Food and entertainment all under one tent
When was the last time you headed to Queen Elizabeth Park for a gourmet meal served up inside an antique spiegeltent? Never?
The production team behind Bacio Rosso are bringing the latest foodie entertainment concept to town, pairing gourmet eats with high-flying feats. Attendees experience a three-hour-long evening of entertainment drawing upon elements of vintage Moulin Rouge cabaret burlesque, nouvelle cirque acts and high-end dinner theatre, all washed down with a delicious four-course meal and libations.
Scott Malcolm of Voila Productions has devoted 15 years to cirque cabaret direction across Europe and the U.S.
Among the productions to his credit is Teatro ZinZanni, which ran in Seattle for many years.
“I started ZinZanni in 1998 and spent six-and-a-half years with them there before heading to San Francisco to start up their show there,” said Malcolm.
“I originally brought TZ the concept from a show that I had been involved with from the German show Pomp Duck and Circumstance, which came to New York and then Atlanta for the Olympics. The history of dinner spiegeltent shows goes back in Europe to at least 1985.”
This kind of dinner/cabaret performance has roots much farther back in time, with the rowdy and sometimes bawdy touring turn of the century carnivals that crisscrossed Europe before the First World War. While some of these shows set up in town squares and rural barns, others would occur inside luxurious travelling venues. Bacio Rosso uses one of these, with its vintage Belgian spiegeltent.
The name translates as “mirror tent,” and the construction from wood and canvas going up in Queen Elizabeth Park is decorated inside and out with multiple mirrors, stained glass, hardwood and velvet. Originally built in Flanders as late 19th century dance halls, the largest of these venues can hold up to 1,000 people standing, and contains well over 3,000 pieces.
There are very few spiegeltents remaining in operation around the world, with fewer still being used for a Bacio Rosso type performance.
“When I was doing some research into Vancouver, I discovered that one of the greats — someone like Sammy Davis Jr. — had once described this city as ‘the place where vaudeville came to die,’ as it outlasted the U.S. scene by about 10 years,” said Malcolm.
“So this is something of a resurrection of that, although what we present may have some historic relationship to the past but isn’t very similar in terms of entertainment.”
In other words, you might get a tease but don’t expect a bawdy 1900 British dance hall or genderbending German cabaret of the 1930s.
“That wouldn’t describe this event, which has its own completely integrated gourmet food element and is an immersive experience quite unlike even a review theatre in France where you get your meal, tables are cleared and the show begins,” he said.
“Ours all takes place at the same time, which makes it really a bit of its own thing.”
Magicians, jugglers, trapeze artists, contortionists, clowns, comics, musicians and more will feature alongside a food experience to measure up to any top restaurant in town.
The job of keeping people fed as someone flies through the air with the greatest of ease above goes to Adam Pegg, the awardwinning chef behind Vancouver’s La Quercia. Malcolm was a regular customer at the West Fourth Avenue eatery and approached the owners with his concept.
Pegg is the first to admit that plating up a tent full of food for between 270 and 300 patrons and getting it out while mimes merrily dance down the aisles is a new thing. In essence, La Quercia is opening a pop-up for a few months with Bacio Rosso.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and more interactive than anything we’ve done before,” said Pegg.
“The challenge in any theatre setting puts a whole new level of what’s possible in terms of what you’ll be cooking. Obviously, taking place in months like November and December means more steams and braises; heartier stuff that keeps its temperature.”
A specialist in Italian slow-food cookery, Pegg has designed a menu including regional delights like a mushroom polenta and a baked pasta course with a twist, which he’s excited about.
“We’ve come up with a glutenfree eggplant parmigiana that’s using chickpea flour, which is just really high quality,” he said.
“It’s not always easy to find a gluten-free substitute with some of these dishes, but my wife is Italian and it has her stamp of approval. Everything will be of that quality.”
Pegg is excited to have his young, talented team take on the extra responsibilities around the show and this is a significant challenge for his staff. As to any issues about whether doing volume sittings runs counter to the whole “slow food” philosophy, Pegg says there are none.
“When I lived in Italy, there were all kinds of much larger events that took place where the food was still all about being prepared the right way and with the best possible seasonal ingredients and so forth,” he said.
“The idea is to get the word out there that we are using the finest products and doing everything to give you the best possible meal while taking in the entertainment.”
There is no rule book about whether it’s better to have the jugglers come out during the salad course of the main meal, but Malcolm says he’s done enough of these shows now to have a good idea about how to make it flow. What wasn’t as straightforward was getting Bacio Rosso to Vancouver.
“I approached ZinZanni as long ago as 2005 to take the show to Vancouver — where I live and where my daughter lives — because I felt that the place was changing enough to be suited to something like this,” he said.
“There was a foodie industry, which has now grown to some of the best in the world, and the audiences for this sort of thing had developed where they might not have been before. They said no.”
The reasoning was that, unlike Seattle or San Francisco, Vancouver’s lack of major corporate headquarters didn’t look good for the block seat sales the company had operated so successfully on.
There was also an extra level of bureaucracy to deal with, which has really shifted in recent years with events from Skookum to Surrey Fusion and Muralfest all getting into city parks with relative ease. Finally, the day came when it all came together.
How easy is it to find performers to do such a long-running show?
“I started with my extensive Canadian clown Rolodex, because I had worked with a lot of people over in Europe from the Montreal schools and seen their good work, but the problem was that they were all working,” Malcolm said.
“I’ve dug deep into all my contacts and was lucky to get local and international talent to do the run, as well as all local musicians for the band.
“It’s about 11 performers, five musicians, the kitchen, service and full bar staff to make 55 or so working every night in the tent and then production staff too; a big gang.”
Bacio Rosso’s gourmet cabaret cirque runs for two months in the park. That’s probably longer than a lot of these performers have had in one place in years.
Someone like Sammy Davis Jr. had once described this city as ‘the place where vaudeville came to die.’