Hum: I tried six creations from top Ottawa chefs. The winning plate surprised me

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At the Ottawa edition of Canada’s Great Kitchen Party, the was one clear dud.

But five of the six dishes served by top Ottawa chefs could’ve hit the podium. In fact, I thought many dishes served Wednesday night at the Fairmont Château Laurier were better than some dishes at last year’s national event, the Canadian Culinary Championship.

Ottawa’s gold medal winner was chef Lizardo Becerra of Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine on Elgin Street, who will go on to represent Ottawa at next year’s nationals

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I picked a different top chef. Here’s my ranking of the dishes, from worst to best.

Kristine Hartling — Oz Kafe

Black pepper molasses mushroom brochette

Oz Kafe chef Kristine Hartling, who finished third in last year’s field of six chefs, opted to serve a vegan dish this year.

“In recent years I am leaning more and more into vegetarian and vegan cuisines,” she wrote in the notes for her dish. “I’ve become known for interesting and creative vegan dishes at Oz Kafe, so it seemed fitting.”

That Hartling’s dish was meatless should not have been held against it. After all, Ottawa chef Briana Kim, whose next restaurant, Antheia, is eagerly awaited, won the 2018 Ottawa qualifier and then the 2019 Canadian Culinary Championship with an immensely creative and elegant plant-based dish that revelled in deep flavours.

That also means that the bar for plant-based dishes is very high, since Kim has proven how wonderful and refined they can be.

Hartling’s dish, however, didn’t work for me.

The intended star was a brochette of king oyster morsels that had been salted, marinated in a savoury black pepper and molasses glaze and then smoked and grilled. I thought the combination of salt, glaze and smoke was far too heavy and even unpleasant, obscuring the mushroom morsels themselves. I couldn’t finish the skewer.

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The accompaniments for the mushrooms — a cornmeal crisp, stewed white navy beans, a red pepper relish, some cherry tomato — struck me as unsophisticated and maybe even half-hearted.

Patrick Garland — Absinthe Café

Seared scallop with cauliflower basil purée, mussel fumet and Greek vegetables

Patrick Garland, the chef-owner at Absinthe Café and the veteran competitor in the field, is a self-described traditionalist. He did not try to re-invent the wheel with his dish, which surrounded a well-seared Îles-de-la-Madeleine scallop with bacon, a soft cauliflower basil purée, and a rich, delectable sauce that drew upon mussels, halibut and lobster.

The scallop seared a la minute was impeccably cooked and the sauce was one that made you pause and appreciate it. I would be happy if I had this dish in a restaurant. But in hindsight, I’m finding it difficult to summon praises for the rest of the dish, which must mean that the other dishes were more memorable or even wowed me more.

Jason Sawision — Stofa

Smoked pork hock and confit chicken pressé

Before Wednesday’s competition began, I told Stofa’s chef Jason Sawision that his was only dish that I couldn’t picture in my mind when reading its description. Nor could I conceive of how its assortment of ingredients would taste together.

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Sawision served, and I quote: “Smoked pork hock and confit chicken pressé, miso-koji bagna cauda, potato roulade, crispy bacon, hazelnuts, spiced poached apples, onion and chanterelle mushroom “jam,” potato tuille, aerated brown butter hollandaise, dill, chervil.”

I think if ambition, technique and imagination were all that mattered, Sawision’s dish might well have topped them all. It was also chockful of tasty ingredients, and the combination of bacon, smoked pork, potato and brown butter hollandaise made us think happily of breakfast.

This is a dish that I wanted to love, and I’m not surprised that it won the people’s choice award at event. But I couldn’t help but hold its high saltiness against it.

Salmon escabeche

Lizardo Becerra — Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine

There’s no disputing that chef Lizardo Becerra served an enjoyable dish that brimmed with luxurious textures, from its lightly cured and then torched sockeye salmon to its thick, savoury sauce that added Peruvian complexities to a French demi-glace sauce.

However, I did find the dish’s sweet potato puree was a little gluey, and its proportions seemed a little out of whack for me, with so much of the rich sauce overshadowing the salmon.

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Whole Mariposa Duck à l’orange

Mitch Lacombe — Gitanes

Funny story: I walked away from the Gitanes station with an end cut of duck breast, which is not the piece you want, since it’s likely to be overcooked and less flavourful. As it turned out, chef Mitch Lacombe twigged to the fact that I’d be given an inferior plate, and I was soon-after delivered a second plate, one with a primo, optimal centre cut of duck breast. And it was much better.

That second slice of duck breast wowed me, even if the dry-aging that concentrated its flavour also made it chewier.  Lacombe’s ambitious plate also included a superior sauce, impeccable foie gras mousse and a potato pave The plate was effectively a duck confit sandwich.

Branzino in miso tumeric broth

Sarath Teegavarapu — Kathā

Sarath Teegavarapu of Kathā on Preston Street was a late entry into the competition, replacing chef Dominique Dufour of Buvette Daphnee. The Indian chef told me that his dish in the competition was based on one that he had served at his one-year-old restaurant on Little Italy’s main drag. While that might have been a practical decision, it also resulted in a dish that seemed more cohesive and balanced than other entries.

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The first thing that I tasted was the dish’s miso turmeric broth. While Teegavarapu didn’t invent this combination, he served a fine, complex rendition, with dots of chewy tapioca pearls adding texture. Adorning the broth, dots of lobster oil and curry oil were flavourful and attractive.

The dish’s fish was clean-flavoured and moist, but it could have been warmer. Its other elements — a fennel salad with a citrus dressing, julienned green apple, a rice-flour crisp with umami notes — contributed meaningfully. The tobiko fish roe added more colour than flavour, but that’s a very small quibble.

In the end, Kathā’s dish was the entry that I most wanted to eat again, despite some very impressive competition.

phum@postmedia.com

Peter Hum’s past reviews of the chef’s restaurants:

Absinthe

Gitanes

Kathā

Oz Kafe

Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine

Stofa

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