The producers of some very unusual Quebec food products came to my home for a tasting. The story ran in print, but never ended up on the Star’s website. So here it is.
GASTRONOMIC AGRICULTURE
When you run a restaurant, people try to sell you things all day long.
“There are suppliers that come in the door constantly,” says Rob Gentile, chef of Buca, adding that it’s usually a waste of time. But a chef friend had suggested he meet with Alex Cruz and Félix Gagné. “When you get a referral from a chef it’s one that you look into.” He was glad he did. “With them, I was like, ‘What else have you got?’”
ME: Can I get you something to drink?
CRUZ: How about a campari & soda
Cruz, until selling his shares this month, was an owner of Montreal’s DNA restaurant, where he worked with Gagné. Their new business, Société-Orignal, which they describe as “gastronomic agriculture”, distributes small batch food products from northern Quebec, developed for restaurant use. Unusual herbs and spices are foraged. Sunflower oil and maple syrup are limited to the harvests of individual farmers, with no plans for the large-scale production that retail sales demand. For example, there are only 700 bottles of this year’s maple syrup.
“They’re limited editions because we work with real farmers. We don’t try to push the limits of nature,” says Cruz. “Sometimes to be modern, it’s to work on something that nobody’s working on at this moment.”
This fall, the pair began making sales calls to the chefs of some of Toronto’s top restaurants: Gentile of Buca, John Horne of Canoe, Ted Corrado of C5, Kevin Castonguay of Woodlot, Matthew DeMille of Enoteca Sociale, Matt Blondin at Acadia. They showed up in flannel and jeans, rather than the usual polo shirts and khakis. Instead of clipboards and laptops stocked with digital inventory, they brought clear glass jars filled with their products: green alder cones (similar to long pepper); myrica gale spike (like pistachio-coloured dried mulberries with sharp points); cow parsnip seeds; young juniper berries soaked in vinegar like capers; Gaspésie maritime honey.
“Some spices I’ve never heard of,” says an excited Corrado. (he was still executive-chef of C5 at the time of writing) “Cow parsnip seeds. I didn’t even know they existed. Really floral. Starts off kind of like fennel but then finishes very citrus. It’s so intense. It really blew me away.”
Fava flour. I swear.
Gentile went wild when he heard of the sea urchin botarga they’re developing. Connecting with products is the other advantage of meeting with chefs one at a time. “You present this to a gentleman like John Horne,” says Gagné, “you put that in his hand and already something’s going on. He’s working it. You basically have to stop talking because he’s somewhere else.”
Horne is using the cow parsnip in a cream foam with a sheep's milk mousse. “It has a grassy anise taste that goes really nice with the sheep's milk,” he says. “The sun flower seed oil I drizzle on a soup made of Jerusalem artichokes which makes the Jerusalem artichoke pop (they are in the same family) and the green alder I make a rub out of it to go on venison.”
Star photographer Vinnie Talotta, taking a shot in the mouth.
The cold-pressed sunflower oil, which Cruz insists on pouring into the clients’ warm hands, is their best seller so far. But the honey is what excites these chefs. The bees are kept close to the coast of Gaspésie, a peninsula on the southern side of the St. Lawrence estuary.
“The wind from the saltwater and what they’re feeding on,” says Gentile, “I tasted it. It was the most potent smell of honey I’ve ever smelled in my life. It’s so citric and almost salty that it made your mouth salivate almost instantly.”
Gentile got to immediate work, finding uses for his new toys.
“I’ve been trying to develop a dessert ravioli with quince. So I’m going to mix the quince with that honey. Instead of cooking ravioli in water, I’m going to cook it off in a simple syrup and throw the dried up wild roses into the syrup water poaching liquid.” Dried roses seem commonplace. But Gentile is converted. “I’ve smelt dry roses before. It wasn’t like that. It was very aromatic. It really punched at me”
All of the dried goods, what Cruz calls “chasse-gardée”, are foraged. “It’s not just about the product. It’s also about the human intervention. It’s about knowing when to pick.”
In addition to being exclusive (which chefs love), these products are expensive (which chefs don’t love). Canoe, a luxury restaurant, can afford it. But David Haman, chef/owner of Woodlot, points out that the prices (a 580 ml bottle of the honey is $20) prohibit buying much of anything.
If a customer loves something and wants more, tough luck. They can order it for next season, but the two won’t be changing methods to increase production.
“The thing that I love is just how unbastardized it all is,” extols Corrado. “It speaks to the terroir of northern Quebec. It’s so Canadiana. Nothing’s been done to it.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment