MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE
Food program is this festival’s biggest success
In late 1999, details of a new festival sounded too good to be true.
It would be called Montréal en lumière, and there would be a performing-arts and museum component, as well as a lighting arts component. But the table-arts component, with tasting events, seminars and especially guest chef dinners, is what grabbed local food lovers. Within hours of the festival’s unveiling, they were scrambling to get tables at what sounded like the most exciting event to happen on the Montreal dining scene since Expo 67.
Launched in February 2000, the first edition of the festival did not disappoint.
The honorary president was none other than Paul Bocuse, and mindboggling meals by French chefs such as Gérard Vié, Émile Jung and fish cooke ry master Jacques Le Divellec were on the agenda.
Everywhere you looked, you saw a famous chef or food personality coming or going. The Charlie Trotter dinner at Toqué! was the hottest ticket in town; I recall my elation at attending that dinner, where everyone who was anyone in 2000 foodie Montreal crowded the tables. Trotter was at the height of his fame and brought along many of the staff members from his Chicago restaurant. Though I can’t remember much about the meal, it was all very very.
The second year was even better, with more than 118,000 people attending the festival’s wine and dining events. Chicago was the featured city, and the great Trotter returned as the 2001 honorary president. Bocuse returned to host a pot-au-feu event in Complexe Desjardins that drew hundreds of giddy Montrealers.
Star chefs like Jacques Chibois gave cooking demonstrations, and there were wine tastings for everything from port to zinfandel to Château d’Yquem.
Dinners sold out in a flash, with local chefs profiting greatly. Reservations were up 27 per cent from the same period pre-festival, and most chefs cherished the exchanges made with their visitors.
Relationships were forged as Montreal chefs invited their colleagues to dine at the best restaurants, meet local suppliers and even go skidooing or play hockey.
Save for the occasional anti-social cook, it was an all-out love-in.
Of the 2003 festival, I wrote: “Food writers, restaurant critics, chefs, visiting chefs and restaurant-goers squeezed side by side to feast on a flock’s worth of foie gras, a herd’s worth of lamb and a school’s worth of snapper. Every dish was dissected, every bite analyzed. There were winners, there were losers, and most of us gained a pound or five. It was all rather serious and, with an average of four hours spent at every meal, more than a little exhausting.”
For those who relished fine food, there was nothing like Montréa len lumière in those early years.
Where else could you wine and dine to your heart’s content at gourmet meals prepared by more than 20 renowned chefs in the space of two weeks?
And there were low-budget events, too. If Montreal is a gastronomic capital today, a good part of that is due to this festival.
With Montréal en lumière’s 19th edition about to start, I spoke to Jacques-André Dupont, president/CEO of L’Équipe Spectra (the company behind the fest), about its origins and the effect it has had on the city’s food scene.
“The concept came from Alain Simard (chairman of the board for Spectra and founder of the Montreal International Jazz Festival and Franco-Folies), who created that festival from a request from many different parties that asked us to do something for Montreal for winter like we did in summer,” Dupont says. He adds that the Montreal cultural calendar was empty in summer for years, “and the jazz fest created a whole new dynamic for the city.”
“February is the toughest month to draw tourists, but also for locals. Together with Tourism Montreal, the Chamber of Commerce, the mayor and even the prime minister, the idea was not to have a snow festival like in Quebec City, but something to show off what’s creative about Montreal. Food and wine just had to be part of that program.”
Dupont says the moment they knew Montréal en lumière would be a hit came in the second year. “When Paul Bo cu se hosted that pot auevent for 300 people, it gave the whole festival credibility. We knew we had hit it out of the park.”
Many other great moments followed, but after attending countless Lumière events, certain Grand Cru years stand out.
For instance, 2003, when Spain was the featured country and avant-garde chef Santi Santamaria was honorary president. At one dinner, you’d taste an all-dessert menu from Barcelona chef Jordi Butrón; across town at Mikado, there would be a multi-course omakase menu by Hidekazu Tojo of Vancouver’s Tojo’s restaurant where each dish was paired with a premium sake.
At the time, I wrote: “Tasting menus are the ideal showcase for a chef’ s technique and style, as well as his or her mastery of flavours, especially when paired with wines by the glass. It’ s a bit like performance art, with six to nine jewel-like portions stimulating the senses: sight, smell and, of course, taste.” Consider those words in 2018, when tasting menus and wine pairings almost seem passé.
Montréal en lumière became the place to experience the latest food trends. I still recall a 2004 dinner by pastry chef Frédéric Bau at La Chronique that featured a 10-course menu centred on Val rhona chocolate. Bau’smenu featured semi-sweet, bittersweet and milk chocolate alongside foie gras, lamb, langoustines, red snapper, scallops and duck confit. Alas, the meal was a bit of a flop — duck and milk chocolate are an acquired taste—and yet Montreal er sc row de din tight to give it a try.
The festival also hosted a good number of up-and-comers, including Éric Fréchon, today of Le Bristol in Paris, New York’s Rocco DiSpirito and San Francisco’s Daniel Patterson, whose seared ahi tuna suspended in lemon and black-pepper jelly remains one of the best dishes I’ve ever tasted.
The discovery of our ingredients by foreign chefs was another bonus. I can still recall the late Michel Del Burgo telling local journalists that Quebec foie gras was as good as French; Christophe Michalak, pastry chef at Plaza Athénée in Paris at the time, leaving Montreal carrying maple sugar; and New York chef Laurent Tourondel raving about Quebec ice cider.
