Gatineau’s Foucault takes gold
Self-taught chef headed to Gold Medal Plates national championships
Marysol Foucault, chef and owner of tiny 11-seat Edgar restaurant in Gatineau, took top prize Monday at the ninth annual Gold Medal Plates regional competition in Ottawa.
It was Foucault’s first crack at the competition, which raises money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. She cooked off against seven rivals, all with impressive culinary credentials.
Like last year’s regional gold medal winner Jamie Stunt, who took silver at the 2012 Canadian Championships in Kelowna, B.C., Foucault, 37, has had no formal culinary training.
As last year’s regional victor, Stunt joined the judging panel Monday night, and so did not compete..
Foucault was flabbergasted with her top showing. This is, after all, the same young woman who studied sciences at the Cégep de l’Outaouais with the idea of becoming a funeral home embalmer — but her restaurant boss “paid me more money to run the kitchen and make desserts” instead.
“I didn’t think I had a chance at all,” says Foucault, who opened Edgar just three years ago. “I wasn’t expecting it.
“For heaven’s sake, I’m just an 11-seat restaurant in Gatineau.”
Judges said while contestants were all very strong, Foucault emerged as the clear first choice with her multi-faceted dish of cured wild boar and rabbit pressé, brown butter rabbit liver mousse, chestnut, parsnip, Sortilège lichen and golden beet gastrique.
“It was a unanimous decision, and by a considerable margin,” says James Chatto, national senior judge for Gold Medal Plates across Canada.
“She said she built the dish around the wine, which is always attractive and a good idea. She did this extraordinary cured and then sous vide-cooked wild boar, which she squeezed around rabbit loin, which was beautiful, juicy pressed rabbit. There was a little rabbit liver mousse beneath that with brown butter.
“Everything on the dish made sense,” Chatto says. “I mean, she took some risks and there were some funny things like lichen steeped in a maple whisky, and it worked beautifully. There wasn’t a fault on that dish, it all had a harmony and sense of purpose. We were very impressed.
“I thought it was a really strong dish. It wasn’t as beautiful as some of the dishes, but it tasted fantastic.”
Scoring silver this year is Jonathan Korecki, 29, executive chef at Sidedoor Contemporary Kitchen and Bar in the ByWard Market. He placed third in competition in 2012.
Korechi’s dish was sustainably harvested spot prawn, Arctic char, and scallop with “laksa” foam and roasted parsnip “ramen” noodles to mimic a deconstructed version of Asian laksa soup.
“He took some risks, he put sliced chili in there, he put a whole lot of lime in there and some sweet coconut and, yes, it was actually like Singaporean soup. And he wasn’t taming it down for Canadian palates, so there was some real serious heat going on.”
Third place went to newcomer Katie Brown Ardington, 28, chef de cuisine at Beckta Dining & Wine.
Ardington made a trio of tuna sashimi coated with pork bone ash, whitefish caviar with pork-braised mushroom and lobster chorizo sausage. “It was a very elegant and wellcomposed and thoughtful dish,” Chatto offers.
Also competing were Arc Lounge chef Jason Duffy, Wellington Gastropub chef Christopher Deraiche, Town chef Marc Doiron, Navarra chef René Rodriguez and Carleton Grill chef Frédéric Filliodeau.
The national-level Gold Medal Plates competition will be an intense two-day finale Feb. 7 and 8 in Kelowna, where the Canadian Grand Champion will be crowned from among the qualifying regional winners.
Ottawa has done well at the Grand Championships in the past. Last year Stunt took the national silver prize after winning gold in Ottawa. Before that, in 2011 chef/owner Marc Lepine of Atelier restaurant took the top gold national prize.
Other Ottawa chefs who have previously placed among the top three in national winner circles include Matthew Carmichael in 2009 (bronze) and Michael Blackie in 2006 (silver).