you’re addicted to: Recently retired lingerie models, and for that matter, recently retired lingerie.

Biggest hope: Free beer, but as they say, only on days ending with the letter Y. But who, as they say, are ‘they’?

Luckiest moment of your life: Filling out this questionnaire.

Favourite book as a child: Stuart Little. The youngest Stalin.