Dine Around the World in Whistler
Story by Nikki Bayley | Images by Joern Rohde
Quattro Restaurant
Lorette Brasserie
Mekong South East Asian Kitchen
Balam
Bar Oso
Bearfoot Bistro
QUATTRO
Chef de Cuisine Thierry Bastian
Scallop Crudo with Okanagan Apple Agrodolce
Born in France before moving to Corsica as a child, Quattro’s Chef de Cuisine Thierry Bastian grew up surrounded by the flavours and scents of France and Italy, the perfect start in life for a career as a Mediterranean chef working in the heart of Whistler Village! “In Italy you don’t see so many apples, but in B.C., the apples are so good it gave me an idea to create something a little Italian, a little Canadian,” he explains as I tuck into his fresh and juicy take on agrodolce (a tangy sweet-sour sauce with shallots, vinegar and fruit) topped with salty delicate bites of scallops. “I used some cooked apples, some raw [apples] for texture, and verjus (unripe grape juice), also from the Okanagan.” Citrus sea salt and Italian olive oil finish this beautifully Euro-Canadian blended dish.
“On our menu, we use those influences of the Mediterranean,” Bastian says. “Then we look at what we have from B.C., and then we make authentic Italian dishes with beautiful B.C. ingredients.”
When it comes to eating out on his days off, you’ll find Bastian enjoying superb seafood over at Wild Blue, tucking into even more Italian at Il Caminetto, or diving into the Village’s sushi restaurants to feed his love for Asian cuisine. “I love all Japanese food,” he says with a smile. “We have some great places in Whistler. I like Samurai Sushi, and on days off, after skiing, I go to Sushi Village for a bowl of udon noodles.”
604-905-4844 | quattrorestaurants.com
LORETTE BRASSERIE
Executive Chef Shane Sluchinski
Beef Tartare
In his soft French-Canadian accent, Executive Chef Shane Sluchinski extols the delights of beef tartare. “It’s a dish that is very close to my heart because in Montreal you get it everywhere; literally every restaurant will have one or two on the menu,” he says. “Our take at Lorette Brasserie is very traditional: beef tenderloin, parsley, shallots, and capers, mixed nicely together with egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.” Dressed with shavings of salt-cured egg yolk and served with slender snaps of house-made, burnt-onion lavash crackers presented on a decadent roasted bone marrow, Lorette’s tartare may have traditional roots, but it looks thoroughly modern and tastes delicious.
“I’m trying to bring Quebec — and also France — to Whistler,” explains Sluchinski. “Quebecoise cuisine is based on French cuisine, so that means butter, butter, and a little more butter! We make rich, indulgent food, and we blend it with fresh B.C. ingredients for the best of both worlds; we’re creating a menu of French-Canadian classics such as Coquille St-Jacques, but with mainly West Coast ingredients; the only thing I’ll cheat on is I’ll get East Coast oysters, because I prefer them!”
On days off, Sluchinski gets his hit of international cuisine at Mekong. “All chefs love Asian food; it’s clean, herbaceous, and delicious; for me, it’s Thai every single time. Chef Bonnie has an amazing Pad Se-ew that I freaking love, and their mussels in coconut broth are to die for. It’s so good, I almost cry when I eat it!”
604-962-1808 | lorettebrasserie.com
MEKONG SOUTH EAST ASIAN KITCHEN
Executive Chef Bonnie Khummuang
Thai Green Curry with B.C. Halibut
If I tell you that Executive Chef Bonnie Khummuang’s Thai green curry was so good that after tasting it, we immediately made dinner reservations.
“We make everything from scratch here,” explains Khummuang. “We slowly cook the coconut cream until it splits to get fresh coconut oil. We make a fresh curry paste in-house, and we make it the traditional Thai way: We pound the ingredients in a mortar and pestle instead of using a food processor or grinder. You can taste the difference!
It keeps the integrity of the fresh ingredients, the lemongrass, galangal, and makrut lime.”
It’s true — I’ve never tasted a curry sauce like this before: creamy, rich, and thick with an aromatic kiss of heat. It’s the perfect foil for the thick flakes of locally sourced Pacific halibut.
When it comes to eating around Whistler’s international flavours, Thailand-born Khummuang starts with a cuisine that’s close to home: Canada! “Whistler is a very special place for me; you can taste really good ingredients from local farmers, which I so appreciate. Wild Blue makes wonderful Canadian food, and I like to go there to celebrate special occasions, but we have enough international options to make me happy too: for Thai street food, I’ll go to Barn Nork; if you want sushi, you can go to Ka-ze Sushi; and for great Italian, Il Caminetto.”
