It had been my plan to check out May’s weekday lunch deal — but the offerings seemed a bit ordinary — and I happened to spy the notice of specials on the white board.

The only item written in english read “fresh lobster with ginger and onion or spicy” — Market Price. I asked the price. Twenty dollars and ninety five cents. Sold.

We add eggplant to the order, cooked down with chewy chunks of really good cured pork, and some of May’s handmade dumplings filled with shrimp and minced pork. These arrive first. We tuck in.

By the time the lobster arrives, we are less hungry than we need to be. Still, we crack and poke and suck at the perfectly cooked lobster meat, scooping up strands of ginger and lengths of scallion to cut the richness and boost the flavour and we manage the whole damn thing, chosing instead to have the dumplings and eggplant packaged up for later.

I remember when May’s first opened at the corner of Preston and Somerset. It seemed to me that was about five years ago. “We will celebrate 10 years in September,” May Houng tells me. “Next time, order it spicy!” Right. I’m keeping my bib on.

Cost: $20.95 for whole lobster.

Open: Wednesday to Monday, from 11 am to 11 pm

May’s Garden Restaurant, 122 Preston St., 613-234-6437

First published in OttawaMagazine

There’s not a titch of bitterness and the flavour  — smooth, toasted, a bit honey-sweet, and all-comfort in the finish —  just keeps on giving.

Kimiko Uriu assured me this tea would — that I could, in fact, get seven steeps out of the leaves, but I suppose I didn’t believe her. You might say I raised my eyebrow at the idea. But she was quite right, and I have found my perfect afternoon tea: gentle and forgiving.

Kimiko is a Certified Tea Specialist, teacher, taster, blender, owner of Kimicha Teas and founder of the Ottawa Tea Festival. I’m drinking her award-winning Jin Jun Mei, a pure black lapsang Souchong tea made from the young, early Spring buds (only buds) harvested on the stony slopes of Wuyi Mountain in China.

Jin Jun Mei, a pure black lapsang Souchong tea made from the young, early Spring buds (only buds) harvested on the stony slopes of Wuyi Mountain in China

Kimiko entered her Jin Jun Mei in the 2011 North American Tea Championship. It went tea-to-tea with some mighty big companies’ entries and emerged with the gold medal as the best Black Tea in the competition. Pretty impressive showing from a small, young Ottawa company.

Kimiko has worked in every part of the tea-making process in Japan: the farm, the factory, the blending room, tea sales, and distribution. She’s a tea educator, a skilled tea maker, a Japanese tea ceremony connoisseur, and a tea-loving mother of a delightfully busy toddler. She is also responsible for breaking my 4 pm double espresso habit and for giving me a crash course in the art and skill of brewing a good cup of tea.

Just like a good cup of coffee much depends on the quality of the leaves/beans and the skill of who’s making it. The temperature of the water matters; the ratio of tea leaves to water matters, as does the length of time the tea is left to infuse.

I figure, as I top up my fourth cup of Jin Jun Mei from the same two rounded teaspoons of leaves, that it’s also wildly more economical than that double espresso for which fresh beans must be ground.

In fact, the third steep of this tea was the finest — richer, rounder, more interesting. Though I did pair that one with a vanilla scone (The Scone Witch) smothered with raspberry-orange jam (michaelsdolce) which likely added to the pleasure and possibly skewed the science. No matter. This stuff has changed my life.

I bought the Jin Jun Mei, along with a number of other Kimicha teas, directly from Kimiko when we met in her home. But her exquisite teas are also available through Kimicha.com and some are sold at Farm Boy, under the Farm Boy label. (And hat’s off to Farm Boy for its efforts to support local businesses, and the quality of its home brand of products, including this treat.)

Cost: Kimicha teas range from $6 for 15g (mint tea) to $60 for 80g (Matcha Organic). The Jin Jun Mei is $25 for 30g.

Available through Kimicha Tea and at Farm Boy

Chef Bien of Chez Bien used to cook in Italian restaurants on Preston Street. My first visit was lunch, but if you come back for dinner (recommended) you should give his Asian marinated lamb (lemongrass, ginger, garlic, star anise) served with Italian style roast potatoes (rosemary, garlic, olive oil) a try. Pretty successful fusion fare!

