Restaurants
Best Plates of 2007
By Alex Gill published Jan 1, 2008
“What was your most unforgettable meal at a local restaurant in the past year?” We posed that question to a collection of our food-obsessed friends, and received some wonderful (and wonderfully unexpected) answers. What follows are their picks—from simple noodles to a fabulous fondue—as the most memorable dishes of 2007.
Crispy Pig’s Brain
Most chefs will tell you that going through life knowing only the pleasures of grilled tenderloin is akin to a romantic repertoire that starts and stops at the missionary position. On a fittingly drizzly October evening at Fuel, I found gustatory bliss tucking into an unforgettable dish of pig’s brain—crispy pig’s brain to be exact. What a difference an adjective can make. Armed with technique learned at the famed French Laundry restaurant, a top-notch specimen (naturally raised, purebred Berkshire pig from Sloping Hill Farm on Vancouver Island), and the mantra “If you fry it, they’ll try it,” chef Robert Belcham tossed me a culinary curve ball—and I loved every morsel. Soaked for two days, poached and marinated for one more, the brain is then dredged in flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs, fried in clarified butter and served with a parsley root remoulade and Dungeness crab mayonnaise. Why crab? Belcham admits the crowd-pleasing crustacean is the front, meant to warm people up for the frontal lobe. Plus, a healthy dose of crab brains adds flavour and texture to the mayo. As you may imagine, this dish doesn’t regularly appear on the menu, but Belcham encourages guests to call down and the kitchen will do its best to oblige.—Murray Bancroft, food writer and menu consultant
Fish Soup
Soup is the food writer’s friend, the soothsayer of how the rest of the meal might taste. But too many are the soups that look lonesome and beige: some cream of cream, others overly redolent of salty chicken stock too long forgotten on the back burner. My favourite year-round provenance-in-a-bowl, the one that rouses me no matter the weather, is Jean-Francis Quaglia’s fish soup at Provence; it’s best taken at their False Creek location, Provence Marinaside. It’s an elixir of long-simmered, even pungent, fish stock smoothed with white fish, and raised again by a cayenne-spiked rouille with rafts of crostini and a little Gruyère. Although always a hospitable bowl at lunch or dinner, the fish soup is best at weekend brunch, when it’s in first-rate condition (even though you may not be). At once restorative and soothing (and, at just $8, larcenous), it dispatches last night’s clangor while quietly focussing the mind.—Jamie Maw, food editor