604-902-1694 | 88mekong.com
BALAM
Executive Chef Jose Manuel Sabrera Meza
Scallop Ceviche
Peruvian chef Jose Manuel Sabrera Meza’s stunning creation, a feast for your eyes, is possibly Whistler’s most irresistibly Instagrammable dish and is on the menu at Balam.
Soft scallops, tender confit yams cooked with orange juice and cinnamon, punchy citrus and chili swim in a dazzling ocean-blue-coloured, blue seaweed-spiked “tiger’s milk” marinade topped with a crunchy tempura of red aka tosaka seaweed. It looks astounding and tastes even better. Balam’s scallop ceviche showcases South American ingredients and techniques with the raw fish “cooked” in the acid of the citrus, ceviche-style, and punchy flavours from a Peruvian-style salsa, chalaca, made with aromatic limo chili, onion, cilantro, and lime. And if you’ve never heard of “tiger’s milk” before, don’t worry. It’s not what you might imagine it to be. Meza smiles and says, “It’s nothing related to tigers! In Peru, it’s usually a spicy marinade. It’s for people who can handle the heat, a delicious blend of lime, salt, celery, ginger, garlic, onion, cilantro, and chili.”
Since arriving in Whistler last year, Meza has enjoyed dining around the Village, experiencing and tasting all that it has to offer. “Whistler is a small town, cozy and comfortable. I like to go to Bar Oso to enjoy the Spanish culture they have, which is really traditional. And then Wild Blue for fine dining Canadian-style.”
604-972-8888 | balamwhistler.ca
BAR OSO
Chef Jorge Muñoz-Santos
Braised Wagyu Beef Cheeks
I’m always happy to take a seat at the stunning, amber-lit bar at Bar Oso to try Chef Jorge Muñoz-Santos’s delicious takes on Spanish cuisine. This time we’re sampling his luscious melt-in-the-mouth Wagyu beef cheeks, in a positively jammy rich gravy, made bright with pops of pickled mustard seed. Cooked for a couple of days, the process starts with creating a roasted veal bone stock, which is slowly simmered overnight and then used as a broth to gently cook the beef cheeks with herbs and aromatics for almost four hours. The remaining stock is then reduced along with a bottle of Port, and slowly, perfection is achieved.
“We pickle the mustard seeds in-house,” says Muñoz-Santos. “Everything about this dish is honouring the style of cooking of my grandmothers in Madrid; when you cook low and slow like this, the flavours come together.”
604-962-4540 | baroso.ca
BEARFOOT BISTRO
Culinary Director Dominic Fortin &
Chef de Cuisine Xavier Audet-l’Hérault
Butter-poached Lobster Vol-au-vent
They’ve always had a reputation for their lobster dishes throughout the winter season, but now fresh Canadian lobster arrives at the Bearfoot Bistro year-round. Culinary Director Dominic Fortin beams, “We love to showcase Canadian products; we work with fishers in Nova Scotia who keep the lobsters in massive live tanks so we can have them fresh. We get through about 1,000 lobsters every two weeks; that’s a lot of lobster!”
This dish was created by Bearfoot’s chef de cuisine, Xavier Audet-l’Hérault, featuring lobster that is juicy and sweet, poached in butter in a classic French vol-au-vent with flaky pastry, the perfect way to slide into winter with a decadent dish. The buttery lobster is paired with a crisp-tasting celeriac cream. “We also have mustard seeds, Swiss chard, and earthy morels or chanterelles,” explains Fortin. “The celeriac really makes me think of apples when I taste it; it’s really fresh.” You’ll still find Asian flair on the menu here, with pan-Asian ingredients and flavours, but at the heart of the cuisine is a French-Canadian soul that expresses itself fully at their annual Sugar Shack pop-up, available for a limited time each spring.
“We have a good choice of international cuisine here in Whistler. I recently went to Lorette Brasserie for my birthday and enjoyed their take on French cuisine. We have everything from Indian and Mexican to Japanese right here. For great sushi, I’ll go to Ka-ze Sushi at the Westin; the chef is great, the quality of fish is amazing, and the black cod is delicious,” Fortin says.
604-932-3433 | bearfootbistro.com