Top Meals of 2010
Posted by Degan on January 3rd, 2011
2010 turned out to be the best year of my life so far and any good year has good eating in it. Here were the top meals:
1. A prolonged New Year’s Day brunch at Au Petit Chavignol that included raclette and 36 month aged jamón ibérico started the year off right. (Hooves do tend to feature in my holiday plans).
2. OceanWise celebrated their anniversary with a surprise dinearound. One of our stops was at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver where we had this beet-cured salmon crepe – along with 3 more courses of deliciousness. You can read about it here.
3. Tasting menu at Per Se. My first Thomas Keller experience, my first 3 star restaurant, 17 courses and 4 hours of eating. Food will never be the same! Even this popcorn sorbet with peanuts palette-cleanser was a lovely bit of culinary genius. You can read about it here.
5. Tasting menu at WD-50. Another (more affordable) New York experience, WD-50 was a restaurant my sister and I had discovered last year when we were there and didn’t have time to try. Wylie Dufresne is pretty much a molecular gastronomy genius and dishes like this deconstructed eggs benny were delicious and creative, although by the time we got through 12 courses I thought I might have to throw out all my pants. You can read about it here.
6. Brunch at Lift. Not because of the massive slabs of French toast, but because I was on the first date with the man who would become my fiancé, Matt. There are no photos.
7. Right after that memorable brunch, I went and made porchetta with Evan for the Gastown Social Bites event. Not only was it amazingly good, it was made with providence, and we won! A very good food day, all things considered.
8. In May, some members of the Foodists collective ordered a Cutter Ranch lamb to be butchered, again at Evan’s. We started off the morning with champagne and very fresh lamb kidney brioche, followed by frittered lamb brain, lamb heart wrapped in bacon and lamb ragu tortellini. The whole animal was used – tip to tail – and it was all delicious. You can read about it here.
9. Andrea’s birthday at Yew in the Four Seasons. My friend had an intimate dinner in the wine room at Yew and we expected it to be good, but it turned out to be amazing. Course after course of amuse-bouches, tasters, bites and dinner dishes left us stuffed and awed. Amazing. You can read about it here.
10. The Tinhorn Creek dinner at Le Gavroche. Many courses of elegant, creative French cuisine paired with delicious wines, this was a dinner to be remembered. You can read about it here.
11. A late evening French dinner date near the year at Jules Bistro turned out to be much better than we expected. I had just had my hair done, I couldn’t walk very far because of a recent ACL reconstruction surgery and so we ended up at Jules – a bistro I had been to many times before but not all that recently – and it was so very good. I exclaimed over my steak frites, and then I exclaimed over Matt’s canard confit and it’s been a while since I’ve exclaimed (audibly) over 2 dishes in a row but in retrospect I will also exclaim over the service and the decor and the proximity to our apartment.
12. Urban Family Christmas dinner. My close friends, my “urban” family (as opposed to the suburban ones) gets together at regular intervals due to the effort of our matriarch, Jules. And being a collection of food-lovers, they are always good dinners, but this year we leveled up: 4 kinds of pâtés with homemade bread, lobster rolls on brioche, beef wellington and creamed onions, etc. and so much wine.
An ex-boyfriend had a tradition of eating black-eyed peas first thing – like the first thing you put in your mouth – after midnight on New Year’s day. I didn’t question it at the time (like many other inanities of that relationship) even though it meant we carried a pot of soaking beans to dinner at Campagnolo and then to a party, to be eaten sulkily at 12:01 with trifle and champagne. I thought it was an awkward, un-delicious tradition at the time and it led to one of the worst years ever, so in comparison to last year I am proposing a new tradition: jamon iberico on January 1st. You don’t have to eat it first thing. You don’t have to cook it. You just have to eat it at some point on day one, with someone you care about. Salt, pork and love started us off for 2011 and I hope it will be as amazing as last year. All the best to you.
