Ottawa chef Briana Kim wins the gold, Edmonton chef Serge Belair takes home the bronze, Vancouver’s Bobby Milheron, the silver.
by Mary Bailey
Chefs Bobby Milheron, Briana Kim and Serge Belair celebrate podium finishes
It’s our first time back in Ottawa since 2019 with a fresh crop of regional winners ready to compete. It’s chilly in Ottawa (-30!) but we’re cosy inside tasting some great dishes.
There are no guarantees in this competition which starts with the Mystery Wine Challenge (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from Niagara’s Clos Jordan). Ottawa chef Briana Kim is on top with an outstanding dish, and chef Belair made a toothsome pâté en croute—a solid performance. Saturday morning’s Black Box is cancelled due to a power outage. Tough for the chefs—what do they do with that performance adrenaline? The judges, on the other hand, go for breakfast.
Edmonton contender, Serge Belair, exec chef at the Convention Centre, wins over the audience and fellow competitors with his characteristic bonhomie and relentless focus on excellence. “We want to change the perception of convention food,” he says at the Thursday night welcome reception. He continues to alter perceptions all weekend. The end result? A well-made mystery wine dish and lovely and a delicious dessert grande finale dish culminates in a bronze medal finish. A dessert at a competition of this calibre is an audacious move, but it paid off and landed him on the podium. Ottawa’s Briana Kim took gold and silver went to Vancouver’s Bobby Milheron of Homer St. Cafe & Bar, Tableau Bar Bistro and Maxine’s Cafe & Bar.
As one judge said about chef Kim’s stunningly good plant-based cuisine, ‘we are tasting the future’. Of Briana’s competition overall, Ottawa head judge Anne DesBrisay wrote:
“Nobody makes mushrooms taste more muscular than chef Briana Kim. The trick is with fermentation, a weapon in plant-based cuisine that Kim wields with spectacular results at Alice, her four-year-old restaurant in Ottawa’s Little Italy and, most recently, at the 2023 Canadian Culinary Championship where she won the coveted gold medal. Her final dish paired cured maitake mushrooms with a ring of smoked potato, charred corn and barley porridge, funky-sweet rhubarb jerky, petals of pickled onion and a beautiful onion tuile. This was treated with kombu smoke and presented sous cloche. Over this pretty composition, Kim poured a steaming trail of lacto-fermented green tomato brine and koji ‘butter’ broth, two years in the making and Pearl Morissette’s 2019 Irreverence. Her Mystery Wine Pairing dish won the crowd’s heart too: she was the People’s Choice at that competition, as well as the judges’ unanimous first pick.”
Chef Serge Belair with sous Francis Flores, a winning team.
Brava to all the competitors and congrats chefs!