But on the first summer-like days of the year thoughts naturally turn to summer rolls. Goi Cuon, also called salad rolls, of softened rice paper circles wrapped around grilled meat, greens, vegetables, noodles and fresh herbs. Lots of Vietnamese restaurants make these, and make them ahead. At Chez Bien, they’re made to order and that makes all the difference.

The grilled pork is warm and fragrant, the vermicelli at room temperature, the vegetables fresh and crunchy in their sweet and sour marinade, while the chopped mint lends a burst of summery vigour to the package.

You have a choice at Chez Bien of a peanut sauce to dunk the rolls into, or the ubiquitous nuoc cham, the Vietnamese dipping sauce used for all kinds of things. I chose the former, where the crushed peanuts are mixed with a dollop of green mung bean paste. Très bien!

Two rolls per order, and quite filling, but if you’d like to start with soup, I recommend the canh chua ga, a shrimp soup, sweet and
tart and slightly spicy, with tomatoes, bean sprouts, scallions and celery, the broth aromatic of tamarind and lemongrass, the whole gently reviving. Much like these summer days of spring!

Cost: $3.95 for two rolls; $3.95 more for a small soup. 

Hours: Open Tuesday to Friday for lunch; Tuesday to Sunday for dinner.

Chez Bien, 277A boul. St-Joseph, Gatineau, 819-775-9558.

Morris was the host chef and the first of three duos – one chef from each territory paired with one from an Ottawa/Gatineau restaurant – at an intimate cooking demonstration and dinner called North-South Fusion (part of the week long festival called Northern Scene that celebrates the art, music, theatre, literature, fashion and food of Canada’s north.)

From a jewelled purse, as Morris described it, his chef partner Rebecca Veevee (Nunuvat’s “Laughing Chef”) unsheathed her ulu, an all purpose Inuit knife used traditionally by women.  ”No man can touch it,” she cackled at him, as he gazed upon its elegant curves with obvious envy.

With her girl-knife, Veevee handily skinned and diced filets of Arctic char while watching Morris do the same, over at his end of the table, using some boring looking chef’s knife.

With that dull knife Morris did manage to produce a luscious char tartare. This he served with a toasted juniper berry aoili that brought the forest to the fish in a stunning way. With her Arctic char, Veevee made a shepherd’s pie – fish, peas, onion, herbs, topped with mashed potatoes and cheese, and devoured at our table.

Genest, expounding on low bush cranberries, and CBC host Alan Neal and Charles Part hanging on her every word

The next duo was Michele Genest from Whitehorse and Charles Part from Chelsea. Genest is The Boreal Gourmet and Part the longtime co-owner and chef of Les Fougeres. Together, they produced an elk osso bucco terrine, with apple-wood smoked elk jerky flavoured with juniper and dusted with yarrow. With the roasted bones, Part produced a sparkling consommé to whet the appetite. The meat came – of course – from Thom Van Eeghen and Fay Armitage’s The Elk Ranch in Kanata.

To Part’s elk, Genest’s part started with black morels. These were foraged after a northern burn, while the morel soaking jus became part of the braising liquid for Part’s meat. She also brought to the dish Yukon low bush cranberries (known as lingonberries in Scandinavia and partridge berries in Newfoundland). At Les Fougeres, they oven-dried some of the berries, and made a sweet-tart syrup with others. The raw berries Genest cooked down in a sugar-birch syrup tarted up with apple cider vinegar, spread it on a pan, popped it in an oven (mine, to be precise) and out came a crunchy brittle that gave a burst of brightness to the pungent meat.

Genest also hauled spruce tips down from the north (ours weren’t yet in season) along with spruce oil. With these she made a gremolata for the osso bucco, where the chopped up tips and spruce oil replaced the more traditional parsley and olive oil. To finish the dish she candied some of the spruce tips: a first for everyone in the room.

Photo by Cathie Archbauld, permission, Harbour Publishing

Michele Genest is my childhood friend. A Toronto girl who fell in love with the north. She left for a three week visit twenty years ago, was apparently enchanted with the place, returned home to pack her bags (yadda yadda yadda, yes, yes, we’ve heard it all before) and the girl never looked back. Damn her.

