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City Food Daily news reports on BC Restaurant Hall of Fame Award Gala
BC RESTAURANT HALL OF FAME INDUCTION DINNER 2009
On Monday night, the BC Restaurant & Food Services Association inducted 12 new industry leaders into its 5th Annual Hall of Fame.
Except for a few minor hiccups (prematurely introducing Thomas Haas a couple of times being one example), this year’s show was the most streamlined presentation yet. Thanks no doubt to the fund-raising and organizational skills of committee power trio Heidi Romich Schoustal, Bing Smith and Dawn Donahue.
After such local dignitaries as Lieutenant Governor Stephen Point and Mayor Gregor Robinson had been bagpiped to their seats and given their obligatory moment under the spotlight (Premier Gordon Campbell also peered down like Zeus via an overhead video screen), the various inductees were allowed stage time to make their acceptance speeches … each according to his own manner.
Geoffrey Howes (Active Restaurateur) was gracious, appreciative and diplomatic, offering the crowd the “five most important things he has learned from the restaurant biz.”
Primo Villanueva of Primo’s Mexican Grill (Pioneer) was endearing. “When I first opened the restaurant in 1959 we made margaritas with vodka. Well, you know how it was in THOSE days.”
David Aisenstat (Active Restaurateaur) seemed bemused. “I don’t really know how I got here, except that I know I couldn’t have got here by myself,” he said.
Sid Cross (Friend of the Industry), and from the reaction of the audience, its rock star as well, was direct, buoyant and as clearly audible across the vast space of the room as Shakespeare’s finest thespian.
Jamie “Heineken Maneuver” Maw (Friend of the Industry) spoke largely about the Chefs Table Group he had helped to found, but seemed alternately distracted between thoughts of David Aisenstat and the leggy Earl’s Girl who had escorted him to the stage.
Darren Gates (Front of House) started out well, right up until the point when he called his wife “Bill”. His wheels were planing on water after that.
Scott Jaeger and Jean Turcotte (both Back of House), and George Frankel and Bruno Patassini (both Pioneers) remembered the long, hard path to success and were careful to thank their wives by their correct names.
Thomas Hass (Back of House), who rivaled Lifetime Achievement honouree Duncan Holmes for providing the evening’s most entertaining moments, waved a large piece of paper on which he had penned “Thank Lisa!”, and cracked up his audience with tales of how as a kitchen apprentice, he had been beaten on the forehead with an apple peeler during his first few minutes on the job. “My early introduction to the realities of the restaurant industry,” he confided.
Then finally we came to the master of oratory himself, Duncan “Uncle Dunc” Holmes, who like a modern day Will Rogers (with references to the late Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life), managed to give nearly everyone a quick smack in the pants with his trademark dry, “I’m just a simple Australian guy”, deadpan delivery. Yah, Good on ya, Dunc.
After which the music soared, the servers did their little turns on the catwalk, all the chefs bussed all the Earl’s girls, the paparazzi flashed their cameras, the bloggerati twittered the best bits via their cell phones, and everyone adjourned en masse to the lobby to get even buzzier on Port and dessert.
To be honest, the honoured ones could have been up on stage reading the federal tax act backwards, because the real star of the show was the building itself – the fabulous new Vancouver Convention Centre West, which this year, housed the event. Somehow the Hall of Fame committee had booked itself in as the structure’s first public event, and quite possibly its principal guinea pig before the official opening. Although everything appeared to be in place, there was some evidence that not every nail had been hammered down. We heard rumours that Chef Blair Rasmussen and his team had struggled to cook dinner for 750 with a kitchen that was not yet operational. Even so challenged, they pulled off an amazing job.
What can we say? The Convention’s interior was simply stunning, and let us count the whys: Its 9 football field length. The floor-to-ceiling, sweeping postcard views in nearly every direction. The airy, airport runway wide hallways. The glassed-in, skybox-like private party room suspended above the main lobby. The showy grand staircase leading up and down from it that felt as steeply pitched as an Olympic ski jump. Not to mention the towering feature wall along the main reception lobby, where the surface had been composed of wooden blocks, all cut by hand and then fitted into an intricate jigsaw pattern by computerized robots.
Everywhere the natural hues of wood, stone, sky and water had been utilized to lend an outdoor, west coast ambiance to the modern hi-tech design. Or as hi-tech as it is possible to be without WiFi.
Bing Smith informed us that the ballroom space used for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony was actually only one-quarter of its full length. That if you stood at the farthest end from the windows when the space is fully open, as he had done that morning, you’d notice that the carpet changes in colour from browns to tans to gradually deepening shades of blue as it approaches the picture windows overlooking Coal Harbour. Thus, giving it an infinity pool affect, or something similar to what you might see if looking out over the beach at Spanish Banks during low tide.
It was a vista best appreciated during the daylight filled cocktail portion of event when the crowd sampled a multiple choice of appetizers such as the Moroccan Lamb Sliders, listened to the swing jazz/blues tunes of Terminal Station (the hipster guitarist sporting the fedora was Bing Smith’s son, Scott), and checked out the “wall of wine donations” brought by guests for the fundraising auction. “The most economy conscious collection of wine bottles I’ve ever seen in one spot,” observed one wine wag.
And speaking of wine wags, our vote for the evening’s "most swank" went to writer Tim Pawsey (pictured next to Joy Metcalf) who jazzed up his tuxedo with a pastel paisley cummerbund and shirt studs in the shape of tiny Champagne bottles.
Well, they don’t call him “Champagne Charlie” for nothing. Which was fitting. The event, the venue, and the industry who had assembled to pay tribute to both, were all fit for a toast.
Source: http://www.cityfood.com/EN/daily_news/
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