Vancouver chef wins the 2025 Canadian Culinary Championship

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A B.C. chef won the 2025 Canadian Culinary Championship for the second consecutive time on February 1 at the Rogers Centre Ottawa, serving a sophisticated seafood trio dish not unlike its 2024 winning predecessor.

Vancouver chef Alex Kim of Five Sails Restaurant won gold with his dish that he called “Taste of Pacific Northwest,” which consisted of wild sablefish and Cortes Island scallop terrine, sidestripe shrimp mandu with Dungeness crab and Okanagan apple, Kusshi oyster on sea lettuce tartlet, Pemberton salsify, six-month fermented doenjang, shiso.

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Taking home the silver was Moncton chef Jordan Holden of Atelier Tony and Tony’s Bistro, who served a classical dish of rabbit ballotine with a stone fruit and rabbit liver tartlet, hazelnut and parsnip puree, smoked rabbit kidney tuille.

Winning bronze was Quebec City chef Francois-Emmanuel Nicol of Tanière³, who called his dish autumnal beef with memories of summer.

While Ottawa chef Lizardo Becerra of Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine on Elgin Street did not place in the top three of the 10-chef field, he won the people’s choice prize at the championship’s wine pairing competition on the night of Jan. 31 with his dish of beet-cured Hokkaido scallop crudo with citrus Grana Padano foam, spiced cucumber, charred basil nuts, and lemongrass plantain.

Below are my rankings of the 10 dishes featured at the event. Frankly, all but one was enjoyable, and elevating three dishes to be medal-winners strikes me as akin to splitting hairs.

Ottawa — Chef Lizardo Becerra of Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine

Accuse me of favouring the hometown boy if you will. But I was very impressed by the originality, thoughtfulness, directness, and clarity of this dish. Everything in the bowl felt essential. The dish treated its salmon with great reverence, included a refreshingly spicy cracker that wasn’t simply just for show and texture, and included a compelling, novel sauce that pulled everything together.

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Montreal — Chef François-Emmanuel Nicol of Tanière³, Quebec City

I was expecting something more mind-blowing from this exceptional Quebec City chef. But I have to say, its beef was absolutely delicious and I appreciated the forthright pleasures of all of its components, which worked well together and were not too heavy.

Moncton — Chef Jordan Holden of Atelier Tony

This dish was a great classical success that elevated its rabbit three times over with textbook-perfect technique. While the ballotine was the hero of the plate, I thought all of its elements were balanced and delicious.

Vancouver — Chef Alex Kim of Five Sails Restaurant

This eye-catching dish consisted of three impeccably made, sophisticated bites — the ultimate dim sum sampler if you will. (To be clear, I mean that as high praise.) I would gladly eat this beautiful dish day after day after day. But as technically impressive as it was, the dish also felt like a bit of a repeat to me, as if it was following the successful formula of last year’s national championship gold-medal winner. That dish also came from a B.C. chef and also featured three seafood delicacies. Dubbed a “wild B.C. experience,” that dish by Whistler chef Jasper Cruickshank featured a sidestripe shrimp terrine, a tartlet of Dungeness crab and a geoduck clam sauce. Perhaps I’m being too simplistic, and I’m not saying that the competition’s judges should have applied my bias. But I’m left wondering if the 2026 national championship will see a bevy of seafood trios in contention.

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Calgary — Chef Matthias Fong of Primary Colours

If the goal of this dish was to prove that walnuts and mushrooms can mimic the rich indulgence of foie gras, it succeeded persuasively. Its accompaniments bolstered the star of the plate admirably as well.

Toronto — Chef Ryan Lister, The Dorset

Kudos to the perfectly cooked pork belly on this plate, which might have been the championship’s best protein of the night. However, as delicious as its porky star was, the plate as a whole lacked harmony, I thought, and I didn’t enjoy the celeriac puree, as smooth and silky as it was, or the black pudding.

Winnipeg — Chef Austin Granados of Cake-ology

This provocative dessert gets full marks for ambition and ingenuity, and its main components were well-made and texturally enjoyable. But I also found that the apricot kernel cream and basil and kaffir lime oil weren’t really to my taste. Also, the savoury flourishes (duck fat caramel, kombu and shiitake black sugar dust) were a little lost on my plate.

Saskatoon — Chef Taszia Thakur, Calories Restaurant and Pique Cafe

A solid dish showed a lot of good technique, but it also struck me as overly elaborate and rich, something less than the sum of its parts. It also suffered in comparison to the similar rabbit dish above.

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St. John’s, Newfoundland — Chef Nicholas Walters, Merchant Tavern

I felt the tuna on the plate was overshadowed a little by its accompaniments, and the balance was a bit out of whack. For me, the foie gras crémeux took over and the Partridge Berry compote’s sweet notes were a touch too loud.

Edmonton — chef Doreen Prei of Riverview Restaurant

I didn’t enjoy this dish, which I admittedly ate at the end of the night when its final examples might not have been at their best. The seafood cake was underwhelming and the uni vinaigrette was unpleasant, with a bitter aftertaste.

The Canadian Culinary Championship was held in Kelowna for nine years before its move to Ottawa was announced in 2019. Ottawa chefs have taken the top spot on its podium four times. Atelier chef Marc Lepine won the championship in 2012 and 2016 and is the only chef to win twice. Yannick LaSalle, now the chef for the Supreme Court of Canada, won in 2019. Chef Briana Kim won in 2023.

Both Lepine and Kim are expected to open new restaurants on Somerset Street West in 2025.

In addition to promoting culinary excellence across Canada, the national championship gives a portion of its proceeds to support national and Ottawa-area charities including MusiCounts, Spirit North, Ottawa Network for Education (ONFE) and BGC Ottawa.

phum@postmedia.com

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