Diva at The Met chef Hamid Salimian puts science and art into his innovative dishes.
Inventive dishes aren’t always that exciting, but Diva at The Met makes it so
Multi- course tasting menus, by meal’s end, can stretch the limits of imagination and pop waistband buttons. I took a deep breath and went to Diva at The Met to try some of chef Hamid Salimian’s food: high- wire acts of modernist cuisine when it comes to his tasting menus. His à la carte menu is more grounded, with nods to some of his magical cooking.
We order the five- and sevencourse tasting menus to find there were four or five snacks before we started. Uh oh, I thought.
Snacks included olive oil marshmallow, maple bacon parsnip, Parmesan puff with burnt onion and roasted pepper, farmed sturgeon puff with caviar on brioche and cucumber soda. That was before dinner. All those dishes took a lot of prepping and primping: dehydrating, powderizing, gelatinizing, smoking, foaming with whipping cream gun, carbonating with soda gun, texturizing with a food- safe chemical and so on.
I ate and scribbled notes and took photos and asked questions about the complicated culinary theatre on each plate, but as a scribe, I lost track as descriptions were rattled off. One server, with marbles in her mouth, didn’t help matters.
Bottom line: chef Salimian is putting out some cutting- edge, creative work on the tasting menus. His team in the open kitchen work quietly and with precision. The $ 55 and $ 75, tasting menus are good value if you consider how mind- bogglingly labour- intensive the dishes are and if you like highly stylized food.
The science behind the dishes isn’t the stuff of a Pulitzer, but Salimian is on the new wave of Vancouver gastronomy ( as is pal Jefferson Alvarez at Fraîche). It’s a tricky wicket, however. Left on impulse, I’d go for succulent traditional dishes with good- sized portions of protein and vegetables. Arty, inventive dishes can leave me cold because the food isn’t lusty; it’s a science project.
Most of Salimian’s nouveau dishes work; he balances flavour, eye appeal and tricks of science. He could simplify some of his more ambitious dishes that have six or seven things going on; the elements are too tiny for exuberant eating. For example, I loved, loved, loved a bone marrow croquette, but it was the size of a marble when I wanted a tennis ball. The dainty little croquette was accompanied by blood pudding swooshes, winter vegetables, bread pudding and veal tongue.
Another dish — sturgeon with B. C. striped prawn, dill- ash cured scallop, salmon roe and champagne jelly — had a lot of elements but they were coherent and lovely. Puffed foie gras ( don’t have the time and space to describe how it’s made but it’s like mousse without being a mousse) with a dab of locally grown fig molasses is so much nicer than the usual slab of fat.
On one of the dishes, he throws in a “glass” potato chip ( again, a laborious process) as one of garnishes.
One of the tasting menus ended with the Stilton cheesecake with rhubarb and port, which has been a signature dessert at this restaurant since long- ago chef Michael Noble literally dreamed it ( in his sleep). It’s undergone a modern makeover.
When we returned to sample the à la carte menu, it started with an amuse bouche of frozen gin soda ( yummy!). The Diva tempura sushi roll with sablefish and salmon was very good; it would have looked cleaner and sharper on the plate without the bits of garnish strewn about.
My ricotta agnolotti with sunchokes, leek and Parmesan foam was delicious; and my husband’s lamb duo ( slow- cooked neck and sirloin and pasta- like celeriac “blanket”) was exquisitely tender and delicious.
We finished with a warm chocolate souffle cake with pistachio ice cream.
Corey Bauldry brings a suave and competent presence as front of house manager and sommelier but service was a little uneven. Salimian was previously chef at Richmond’s Westin Wall Centre, where he had foodies trekking to the burbs.
On your way out, check out the camphor wood Golden Temple carving in the lobby of The Met hotel. The 170 separate pieces were carved with hammer and chisel with no preliminary drawings and each panel tells a story.
Diva’s tasting menus are avante garde; perhaps it’s not for everyone but if you’re curious about what’s happening in leading edge kitchens of the world, you might want to check it out.
More conservative tastes won’t be disappointed going à la carte, however.