Chefs de Mission

We spent a week with seven stars of Canadian cuisine as they introduced themselves to China, and China to Canadian food and wine.

SUNDAY: HONG KONG

The trip almost ends on Day 1 with the poison fish, because some of Canada’s most celebrated chefs just can’t stop sticking their hands in the tanks at Hong Kong’s Aberdeen fish market. Iron Chef veteran Lynn Crawford cradles a massive scallop. A tiny fishmonger snaps at Canoe’s cocky Anthony Walsh for goading the rockfish, with its poisonous dorsal fin. Later our sampan nearly tips when several chefs rush to one side to snap photos of a rustic fisherman – one of many near-disasters as these resourceful chefs introduce themselves to China, and China to Canadian food and wine.

These days, to be a world-class chef requires more than kitchen mastery. It demands international appearances to build a profile and exoticize your pantry and kit. It’s driven by the impulse that has always propelled musicians, writers and other artists: the chance to see, smell and taste another culture (in this case, one of the great “mother cuisines” and fastest growing consumer and hospitality markets in the world) and to bring those influences home to enrich their oeuvre (in this case, Canadian cuisine).

After the fish market, we go to a spotless dive where dumplings and fish ball soup are consumed with alarming quantities of hot sauce and Tsingtao. Over the next week, this fearless group will create two five-course dinners with wine pairings in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Considering that several bottles of Canadian wine were cracked in transit and that they must source ingredients in a foreign country, they’re surprisingly chipper, inviting themselves into the tiny glassed kitchen to ladle soup and into the backroom to marvel at the fish ball machine. If they play this hard, I can’t wait to see them work.

MONDAY: HONG KONG

Collective sigh of relief. Supplies – including prime Alberta beef and Pacific salmon – have been expertly sourced by Patrick Lim, the jovial executive sous-chef of the host Royal Garden hotel. From Lim’s days in Toronto, he’s a friend of hyperactive trip organizer Rudy Guo, just 27 and on a mission to put Canadian cuisine on the world’s plate with his Spirit of Hospitality events.

“Everyone’s looking for the next big thing in food. I’d love to help make Canadian cuisine trendy because Canada has done so much for me,” says Guo, whose family started the China Buffet chain of restaurants in the Toronto area after emigrating from China when he was 10.

The chefs demonstrate at a local culinary school where the polite, hair-netted, latex-gloved students gawk at them like rock stars. Air Canada Centre executive chef Brad Long reduces a sauce for filet mignon – a basic skill, but after supervising dozens of apprentices, Long says, “You can’t assume they know what they don’t know.” Fish expert Robert Clark only reluctantly prepares Chilean sea bass (a notorious farm-fished species blacklisted by many chefs), serving it up with a lecture on the importance of ingredients with integrity.

Later 40 Hong Kong chefs come out to greet the Canadians. “We couldn’t talk to each other so we just…” Air Canada Centre’s sous-chef Brad Livergant makes the universal symbol for hoisting a pint. (There are more than a few bleary-eyed chefs the next morning.)

TUESDAY: HONG KONG EVENT

I sit next to Calgarian Bruce Dawson, a Hong Kong-based food critic, as dinner is served to a crowd of 75 who are clearly charmed by über-sommelier Zoltan Szabo’s inter-course patter. “Who are these people?” I ask curiously of the well-heeled couples. “The kind of people who attend wine dinners,” Dawson explains. For the burgeoning middle class, Western-style cuisine and wine is a hot culinary trend. A Filipino show band belts out Billy Joel covers and several people around me indulge in the Chinese practice of smoking at the table. But Szabo, circulating among the crowd, confirms their culinary sophistication. “I heard comments like ‘the sablefish was creamy… the wine pairing with the beef was well balanced.’ They really know what they’re talking about.” Smiles all around. Success!

WEDNESDAY: SHANGHAI

The last precious dozen bottles of Canadian wine cause a kerfuffle at the air­port, nearly making Guo and Szabo miss the airplane. The Hilton Toronto’s Yannis Paravalos works his charm on the gate attendants to get them to hold the aircraft until the last possible minute as the rest of the group – team players, for better or worse – sprint to the gate.

At a chefs’ meeting, the executive chef of the host Regent Shanghai diplomatically explains, “You cannot always get what you want every day here.” No yellow apples, but green. No fresh peas, just frozen. Pancetta instead of smoked bacon. No sablefish… The list goes on, but the chefs suggest substitutions, making mental adjustments to their recipes. Later they run up and down flights of stairs between the hotel’s Chinese and Western kitchens, prepping and looking for ingredients (and each other), pointing and gesturing instead of speaking Mandarin to communicate with the Regent’s enthusiastic staff.