Up To The Task of Tasting Food? You Bet!
As evident by my many food posts, I have a love affair with food. I love cooking it, I love cutting it, but most importantly, I love eating it! When Brice said that he needed help tasting a food, he called the right man! Where there’s food, Stephen Fung is on the move!
The tasting was to be held at the 500 Plaza Hotel, which is also home to Figmint Restaurant and Lounge; a place that I had a chance to go to earlier this year for their Dine Out Vancouver promotion. Although Figmint shares the same address, the hotel itself has its own kitchen for banquets and special events including a bakery. On with the tasting!
Poached Eggs Benedict
First up was the eggs benedict. Now, the only way to screw up a benny for me is to overcook the eggs or serve it with a crappy sauce. The dish featured a tarragon hollandaise sauce ladled over a pair of slightly runny poached eggs on a bed of ham and served on an English muffin. It’s flanked by some home fried hash brown potatoes with a fruit garnish.
I’m a bit of an eggs benny afficianado and was impressed by how light and tangy the hollandaise was. It was very well balanced. Most places serve a sauce that is either too thick or made radioactive looking by an over-abundance of food colouring so I was pleased to see them getting it right. The only criticism I had was that the English muffin was a bit tough, however, knowing that the dish will likely need to wait for 40 minutes in a buffet before service, that should give it sufficient time to soften up.
Roasted Corn and Potato Chowder
This was probably one of my favourite dishes. I really enjoyed the smokey bacon flavour along with the fresh corn. You’ll typically find too often that restaurants will sub in the frozen stuff, but nope, it tasted like fresh off the cob to me. It was finished with green onions and was very savoury. I had to finish it.
Wraps and Sandwiches
Following the soup were a couple of sandwich and wrap selections.
The hotel presented two wraps; a cajun spiced beef and blackened vegetables with salsa (left) and a pesto grilled vegetable with avocado and pea shoots (right). The cajun spiced beef one had the most impressive name, but the least impressive taste. I would almost call it bland as I neither tasted cajun spice or salsa. It was just a bit “blah” for me. On the other hand, the vegetarians will be impressed with the latter. The grilled veggies, avocado and pea shoots really performed well together.
For regular sandwiches, the hotel presented us with an egg, grilled asparagus and tarragon mayo sandwich and an open face pesto grilled chicken sandwich with blue cheese mayo. Both sandwiches tasted fine, but could have been better. For example, the open faced chicken sandwich was dry. Searing the chicken and then finishing it in the oven would have produced much juicier meat. I did like the blue cheese mayo though. The egg sandwich was just bland and could have really have benefited from some tang (a change to miracle whip perhaps?) or a bit of kick from some cayenne.
Ravioli Time!
The hotel presented us with two ravioli dishes for our tasting pleasure…
First up was the roasted vegetable stack, porcini ravioli, cumin smoked tomato jus and goat cheese. This is a rather substantial dish that was more roasted vegetable than ravioli. The stack contained roasted red pepper, asparagus and zucchini with goat cheese in between each layer. Since I do like a good goat cheese, I really enjoyed this dish, however, based on the other two taster’s reactions, goat cheese is definitely an acquired taste or for more sophisticated palates. I also enjoyed the freshly made ravioli which was cooked to al dente perfection.
The porcini ravioli returns for another interpretation with thyme, parsley puree and asiago cheese, drizzled with olive oil. This dish really made the ravioli a star whereas in the other dish, the ravioli seemed like a side. This dish was light and tasty and I loved the asiago cheese. This one’s a winner.
Beef Tenderloin Au Jus with Sour Cherries
At first, I was puzzled by the use of sour cherries in a beef dish. However, after tasting the results, I was a believer. The beef was tender and the cherries really did complement the dish afterall. The only thing that I would change would be to braise the beef for just a bit longer so it gets even more tender. Since the beef would be sitting for 40 minutes over heat before service, as long as they put more sauce in the pans, they should be able to present an even more tender version to the guests.
Roasted Whole Lemon Rosemary Chicken with Pan Jus
Every banquet buffet has to have a chicken dish, and this was the one that was presented. It was a safe dish, nothing too fancy, but it did have good moisture content and was fairly tender. It could use more sauce though and maybe a bit more lemon.
Baked Halibut with Sauce Verte
The sauce verte means green sauce by the way. This dish also marked one of our biggest debates. Brice thought this one was A-OK while everyone else struggled to figure out what was wrong with it. I thought it lacked moisture content due to the thin cut of halibut used. I even hit it with a fork to show him just how overcooked it was. Typically, you’ll see fish dishes prepared with a thicker chunk of meat. The reason you do this is so that you get more fat and moisture content retained as you cook it. This dish had neither. The sauce verte, which seemed to be a mix of green pesto and other aromatics, was tasty, but without a nice juicy piece of fish to support it, becomes a fail…but not an epic one. It was mentioned that perhaps the Chef used the thinner “fish and chip” cut for tasting and will use the proper cuts when the time comes.
Wild Mushroom Polenta
We thought that this dish was a unanimous “EPIC FAIL”. Upon first bite, everyone had a look in their faces that was a tell of confusion. Based on the way the dish looked, you would have expected something egg like and soft in texture, but instead of giving us that, it merely crumbled in our mouths. I mentioned that it had the consistency of a facial scrub and everyone tended to agree. According to the staff, it was one of those dishes that people had no complaints about, but had no rave reviews either. It’s outta there!
Dessert?
Instead of some sort of masterpiece dish like the Figmint Sticky Toffee Pudding, we were presented a Zucchini Chocolate Loaf and a Banana Loaf followed by macadamian nut and peanut butter cookies. Since everyone’s seen all of these before, I put my camera down. I did like the Zucchini Chocolate loaf as it had a very complex flavour, but finally settled on the Banana loaf since it would be a safer choice for a wide range of palates. It was pretty even split on the macadamian nut and peanut butter cookies. I’m a huge peanut butter fan, but Brice will probably have both on the final menu.
It was rather interesting to see how a vegetarian guy like Brice interprets the food. What was tasty for him, was bland for the carnivores. Even textures, like the overcooked halibut, weren’t picked up by him. This reminded me of a Gordon Ramsay moment on one of his shows where they were discussing vegetarian dishes and Gordon replied with something like “vegetarians have no f***ing palates”. I guess they don’t Gordon and it was a good call for Brice to bring me along. If anyone else needs a food taster, give me a shout! 😉