In many years of the festival, Normand Laprise’s events at Toqué! were the ne-plus-ultra. After Trotter in 2000, there was Boston chef Ken Oringer, who wowed patrons with a 10-course dinner that included cockscomb soup and foie gras with ginger confit and sweet-and-sour lemon. Then there was famous Australian chef Tetsuya Wakuda, who presented a 14-course extravaganza including Tasmanian trout, loin of Wagyu beef, and halibut with shallots, ginger and sesame.
“I remember the year with Tetsuya very well,” says Laprise. “We went to La Mer and he saw this 200- pound halibut that he wanted, and we ended up buying the whole fish. I think we served halibut for the next five or six days after he left.
“You really have to go out of your way to source ingredients. But I think it’s important for the image of Montreal, for (visiting chefs) to see that ours is a gastronomic city so they can spread the word.”
For Laprise, Lumière collaborations were always fruitful. “In the early days, it was a sort of reward for my staff to get to work next to chefs like Charlie Trotter, which was extremely motivating. It’s an extraordinary event, so enriching, especially because chefs would come with their teams and all the young cooks would bond together and it would create a network for them. And I’ve stayed in contact with all the chefs and talk to them all the time.”
David Ferguson, chef/owner of Gus, also remembers his festival experiences fondly. The first was as a line cook at Toqué! when Tetsuya Wakuda was in house (“I had never seen anyone work with low-cooking techniques like that before”), and there were events at his former restaurant, Le Jolifou.
“My two memorable experiences were with Jamie Kennedy and Donald Link from New Orleans,” he says. “Watching Kennedy work was a revelation. His food looked so simple, but actually it was layer upon layer of flavour. His energy was terrific: fun, giving, warm. And we’ve kept up. I just visited him at his new restaurant in Prince Edward County. It was interesting to get to pull back that curtain, to see what makes someone excellent. That camaraderie and rock ‘n’ roll energy was just great.”
Montréal en lumière has also turned out to be an opportunity for a culinary Entente Cordiale,
No doubt, the festival needs to be in constant evolution and innovation mode.
with Quebecers hosting chefs from Canadian food capitals like Toronto and Vancouver. It was during the festival that I discovered top Canadian chefs Vikram Vij, Rob Feenie and Hidekazu Tojo of Vancouver, plus Toronto chefs Anthony Walsh, Susur Lee and the aforementioned Kennedy.
The eighth edition — featuring New York chefs, with Daniel Boulud acting as honorary president — was another big hit. Dan Barber, Gray Kunz, Paul Liebrandt, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Anita Lo, Bill Telepan and others brought a real sense of excitement, and their enthusiasm for the city was infectious.
But the 10th anniversary in 2009 — spotlighting Parisian chefs, with honorary president Alain Passard — was odd. In contrast to the North Americans, the Parisians were a stern bunch who uniformly shrugged their shoulders when asked what they knew of our city before their arrival.
“The pretension was incredible,” said one of Montreal’s leading chefs at the time, who preferred to remain anonymous but was obviously steamed. “When our guest chef was here, he made it pretty obvious that God was in our kitchen. He didn’t even get our names right.”
Happily, there were still some fabulous meals, such as the Iñaki Aizpitarte dinner at La Montée, Gaël Orieux at Europea and Christian Constant at La Fabrique.
Lumière organizers have also been visionary in featuring countries that weren’t necessarily famous for their gastronomy at the time. Caseinpoint: Portugal, which was a surprise when announced as the featured country for 2010. It turned out to be a strong year in which creative food was matched with superb wines. I still recall shy José Avillez, proud Leonel Pereira and passionate Ljubomir Stanisic, who called Canadians “the best people in the world” despite the native Yugoslavian being searched and detained for three hours at the airport.
The theme for the 12th edition in 2011 was female chefs, with the sensation al Anne-Sophie Picas honorary president and star chefs like Anita Lo, Elizabeth Falkner, Mindy Segal and Barbara Lynch. The questions that came up at dinner were not as focused on cooking that year, but rather on the roles of women in professional kitchens. Speaking to them about their work and lives made for compelling conversation. Having interviewed dozens of male chefs during previous Lumière fests, I can easily say the 2011 participants were not only on a par cooking-wise with the men, but were generally sharper, friendlier and lacking any sort of attitude or inflated ego.
Dupont admits some years have been more challenging — for example, when Argentine star chef Francis Mallmann famously stormed out of his dinner in 2013 after being told his plates were too simple for the honorary president’s dinner. “It was sad,” says Dupont, “a misunderstanding.” The 17th edition in 2016, featuring the Chinese city of Shenzhen, was difficult due to communication issues, he says, but adds: “I still enjoyed seeing that meeting between cultures and creative people.”
Many of what Dupont refers to as the“under dog years” have been his favourites. “We had many amazing comments about the chefs from Brussels in 2012, and the Swiss chefs in 2015 added a great spirit to the festival. They partied hard, too. I think many friendships were forged that year. Toronto was another great year (in 2008), and the women chefs in 2011 were just incredible.”
There is no denying that the festivals of the past few years have lacked the star power of early editions, but Dupont is optimistic about Montréal en lumière’s future.
“No doubt, the festival needs to be in constant evolution and innovation mode,” he says.
“We’re eager to explore new trends, create an international discussion. I’m happy that next year we will be celebrating our 20th edition. It’s a milestone, and we’re working to make sure the festival will grow in a dynamic way for the next 20 years.”