Vancouver Eating Part 3

Fun dish of pork rinds from a maple syrup can!

One of the last restaurants I ate at in Vancouver was St Lawrence. I had wanted to visit this restaurant the year before, but heard it was impossible to get a table. It's not in the best location in the city, on the corner of Gore and Powell, but that means parking isn't too difficult to find.

The cozy interior of St Lawrence is like dining at home

This time my friends and I looked it up online and booked a table at the restaurant that serves Quebecois cuisine -- but that meant immediately putting down a credit card number. If one person was to drop out before 24 hours then there would be no penalty, but less than 24 hours then credit card would be charged CAD$25.

As a result it was a major commitment and we made sure we made it there on time -- 5.45pm.

The restaurant used to be a butcher shop, but walk inside and it feels like walking into an aunt's living room to have dinner. It's very cozy, with antique light fixtures that don't match, copper pans and plates hanging on the walls, mini curtains hanging from the open kitchen.

There's also a small bar area for customers to wait to be seated.

Paris-Brest using duck liver and foie gras in the filling

The menu is small, but a good selection. With four of us we ordered all six appetizers. The fried pork rinds with maple syrup and spice (CAD$12) are presented in an empty maple syrup can. The pork rinds were freshly deep fried and so good -- they would make excellent bar snacks.

Meanwhile the house-made terrine (CAD$18) combined with apricots was delicious and came with some mustards. Paris-Brest (CAD$22) is typically a dessert -- a round pastry with a praline mousse piped inside. But here it's a savoury dish, with the filling being duck liver and foie gras mousse. Very clever though hard to cut into four pieces. I don't usually like to eat foie gras, but this I had to try.

Refined cod cake quenelle with mussels

The escargots (CAD$18) were presented in small puff pastry cups with a generous serving of garlic sauce on top. Another highlight was the steak tartare (CAD$19) that had a lot of seasoning from the capers and onions, along with chevre noire cheese, and presented with waffle potato chips.

Finally the cod cake quenelle (CAD$22) was very smooth and came with mussels and Normandy sauce.

We also balanced our diet with two vegetable dishes. The ratatouille (CAD$17) was alright, but we preferred the Avonlea cheddar custard in the middle of the plate, while the baked potato (CAD$15) with Sauvagine cheese and poutine sauce was the disappointing dish that evening; it was recommended to us, but wasn't particularly interesting.

The very hearty pork chop with Robuchon potato puree

At this point we somehow managed to have room for a main course and we chose the pork chop (CAD$38) that came recommended to us. We were not disappointed. It was a giant pork chop on a bed of Robuchon potato puree (which means it had lots of butter in it), with Oka cheese.

The pork chop was amazing -- it must have been brined before because the meat was so tender and so juicy. I usually avoid ordering pork chops because they usually turn out dry, but here it was absolutely divine.

As if that wasn't enough food, we somehow talked ourselves into having three of the four desserts. One of them, sugar pie (CAD$11) is not regularly found on menus in Vancouver and it's a pretty dense pie that's filling and sweet.

Rice pudding with cinnamon buns, pecans and caramel sauce

We got a small portion of the rice pudding (CAD$20 for the whole table; so ours was less) and it's so cute: it comes with four mini cinnamon buns, caramel sauce, and toasted pecans. What a delicious combination and the rice pudding wasn't too sweet.

Many other tables ordered the lemon tart flambee (CAD$16) that the servers don't really like to send to the table because everyone wants to whip out their phones to video the tart being set on fire. So have your phone ready, because the server won't wait for you, and it doesn't set on fire for long, making it a bit disappointing visually.

However, the lemon tart is very good -- again not too sweet, and comes with an burnt soft meringue. Oh so good, tart custard, crunchy pastry shell and soft meringue. What a finish.

The lemon tart flambee was quick dramatic finish

St Lawrence
269 Powell Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 620 3800

Au Revoir, Monsieur Robuchon

Culinary master Joel Robuchon has died at the age of 73

Another culinary giant has passed... Joel Robuchon. He died in Geneva today from pancreatic cancer at the age of 73.

I had heard that he had been ill for some time, and had lost quite a bit of weight. It's a terrible way for a chef to go, someone who loves to bring pleasure to people with food.

His signature foie gras dish at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon

Unfortunately I never had the chance to interview him, but did take a picture with him in November 2015 when the Michelin guide announcement was made in Hong Kong.

Nevertheless he has trained and influenced so many chefs around the world. His army of chefs took their skills and knowledge to Robuchon restaurants in numerous cities and in turn they trained more people to cook the master's dishes.

Interestingly when he was boy he was training to become a priest and helped the nuns prepare food in the kitchen. He recalled only doing simple tasks like peeling vegetables and cleaning plates, but he found such joy in doing that.

He also remembers his mother holding a loaf of bread to her chest and then portioning it out to each person, as if giving the food from her heart. Robuchon took that philosophy to his kitchens -- how it was important to put passion in preparing food, as diners would feel that love in the dishes.

Robuchon lost a lot of weight in the past year

His career started in the early 1980s with his Paris restaurant Jamin, named "Chef of the Year" in 1987, and then "Chef of the Century" in 1987 by Gault-Millau.

Many years ago I had a chance to have lunch at Robuchon Au Dome, the fine dining restaurant at the top of the Grand Lisboa in Macau. It was such a decadent meal, several courses, with beautiful breads, salted and unsalted butter, and not only a dessert trolley but also one for sweets. I felt like a child cooing in a candy shop.

In my work I have met several chefs who have trained under Robuchon and acknowledge the master for his demands for the best ingredients cooked perfectly. He was most famous for elevating mashed potatoes into a fine dining dish (by adding lots of butter)...

As he got older he moved away from classic French techniques and preferring simplicity of flavours on the plate.

His famous gourmet mashed potatoes were very buttery

"The older I get, the more I realize the truth is: the simpler the food, the more exceptional it can be," he said in 2014. "I never try to marry more than three flavours in one dish. I like walking into a kitchen and knowing that the dishes are identifiable and the ingredients within them easy to detect."

Chefs who have worked under him are posting pictures of Robuchon on social media tonight and describing him as a father, mentor, teacher. He once said, "When a grandfather dies, a library burns", meaning the knowledge that person has accumulated is gone. That is why he felt it was so important to teach as many people as he could what he knew so that the knowledge would not disappear.

This year has been a terrible series of losses in the culinary world -- Paul Bocuse, Anthony Bourdain, Jonathan Gold, and now Joel Robuchon.

A bientot, chef!