Though she’s been back all this week, borrowing my kitchen to prep for Northern Scene, my front hall filled with cases of her fantastic book The Boreal Gourmet (Harbour), my house infused with the earthy smell of black morels and spruce needles and birch syrup simmering on the stove. All attempts to woo her back to the south with excellent restaurant meals and glorious summer weather have been in vain.  She and her magnificent husband Hector MacKenzie (famous wilderness guide, avalanche expert, official taster for The Boreal Gourmet) return to Whitehorse on Sunday to the snow and the mud of spring, and my kitchen will never smell as fine again.

Our third and final pair of chefs (sorry, back to Northern Scene!) was Yellowknife’s Robin Wasicuna teamed up with Ross Fraser of the Fraser Café. Their course featured reindeer, farmed in Inuvuk and apparently from the original herd at Reindeer Station (brought from Scandinavia and herded from Alaska to NWT in the thirties, a government initiative to introduce reindeer farming to Canada’s north).

Wasicuna roasted the tender back strap of the venison to ruby rare. To pair with the reindeer, Fraser found wild garlic in the knick of time (delivered to his restaurant that afternoon). He grilled ramps, diced rhubarb and with toasted sunflower seeds and charred bread made a romesco sauce of sorts with which to smother his bronzed gnocchi. The dish was finished with early Ontario asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes chips.

Hats off to the National Arts Centre. This was a wonderful event.

The vanilla lid broke, the extract began oozing out and, as I pulled over to rescue it, I got a ticket for pausing in a bus lane during OC Transpo-only hours. No amount of truth telling convinced the officer.

Though I am convinced she did look longingly at my pain aux raisins before commenting on the smell, which was quite boozy.

It is possible I got off lightly…

For the purposes of the photograph, I have tucked the vanilla bean back under the raffia and turned the bottle so you cannot see the cracked lid. Nor can you see – I hope – that a third of the liquid is gone.  The stain remains, reminding me of just how much I paid for that extract, but also – and more importantly — of my mum’s freshly baked vanilla cream cookies, of childhood milkshakes, of my nana’s vanilla pudding, of creme brulée from Café Henry Burger. These memories waft up  from the carpet and they make me smile. The aroma is still strong. It’s even overwhelmed scent of hockey bags, basketball shoes, and wet dog.

A few years ago, Cook’s Magazine did a blind tasting of vanilla extract and they came up with the shocking conclusion that, in baking, there is no noticeable difference between goods baked with pure vanilla and those baked with the synthetic stuff, a byproduct, I learned, of paper production or a derivative of coal tar. I gather they had quite a readership reaction to that find. So they looked again, this time using pure and artificial vanilla in pudding for one test, in warm milk for another, and this time there was no question: pure vanilla won the day handily. Their conclusion? Use the best quality artificial in baking and save the good stuff for confections made with little or no heat (like puddings, pastry cream, frosting and, I would suggest, milkshakes.)

I conducted my own little test. I prepared two cups of warm milk. Into one I poured a teaspoon of a supermarket brand of pure vanilla (ClubHouse), and in the other, the vanilla from Macarons et Madeleines, aged eight months, made with beans from the Madagascar region infused in vodka. No contest. Just like those pain aux raisins maitre-patissier Stephan Ethier crafts — with his vanilla of superior product — this stuff rocked. Spill some today.

Cost: $25

Macarons et Madeleines, 46 Lorne Ave., 613-422-6215.

First published in Ottawa Magazine, April 29/13

On newstands now, the Spring 2013 issue of Taste & Travel, the Ottawa-based magazine designed for culinary tourists —  loosely defined as those who travel mouth first, as it were, getting to know a new place through its cuisine.

In this, the 9th issue, you’ll sink your teeth into Cambodian cuisine, Thai street food, the pastries of Tunisia. You’ll taste the food, wine and history along the scenic byways of Central Virginia, the White Mountains of Arizona, and you’ll wander the day markets of Laos. There are recipes for authentic Irish Soda Bread, Croatian pepper soup and chef Michael Smith’s bacon beer mussels, steamed on board his buddy’s boat. There’s a marvellous story on PEI shellfish, written by Canadian culinary activist Anita Stewart, and I contribute a piece on Stratford, one of Ontario’s greatest treasures… particularly for hungry theatre goers. I’ve attached the story here.

