Chef for a day
AS THE KITCHEN awakens with the hollow clang of pots and pans and the tinkling of cooking utensils, I jot down ingredients in a notebook: Manchego cheese, green peas, eggplant, strawberries, grapes and one “surprise” meat. Perched at the chef’s table next to the kitchen, I’m being briefed by a convivial group of chefs and staff at the TOCA restaurant at the Ritz-carlton in Toronto. I’m participating in the Ritz’s Urban Food Safari, part of a new program called Off the Eaten Track that the hotel launched earlier this year. First, I’ll head to a market to shop with a local culinary tour guide. Then, I’ll bring my loot back to the restaurant, make one dish with one of the chefs, and finally enjoy a five-course meal designed especially for me from the ingredients I gather. The Ritz partnered with the Culinary Adventure Co., Canada’s largest food tourism and experience operator, to create a series of curated experiences exploring the Toronto’s vibrant and culturally diverse food scene. The tours include foraging for mushrooms in the Don Valley trail, breaking bread with top restaurateurs and chefs, and paddling a voyageur canoe around the Toronto Islands, learning about local geography and birds before enjoying a catered picnic. With my grocery list in hand, Kevin Durkee, co-owner of the Culinary Adventure Co., whisks me off to the St. Lawrence Market, the largest indoor market in Toronto. With more than 200 vendors selling everything from caviar and antipasto to viennoiseries and raw, gluten-free gnocchi, there’s something for every palate. Durkee knows many of the food vendors by name. He introduces me to Mario Aricci of Ponesse Foods where we buy the juiciest strawberries. At Scheffler’s Delicatessen and Cheese, we opt to replace the Manchego cheese with a wedge of Grey Owl, its dark ash rind cloaking a velvety goat’s milk cheese from Quebec. Along the way, we sample a “world famous” peameal bacon sandwich and stab through a plug of cream in a bottle to sample the most decadent chocolate milk. As Durkee and I munch on kangaroo pepperettes at Whitehouse Meats, I remember I must choose one “surprise” meat ingredient. In keeping with the safari theme, I buy a piece of camel sirloin. Back at TOCA, chef de cuisine Daniele Trivero greets Durkee and me in the kitchen. As we lay out the bounty, he scans the ingredients. When he sees the slab of camel meat I detect a slight amusement — or maybe irritation. He examines it, turning it over in his hand, sniffing it. I’m then handed a TOCA spritz cocktail, tossed an apron and put to work. I slice olives, shave parmesan and peel the eggplants I bought at the market while Trivero — a native of Italy — shows me how to make an elegantly simple eggplant parmesan. Then, seated at the chef’s table, I watch as Trivero creates dish after gorgeous dish for me based on my St. Lawrence Market finds, including a Grey Owl cheese platter with honey, red pepper and Concord grapes and my eggplant parmesan plated with a fresh piece of halibut. As Trivero serves the main course I notice him slide the camel sirloin dish to the side. I sample a piece — a delicacy in parts of the Middle East — and find it gamey and extremely chewy. Trivero asks me what I think. “Camel bubblegum,” I say. “Exactly!” he says. “It needs to be braised.” And he whisks the dish away.