Anthony Sedlak grew up in North Vancouver BC and at the age of 13 began working in a restaurant at the base of Grouse mountain in exchange for a snow board pass to the resort.  When you hear him speak about food and cooking techniques you can tell that a passion for food got a hold of him at a young age and didn’t let him go.  He worked his way up from being the youngest chef at ‘The Observatory” on grouse mountain to being executive chef.

Among a thousand other things Anthony has done, he competed and won in the food Networks Super Star challenge and can now be seen on Food Network Canada with a show called ‘The main’.

While watching Anthony in the demonstration kitchen, it is not hard to see why he was favored to be in front of the camera.  He is energetic, funny-at least he definitely thinks he is, but most importantly his passion for food is impossible to miss.  He gets so excited about what he is talking about that he had a hard time containing himself long enough to get back the recipe he was making.   It was great!

Here are a few things that I remember him ranting about while teaching and fielding audience questions:

-       Minced garlic in a jar is disgusting.  I knew that, but one fellow from the audience got a very clear answer about whether or not it is a worthy supplement to chopped fresh garlic.

-       For most cooking, use unsalted butter

-       Smoked paprika is very good-in fact good enough to spend at least 5 minutes discussing

-       Use kosher salt for most cooking and save the best quality salt for the final seasoning.

-       Cooking is more about learning techniques than recipes.

-       Shop fresh and locally.  Watch organic labels that are shipped from afar and bypass our own local farmers.

There was much more but those are some important things that stood out to me.  What also stood out was his shiny, full color, cookbook called ‘The Main’ that sat at the front of the stage.  Being a cookbook addict I clung to my own copy through the whole presentation.  It is now sitting in front of me as I type.

By the end of the show, Anthony had cooked an incredible smelling sable fish extravaganza that looked amazing.  My only problem with the whole show is that I didn’t get to try it.  I felt I had dibbs to be picked since I had my camera and was sitting in the front row.  I give him props though for an amazing show, amazing food, and some good solid tips to take home.  He is also in the process of opening up a brand new restaurant called ‘The Corner Suite’ so keep your eyes open for it.

For the second year in a row Sean and I attended the annual Chef meets Grape.  It is a popular event but much smaller and more quaint (if you can call 350 people quaint) than the larger Vancouver Wine Festival.   The event showcased many of Vancouver’s finest restaurants as well as 44 vineyards from the Okanagan Valley.  The challenge of the night was to pair the perfect wine with a small plate created by the chefs.  For anyone who thinks any wine goes with any dish and it all tastes the same, it takes actually seeing how it works together to appreciate that there is an art form as well as an especially phenomenal palate.  Not to toot my own horn or anything but once again this year I picked the  popular vote winner.  The winner was Sanafir.  The chef plated a butter turkey with basamati rice, cucumber raitia and mango chutney with a 2008 Gerwurtztraminer from Desert Hills Vineyard.  The effect was absolutely decantent.  A clear winner for me.  As fate would have it…it is the one dish of which I did not get a photo…DRATS!!!

My next favorite was  the masterfully created small plate by Goldfish Pacific Kitchen.  The Chef made a pan seared sable fish served over a duo of pea salad with dungeness crab and asian pear, soy painted salmon and thai basil pesto.  He paired this with a Pino Gris 2008 from Sandhill Winery.  The pairing was good but the food was fantastic.

I am an absolute sucker for  great scallops so while the wine pairing was satisfactory, the dish was yummy!  It was created by Bin 942.

One of the main sponsors of the night was Canadian Wild Sablefish, and in my opinion, there were way too many sablefish dishes presented.  Because sable fish is such a rich fish and because the dishes themselves were rich I had a very hard time eating more after my 3rd dish.  That is probably why I loved the ‘Shepherd’s Pie, confit duck, roasted baby carrots, carmalized pearl onions, tomatoes and pomme puree’ so much.  It was created by the chef from Mosaic at the Hyatt.  I am sure I am not the only one who was ready for something other than sablefish because it also came as a runner up in the challenge. MMMM, there were black truffles grated over top!!

Lastly, I need to give props to Diva At The Met for cooking something other than sablefish…just joking..kindof.  They made a pan seared salmon with squid ink risotto with clams, and brown butter emulsion.  I was the DD that night so I must refer to Sean on the pairing of the Arrowleaf Cellars Pinot Gris 2008.  He said the wine was alright and the pairing satisfactory.  But the food itself was great!

I have yet to visit Italian Kitchen which I have heard so much about.  They made another wonderful dish.  A Skeena river sockeye salmon carpaccio with sorrell sweet pea vanilla agnolotti and caviar vinaigrette.  This was paired with Mission Hill Family Estate Reserve Pinot Noir 2007.  The food was amazing but the wine left something to be desired.  The wine was not well balanced, to quote Sean “the wine was blah”.

Of the 14 restaurants there, the preceding are my favorite.  There were also some dishes that were downright awful.  If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all right?  I will leave it at that and assume that those restaurants that were less than successful had a tough venue to cook in.

The event was a success again, and I plan on going again next year.  It is great to see all the chefs working away, creating, inspiring, and appearing to have fun..especially when the food portion was over and there was only wine to be tasted!  The venue at the Westin was nice and the chance to eat great food all evening, well, it doesn’t get any better.