I wouldn’t ever do this in my own kitchen. This is a dish you clearly leave home for.

Pla Sam Rot: described on the Thai Flame menu as “Deep fillet crispy topped with sweet and sour sauce.” Translated literally, pla sam rot means “three flavour fish,” generally cooked whole and smothered in a bright and lively, colour-charged topping that simply banishes any vestiges of winter,  that cling stubbornly, determined to stay late at the spring party.

It was looking for the old Taste of Japan restaurant in a little strip mall on Robertson Road (its windows sadly papered over) that led me here. I had had a sense that Taste of Japan was gone, possibly long gone, but I couldn’t remember. Sure enough, there it was. Its lights out, view in obscured, but not forgotten, and now with a neighbour worth exploring.

Thai Flame is a newish Thai restaurant run by a Laotian couple who once ran the That Luang restaurant on Wellington West.

I asked for fried fish for lunch, with something tangy, sour, spicy, sweet and this is what arrived. Trout, fried whole to crisp, and covered with a sauce sweetened with pineapple, sour with tamarind, salty with fish sauce, hot with red chiles, and green with Thai basil and cilantro. The flesh of the trout remained soft within its crunchy crust, and the sauce was simply joyful. I ordered some rice and managed to make a bit of a dent in the dish. But most of it came home, with extra rice provided from the kitchen.

It became a spring supper for one. My boys were still at that wintry game of night hockey. No plam sam rot for them!

Cost: $13

Open: Monday to Friday for lunch, daily for dinner.

Thai Flame, 1902 Robertson Rd., 613-695-9188

First published in Ottawa Magazine, April 2, 2013

Among its many other admirable activities, The Ontario Hostelry Institute (its purpose outlined above) gives out annual “Gold Awards” to eight Ontarians involved in the food and hospitality industry.

I feel a bit like the guy in the picture up there, the one standing on the golden platform tooting a horn, but I’m delighted to report that I was one of those lucky Gold Award recipients, recognized in the category of Media/Publishing at the OHI Awards Dinner and Auction in Toronto last week.

I can’t begin to tell you how thrilling it was and I am enormously grateful to the OHI, its Chair and President Charles Grieco and members of the selection committee for the honour.

Each of we eight Gold Award recipients was given 90 seconds at the microphone to say thank you (and whatever else we wanted to say… quickly). Here, for the record, and for the fun of  it, is what I said (more or less).

“When I discovered the Gold Awards Dinner and Auction would be held here at the new Four Seasons Hotel, it tweaked a powerful memory. I did the math. Here’s what it told me: it was 30 years ago (to the month) I began working in the kitchens of this hotel. I was an unpaid apprentice. The year was 1983 and Niels Kjeldsen was my boss. I was pretty much the lone girl in a kitchen brigade of 27 guys, not one of them the slightest bit impressed with my freshly minted degree from LaVarenne Ecole de Cuisine, Paris.

They kept me busy painting aspic on canapés, shucking oysters, peeling things. For a solid week I stood on a stool, my job to keep the orange juice machine from gumming up. And finally, finally, weeks later,  the fearsome Niels Kjeldsen let me take my place on the Truffles dinner line.

Please understand, I was hugely grateful for that experience but it was likely right here, all those years ago, I figured out this wasn’t for me. I decided I’d really rather write about those who cook for a living, than cook for a living.

I’ve been doing that, in my adopted city since 1991, and it’s been a privilege to report on the emerging restaurant scene in Canada’s beautiful capital. We are much more delicious than we used to be.”

I was surrounded by pioneers in the hospitality industry last week. By artisans and chefs, restaurateurs and innkeepers, educators and hoteliers and suppliers, writers and publishers. And to be among them, honoured in this way, was a thrill of a lifetime.

In addition to the yearly Gold Awards, the OHI does a number of great things for the hospitality industry in Ontario. It particular, it looks to the future, nurturing the next generation, raising funds for scholarships to support the brightest and best students seeking careers in the industry. It honours the Top 30 Under 30 (among them this year, chef Luis David Calero of Ottawa’s Atelier Restaurant). And congratulations as well, to Chef Marc Lepine who was inducted into the OHI as a 2013 Fellow of the Institute in recognition of his professional achievements.

