Richard Raisler has thrown a challenge on the table.
How many meals do you actually remember, he asks. Not just the place, but the actual food. Not just who you shared the food with, but the foods flavour. Not just how the meal made you feel, but the ingredients that went into making it.
Most of us would be hard pressed, a week or a month or a year after one of our favourite restaurant meals, to be able to describe the flavours.
Thats why, Raisler says, he loves the new Le Gavroche. The physicality of the service will remind you of the food, he says during a dinner at Vancouvers longest-standing French restaurant. Le Gavroche infuses food memory.
Hes right. I can absolutely recall the gently smokey flavour of the salmon that had been delivered to our table in a large, enclosed glass jar. At the bottom was wild sea grass pickled in champagne vinegar, sea salt and citrus. A wild Pacific salmon filet, marinated with pickled mustard seeds and dill, and pierced by skewer that rested diagonally within the jars confines (pictured, below), was awash in a swirl of alderwood and sea kelp smoke. A few minutes later, the restaurants co-owner, David Auer, opened the jar, spooned the sea grass on a plate and gently placed the de-skewered salmon on top,
Tasting the result was like being transported to a pebbly beach somewhere along the Pacific coastline, sitting on a tree stump that had been washed ashore and eating a piece of salmon that had been cooked on a salvaged stick over a campfire. (It was also easy to imagine we had caught the fish earlier that day, it was so fresh and moist.)
My husband and I were sharing a degustation dinner with Raisler an international food and travel writer and soon-to-be online newspaper publisher and Rasoul Salehi, the Vancouver-based general manager of Enotecca Wineries and Resorts.
Salehi and Auer have worked together when Auer was at Cibo and together they have come up with Le Gavroches house blends of red and white from Enoteccas Le Vieux Pin winery.
Hes not saying goodbye to traditions but hes not dogmatically following them either, Salehi says of Auers approach to blending the house wine.
The same can be said of chef and co-owner Robert Guests menu. Hes taken the French traditions Le Gavroche was known for during its 35-year reign at the foot of Alberni but modernized them and given them a decidedly West Coast twist. The menus theme is gardens they have their own garden on the roof of the heritage building and oceans. As Salehi says about the mixed beet salad, Its spring on a plate.
Auer and Guest spent weeks coming up with innovative ways to prepare and serve many of the dishes. The medley of sea urchin and scallops is cooked quickly but gently in a coffee siphon filled with fish broth. For a palate-cleansing trou normand, they put a teaspoon of fresh herbs into a metal bowl and pour in a dash of liquid nitrogen. With a temperature of roughly -196 liquid nitrogen instantly freezes the herbs, which you smash with a small ladle. Auer then pours in a little more liquid nitrogen and then puts in a spoonful of kelp mousse which hardens instantly in the cold bath. A similar trick is used to make a frozen White Russian dessert.
Le Gavroches motto is We believe in our local, organic farmers and bringing their joy to your plate. Theyre obviously having a lot of fun while they do it.
