2015 Canadian Culinary Championships

Congratulations to Ryan O’Flynn, executive chef at The Westin Edmonton Hotel who topped the podium at the Canadian Culinary Championships.

“It was a fascinating competition,” said James Chatto, Gold Medal Plates’ national culinary advisor and head judge of the event featuring 11 competitors from across the country.

“I felt we might have had the strongest lineup of chefs ever, with a very serious contender from every single city — some of them established stars, others dark horses with powerful experience. We were not disappointed.”

Chef O’Fynn impressed the judges from the first challenge.

Ryan’s bravura use of Canadian sturgeon and expert technique wowed the 14 judges from across the country at the three-day event in the heart of BC wine country.

He guessed the mystery wine, a brash Pinotage from the southern Okanagan, and paired it beautifully (and not without some risk) with sturgeon with a smoked beet purée in Friday night’s Mystery Wine Challenge. He played Saturday morning’s Black Box challenge safely with a well-executed pan-seared duck breast and yam purée, which kept him in the top three.

Ryan’s grand finale dish was as thrilling to the national judges and Kelowna guests as it was to Edmonton’s Gold Medal Plates judges and attendees last fall. The 2013 Sandhill Small Lots Viognier was an ideal choice with the creamy textures and bold flavours of the Quebec foie gras and pine-smoked sturgeon terrine with Northwest Territory-sourced morels. During his presentation of the final dish to the national judges, Ryan talked about being a garde-manger in a restaurant in France and spending six months cleaning foie. This depth of experience, superb skill and obvious talent set him apart, even in this group of chefs, who were brimming with talent and desire.

We congratulate Ryan, his sous chefs Juan Pablo Mendez and Vikram Redgaonkar and the Okanagan College culnary students who worked on Ryan’s team in Kelowna.

This is Edmonton’s first big win in 10 years of CCC. Let’s have a little swagger!

Silver
Antonio Park, Restaurant Park, Montreal, Québec

There are chefs who are expert technicians, and some who are capable of transferring ideas, producing concrete realisations from mind to plates, like magicians of the senses. Antonio Park combines both qualities with virtuosity. Argentinian-born of Korean-descent and Quebec-educated, formed in Japan, Brazil and New York, Park gives weight to the idea of blending cultures, ingredients, techniques and seasonings in what amounts to cooking a primordially Japanese “storm”. His is a cuisine so clear, tidy and unadorned, in which ingredients are skillfully amalgamated with almost surgical precision. In the restaurant that bears his name, this is what customers will be presented with: raw, almost primitive produce from the sea, but also from gardens and forests, assembled rather than transformed. We could call it a cuisine of sincerity, almost pastoral, vivacious in its approach and fuelled by a formidable energy.

This slant on Japanese cuisine, proposed for the competition in Kelowna, impressed the jury but mostly convinced them that Antonio Park was a chef to be taken very seriously. Over the weekend, he cooked blood pudding with Jerusalem artichoke purée and a tataki of almost raw duck breast alongside a softly-poached piece of lobster tail, made to look like a sashimi. For the gala evening, he made a dish which sounded complex rather than complicated and featured a deconstruction of a typical bibimbap, the Korean national dish, made unrecognizable yet vaguely familiar with a layer of gochujang, the fiery chilli paste, transformed into a strip of robust and tangy bright-red ribbon. The flavours were profound yet the touch by which they were executed, light as a feather.

Robert Beauchemin, Montreal Judge

Bronze
Kristian Eligh, Chef de Cuisine Hawksworth Restaurant, Vancouver, British Columbia

All foodies in BC respect our talented chef Kristian Eligh and congratulate him on bronze. We admire how he always strives to create new contemporary dishes that are light and vibrant using the finest of fresh ingredients. This focus was exemplified at the Bitish Columbia Gold Medal Plates held in Victoria with his unique confit pork neck with Granny Smith apples, puffed Avonlea cheddar and mâche.

His mystery wine pairing of Fraser Valley duck breast delicately spiced with fennel, cinnamon, and allspice (but no strong peppercorns) cooked á point on a bed of lentils with textured parsnip duo of purée and crisps was an outstanding start.

Bad luck to open the Black Box with a repeat duck but a to-die-for, silky- smooth yam puree with a sophisticated turnip Parisienne and pan-fried crispy onion rings showed innovation. A very fresh and lively mustard-bacon vinaigrette/gastrique sauce gave the dish lift.

His coast-to-coast refined chowder of Pacific sablefish and Atlantic lobster covered by a lacy bread bowl inverted into a dome paired brilliantly with one of Canada’s most complex chardonnays, the elegant 2012 Meyer Micro Cuvée.

Admirable sophisticated culinary skills plus team leadership continue to emerge from one of Canada’s best young chefs.

Sid Cross, Vancouver Judge

Proceeds from Gold Medal Plates and the Canadian Culinary Championships are given to the Canadian Olympic Foundation. To date, more than $9.5 million has been raised to support high-performance athletes.