My fellow Gold Award honourees were Hart Melvin, President and Founder of Gelato Fresco Inc. (Supplier); Bob Desautels, of Borealis Grillhouse Pub in Guelph (Independent Restaurateur); David Martin, Director of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Ryerson University (Educator); Chef Lynn Crawford, co-owner/chef Ruby Watchco, Toronto (Chef category); Jeff Fuller, President Joey Restaurant Group (Foodservice Chain Operator); Mario Pingue Jr., (Artisan category) General Manager of Niagara Food Specialties; and David Smythe, (Hotelier of the year) GM of the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa! Congratulations to all.  

I’ve been quite enjoying it, I must say.

One of the framed photos I stashed away was of my youngest, in an infant seat at Cyranos. I knew it was Cyranos because behind him were the giant murals of fruits and vegetables that plastered the walls of this Bells Corners Mediterranean restaurant.

I’ve no idea who took the picture, or why, but there you go. Both kid and restaurant were pretty brand new.

Cyranos hasn’t changed much in those 16 years. Here still are those murals, the booths beneath them, the open kitchen and long bar.  It’s still dark inside — the price of blocking out the view of the Bell Mews — and the service remains maternal and kind.

I dropped in for lunch with my youngest son, now well out of the infant seat and into the driver’s.

I could have used a stiff drink, after the trip west, but settled for the warm avocado salad, which included a quartet of  grilled shrimp, well-seasoned and in fine shape, with a half a ripe avocado, a pile of greens and a warm stew of onion, tomato and cilantro smothered on top. It was pretty good.

My lad had the kofte special, three moist, grill marked ovals of lamb, veal, and pork, seasoned, herbed, and very tasty, resting on a mound of boring rice and served with a tossed salad.

Neither rocked our world, but Cyranos doesn’t tend to do that. It’s been a reliably good unremarkable restaurant for many years, in a part of town that needs those, and it carries on in that vein.

Let’s hope it’s a long way away from having to be put on a shelf.

Cost: Shrimp salad, $15; kofte special, $18.

Open: for lunch, Monday to Friday; dinner, Monday to Saturday.

Cyranos, 39 Robertson Rd., 613-721-0510

First published in Ottawa Magazine,  April 22/13

The winner, as you know, will go on to compete in the Canadian Culinary Championships in February 2014, against all the victorious chefs in ten other competing cities across the country and no doubt, Ottawa will do as remarkably well at the national level as it has always done in past years.  Just look at us: Michael Blackie took the Silver at the CCC in 2006, Matthew Carmichael the Bronze in 2009, Marc Lepine won gold (the Canadian Culinary Champion for 2012) and just last year, Jamie Stunt of OZ Kafe took the silver, one turn of the whisk behind Toronto’s Marc St.Jacques of Auberge du Pommier.

So here, Ottawa, are your Gold Medal Plates competing chefs for 2013:

From Beckta Dining and Wine, Katie Brown

From The Wellington Gastropub, Chris Deraiche

From Town, Marc Doiron

From ARC Lounge.Dining, Jason Duffy

From the Carleton Grill, Sheraton Hotel, Frédéric Filliodeau

From Odile, Marisol Foucault

From Sidedoor, Jonathan Korecki

From Navarra, René Rodriguez

Some have competed before: this will be a second year for both Jason Duffy and Jonathan Korecki who podiumed at last year’s GMP, taking silver and bronze medals respectively (Jamie Stunt of OZ Kafé took the top prize). This will be year two for Chris Deraiche of The Wellie, and René Rodriguez of Navarra competed way back in 2010. He’s coming back for another kick at the can.

First-timers this year are Katie Brown of Beckta, Marisol Foucault of the Gatineau restaurant Odile (and the little café called Edgar) and Frédéric Filliodeau of the Carleton Grill.

My thanks to Sheila Whyte, Chef Jud Simpson, Pam Collacott, Margaret Dickenson and GMP culinary advisor James Chatto, my fellow judges who help me with the impossibly difficult decision of which chefs to invite year after year. I think it’s a fine roster, I’m hungry already,  and I wish each chef all the very best in this year’s cook off. All for a cause, of course. The Gold Medal Plates, through its series of cross-Canada culinary competitions, raises money for Canadian Olympic athletes.