Whistler’s Cornucopia offers fine food, drink
Wouldn’t you just love to walk into stranger’s opulent home and sit yourself down for lunch prepared by a top chef? A really elegant one with wines to match each course? I’ve done it more than once and you can too.
Chef ’s luncheons in private residences are part of the scores of food and drink events at Whistler’s annual Cornucopia. It took place this year from Nov. 8 to 18, and is much bigger than what started as a weekend of fun 22 years ago. Now there are over 100 events over 10 days.
The chef’s luncheon I attended was by Jeff Park, chef/owner of Salted Vine in Squamish. He once cooked at Araxi under the talented James Walt (now at Il Caminetto). The lunch location, kept secret until a bus drops you off, was in a home in the deluxe Kadenwood neighbourhood, high above the Whistler Valley, with a private road, private gondola and private snow groomer. A sign warning of “predatory towing” suggests its exclusivity.
Park’s four-course lunch didn’t disappoint, especially his melt-in-mouth magic with the Wagyu short rib course.
I attended another last year helmed by award-winning Alex Chen of Boulevard restaurant. He recently added Iron Chef Canada to his bag of honours and that’s the level of lunch he served. He was there this year too but I decided to stray.
Another Cornucopia event I attended, The Four Peaks dinner, packed the combined talent of Four Seasons mountain resort chefs from Whistler, Vail, Santa Fe and Jackson Hole. I’ve got to say, Four Seasons Whistler’s David Baarschers’ sturgeon gougere with Northern Divine caviar was heaven.
The dinner was preceded by cocktail theatre, including a punch made and displayed in a porthole infuser, a mixology vessel that looks like a ship’s porthole. Inside the round window, a colourful cocktail of tequila, liqueur, sake, bitters and lime rounds, pineapple, lemon grass, basil and lime leaves. A Volcan de Fuego cocktail did time in a smoker and the drink, inspired by an Old Fashioned, emerged with a scent of campfire.
On another evening, I attended a cocktail pairing dinner. I know, I know, you’re wondering just how sloshed I was at Cornucopia. Cocktails matching multi-courses could topple far more accomplished drinkers than me.
Well, first of all, it was at Il Caminetto, where patrons rarely leave dissatisfied or in a dishevelled state, so there was comfort in that. Secondly, it turns out we were in good hands with bar manager Peter Johanson, who worked with the kitchen as cocktail orchestra leader, matching the movement of dinner, toning down alcohol in some drinks and playing matchmaker with flavours.
For the five canapés that started the evening, he made a negroni but with Prosecco in place of gin, making it lighter and food friendly.
For the tuna carpaccio with fennel and artichoke, he served a spritz with rosemary infused Grey Goose l’orange, Cynar (with its predominant artichoke flavour), rose sparkling wine, and lemon.
The porchetta course was magnificent and magnanimous — chef must have thought we needed fattening and served up hungry man portions as thick as a doormat and filling out the circumference of the plate. Potato and truffle culurgiones (chubby raviolini) and greens came as side dishes. A hefty mate was in order and Johanson poured a mix of Dewars 12, Naramaro, Port Charlotte heavily peated scotch, ginger liqueur, fresh ginger, lemon, blueberry honey syrup and quince reduction. Peat and meat not only rhyme, they go well together.
It seems I hadn’t eaten and imbibed enough over the weekend as I was loathe to leave the mountain without having executive chef Isabel Chung’s food at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. Her dessert at an all-female chefs-winemaker-mixologist dinner at Cornucopia 2017 was unforgettable and too beautiful to eat (but oh, I most certainly did).
This year, a winemaker dinner where she teamed with chef Eva Chin of Royal Dinette had sold out quickly, so I had dinner at Fairmont’s Grill Room instead, starting with the finest tomato gin soup ever, made tableside, flaming local gin and all. The menu offers a lot from the grill where quality of product reigns supreme and it’s very good. The creative prowess in the finer dishes — the salads, the appies, seafood and desserts that demand more artistry and they’re beauties.
Cornucopia keeps Whistler going through the shoulder season, the lull just before ski season. It’s always in November so keep tuned for 2019.