A la cuisine!

When Allison and I get together, sometimes it’s like we’ve boarded the De Lorean and whipped back to 1997. We regress into giggling schoolgirls, debating random people’s resemblance to random celebrities. Case in point from the other night:

Me: That guy totally looks like Michael Vartan!

Allison: No way, Ryan Gosling.

Me: Are you blind? Not at all.

Allison: He totally does - he’s got that long-face thing going.

Me: I’m not convinced.

Allison: Just squint.

Me: Hysterical laughter. (And, no, unlike teens these days who like to narrate their emotions instead of, well, emoting them - LOL, you have marred the linguistic landscape forever - laughter actually burst from my lips like air from a sat-upon whoopee cushion.)

We were at an Iron Chef-style charity event and our mid- to late-90s regression proved well timed. It was then, after all, that the original Japanese series was in its heyday. (Oh how I loved that show. The best part? Sure, Chairman Kaga’s pepper biting was amusing, but I adored it when they dubbed panelists’ laugher. Honestly, aside from spotting look-a-like celebrities, dubbed laughter has got to be one of my favourite things.)

Unfortunately - and this really, really irked me - we didn’t get to sample any of the wannabe Iron Chefs’ dishes. Instead, we had to make due with a few pre-competition appetizers.

They were…there. The selection, to be honest, was uninspired. Everything looked pretty, but tasted flat. It was like channel-flipping and catching Back to the Future on a lazy Sunday afternoon - comforting, to be sure, but not quite the sensory overload it had been in the 80s. (80s, 90s, I’m all over the decades today.)

I did like the pepper-marinated chicken served atop a edamame corn salad, however. And the grilled tofu was relatively tasty (was there coconut milk in the sweet and sour sauce? A nice flourish). But the black bean steak didn’t have much flavour - a few more hours in the marinade bath could have helped. Or maybe it was the beef itself. That whole uproar about mass produced meat tasting like sinewy cardboard? They’re on to something. (Which is ironic considering how much the emcees preached the “buying local” doctrine. Who knows? Maybe that beef was local. Maybe Ontario beef just naturally tastes like cardboard.) At any rate, my taste buds had a beef with the missing beef flavour.

The real action was inside Kitchen Stadium. Chef Ted Reader - “known for his wild hair, pyrotechnic charm and fearless culinary spirit” - battled it out against Chef David Garcelon, executive chef at the Fairmont Royal York. (I’m quoting directly from the program here. Clearly, one man had already won the PR war.)

The secret ingredient, you ask? Whitefish. (Which I totally called. “I bet it’s seafood,” I said to Allison. She guessed meat.)

A smorgasbord of dishes were created. And, true to his reputation, Chef Reader did light something on fire. (Cedar wood chips, I think. Panelists had to blow them out before eating a dish that involved some sort of risotto.)

His inventiveness paid off in the end. (He served one dish that involved basil butter-filled syringes. That’s right, butter-filled syringes. You were supposed to inject the mixture into the centre of a roasted potato. How could he lose?) His cuisine reigned supreme.

I must say, the buzz of activity on the floor was exciting to watch. Even if we didn’t get to sample any fruits of the chefs’ labour. (Chef Garcelon did pass around apple slices and caviar after the battle; a very gracious non-winner.)

And I did learn something that evening: from a football field away, just about everyone looks like Ryan Gosling.

-Andrea