The going got weird last week. I was hosting a television pilot on Canadian cuisine with a small crew, filming the last day-in-the-life of some prawns from trap to plate and the first day of the eight-week Spot Prawn Festival. I say it was weird not because Im awkward on camera (which I am), but rather because filming this one day took three.
Day 1 felt the most natural. It was the actual day of the festival, and C Restaurant executive chef Robert Clark and I went out on Steve Johansens Organic Ocean as we usually do on this day without any cameras. (It was through the efforts of Clark and Johansen, together with those of the Chefs Table Society of BC, that the Festival was born six years ago.) Once back ashore, we did a few stand-ups and interviews, but most of my TV collaborators day saw them getting miles of B-roll of festival action without me.
Day 2 brought the crew out on the boat to shoot as if it were the dawn of Day 1. To achieve this continuity (a novel concept to me), everyone on board had to wear the same clothes as they had the day before. Even the weather had to pretend that it was yesterday. The traps had to cooperate, too, and they did, coming up just as full as the previous day. It was a tight set but the footage was terrific and the live prawns were delicious.
Day 3 was an evening shoot at C Restaurant, located on the seawall directly across False Creek from where the Organic Ocean does its daily to and fro. Chef de cuisine Lee Humphries walked us through the making of his special spot prawn tasting menu while the fishermen, Steve and Frank, waited patiently, if hungrily, at a table on the patio (the pretense being that wed just come off the boat and wrapped the festivals opening day, and were now about to sup diversely on the fruits of our labours).
It was a beautiful evening and the real reason for this column. The meal the first Id enjoyed on a patio this year was outstanding. For the occasion, Id been permitted to change my clothes, so I mercifully no longer smelled of prawn bait and sunscreen. If the fishermen, Steve and Frank, were a little out of their element, I was squarely back in mine.
The truth of it was that I had neither dined at C nor eaten Humphries food in two years (not since his days at Judas Goat in Gastown.) And since my head was so immersed in the making of the show, the quality and the artistry of his food, combined with the sudden awareness of the setting that it inspired, literally took my breath away. (I have the acting skills of a small pebble, so if you ever watch this show, note that the convincing expressions of contentment that I wear in these scenes are entirely genuine, for just as my appetite was remembered, the cameras were forgotten).
Steve and Frank were just as besotted, and I think not a little tickled to be fed their own catch. After foie gras-topped steaks and coronets of frites (I said they were hungry), they were led through the entire tasting menu, which can be had by all during the spot prawn season for $70 per person.
I imagine it will change a few times as Humphries inspiration allows, but for us it began with a sizeable amuse bouche: a citrus-dusted, beer-battered prawn next to shot glass filled with a hot, delightfully aromatic bisque (and so explains my sudden lack of breath). This delight was followed by a roughly deconstructed prawn cocktail. Think naked, wine-kissed prawns draped decorously over a two-hour poached egg littered with shaved truffle on a mound of tomato/horseradish relish. Next came a textural assault: a smear of black bean purée dotted with bright fava beans centered by little tortellinis stuffed with prawn, bacon and lime (the taste of each one further amplified by a squirt of jalapeno-flavoured gel.)
The final course was the simplest and best: whole prawns (heads still on) treated to heat, preserved lemon, brown butter and garlic. We used our hands, violently tearing the carapaces off and sucking out the cranial remnants before tearing open the exoskeletal abdomens to get at the toothsome meat inside. It was at this point that I remembered cameras, and I was happy to do take after take after take.
Though it was entirely staged, the meal went down as the best Ive had so far this year (without even a mention of the lime tart and petit fours to close). Of course, I would never review a restaurant in such managed circumstances, so treat this not as such, but rather as a reminder of two things: first, that until the last week of June, Steve and Frank will be arriving back at Fishermans Wharf every afternoon with the Organic Oceans hold filled with live prawns, which they sell to all and sundry, and second, that Vancouver boasts some 25 kilometres of gorgeous seawall, but scarcely a dozen metres of it are given over to excellence, and these are them.
C Restaurant still excels in expressing the bounty of our local shores, and does so with innovation in a setting that is second to none. If you have yet to take in its varied pleasures this season, now is most definitely the time to go.
CRestaurant.com | 1600 Howe | 604-681-1164
