Haute cuisine at budget price
Community college pop-up short on ambience, long on value
Ordinarily, this wouldn’t compute. Hamid Salimian and Tobias MacDonald, two top-rung chefs in the city with bags of accolades and awards, hawking five-course dinners for $30; with wine matches, the price inches up to $45. What the ... ?
I recently visited their establishment and I can tell you it was an astonishingly pleasing meal. Comparables would run you at least $100 without the wine.
I can hear you panting for the name of this place, so here it is. It’s The Chef’s Table at Vancouver Community College’s International Culinary Program, and Salimian and MacDonald are instructors. (Salimian teaches cooking skills and MacDonald front-of-house operations.) So that’s the reason why the glorious meal is such a bargain — the cooks and servers are students and you are, supposedly, the guinea pigs, but what lucky little piggies you are if you manage to book a spot.
Here’s the downside to The Chef ’s Table. It’s in a curtained-off section of the college cafeteria (Quizine) and it looks like surgeons will be operating. Institutional tables align in a U-shape around the room with the stainless-steel plating stations at the helm. Students are also learning front-of-house skills and since I visited on the first week of this set of pop-ups, they were self-conscious and not entirely confident, even with white towels formally folded over their right arm (or perhaps, because of it). Wines selections are wonderfully paired for each course by MacDonald, but ask a question about a blend and our server got three out of three of the grapes wrong. But, as I say, they’re students, a year into their 17-month course and they’re practising haute skills on us.
I couldn’t quite believe how accomplished the food was. Better, I’d say, than most executions in high-end venues. It was beautifully and cleanly presented and each dish had several labour-intensive and creative elements. The menu changes every two weeks, sometimes more frequently, a difficult pivot, even for long-standing restaurants. At the last of the dinner series by each class, they do foods from their home country, but much more elegantly than their moms. “They come from everywhere,” says Salimian. “I’ve had students from Turkey, Korea, China, Mongolia, India, Sri Lanka, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia. Ninety-eight per cent have never had a knife in their hands. I wish you could see them on Day 1. They’ve been here a year by the time they do the pop-ups.”
I won’t go into detail about how it’s orchestrated; suffice to say, Salimian shows and tells, then the students cook and plate under his guidance.” If I do the work, they’re not getting what they paid for. I ask them for their 100 per cent. It’s like a small restaurant.”
Of MacDonald, he gushes: “He’s a legend. He’s a rock star and he’s very good with the kids. I think we make a good team.”
On the night I visited, the first course was tuna and Dungeness crab cannelloni, the ‘pasta’ being a thin sheet of tuna, wrapped around crab filling, plated with a perfect shrimp, avocado purée, soy vinaigrette pearls, compressed cucumber and puffed rice chip. It was perfection.
Second course: grilled octopus with house-made chorizo, salsa Romesco, pickled navy beans and tapioca squid-ink puffed chip. It had lots of assertive flavours as well as textures. The puffed chips add a great crisp contrast.
The students must have thought, ‘I did that?’ upon making the third course that was puffed foie gras with apricot purée and honey bubbles. The process includes curing the foie gras, putting through a tami (fine, fine sieve), lightly heating, extruding through a whipping-cream gun and freezing. Anyway, it’s foie gras transformed into a crumble.
“People think it must be very, very hectic in the kitchen, but it’s not,” says Salimian. “They’ve had so much training, it’s not like they’re thrown into the unknown.”
The fourth course of roasted beef tenderloin and oxtail meat jam was a beauty, too. The tenderloin was coated in leek ash and the oxtail, first cooked in a sous vide, was ultra tender. The Lost Inhibitions wine by Church & State made it a completely wonderful dish.
And for dessert there was lemon-curd ice cream, with white chocolate mousse, macerated strawberries, strawberry powder and a coconut crisp. I smiled when a student plating one of the dishes, dropped, rather than delicately placing the mousse, onto the plate; panic flitted across her face. It must have landed in keeping with the design (because oh, yes, each element has its place) because she smiled and continued.
The international program has three intakes a year, meaning the several weeks of pop-ups happen three times a year and if you’re OK focusing on the food and are cool with the operating-room ambience and novice servers, you’ll love it. And note the address.
It’s the East Broadway campus, not the downtown one. Otherwise, you might find yourself madly scrambling across town like one couple did on the night I was there. Also, don’t forget to tip when you make your reservation and pay in advance.