If all the food and wine from The Dirty Apron Cooking School open house and VinoCamp CheeseCamp 09 wasn’t enough this weekend, I needed to eat more. Jeesh. However, on Sunday morning I headed to the Chefs To The Field event at Terra Nova Schoolyard Society in Richmond.
With my camera buried deep in my jacket and the rain pouring down like it was November, a small handful of other dedicated foodies and myself sampled foods from local restaurants and wandered the Schoolyard gardens. Some didn’t stick around for very long as the rain continued to drench us all for a good hour and a half, but the food certainly made up for it.
^ Crave – Halibut gravlox, lobster and dungeness crab vinaigrette, crisp prosciutto. Exec Chef Wayne Martin
^ Circa Restaurant & Lounge – beet salad fresh & pickled with goat cheese, celery, apple and arugalo; preserve of lemon and argan oil vinaigrette.
^ Blue Canoe Restaurant – BC smoked albacore tuna taco with stuffed cucumber and cilantro pest
There was a fabulous fresh and pickled beet salad from Chef Ségué Lepage at Circa (who, while I was talking to, was interrupted by a woman to tell him the only problem with his beet salad was that there wasn’t enough of it); a melt-in-your-mouth Aggasiz Farmhouse Cheddar with local hazelnut shortbread from Culinary Capers; and Blue Canoe Restaurant served up BC smoked albacore tuna tacos with stuffed cucumber and cilantro pesto that were so fresh and delicious I went back for seconds.
Once one forced themselves to stop eating for a moment, (and my ‘one’ I mean me) I was very interested to check out what was going on with the student Green Cuisine competition; this was the first year students have been invited to compete. 
Both students and the pro Chefs were to compete with only that which is provided by the organizers in the competition pantry, what is available in the gardens, and of course, the secret ingredient. For the students this was fish ~ but not nicely filleted ready-to-cook pieces of fish; they were given the entire thing, guts and all. Jack Lin, apprentice at Goldfish Pacific Kitchen took the crown, with Chris Sinclair (VCC) in second place, and Jamie Huynh (VCC) in third.
Bruno G. Marti, President of the CCFC gave a heartwarming speech before announcing Jack as the winner, about giving emerging Chef’s opportunities to grow and try new things in an encouraging environment. What aren’t more industries this supportive?!
After just a bit more eating, and with raincoats were being replaced with sunglasses, it was on to the main event.
The pro chefs literally ran into the gardens and harvested what they needed to cook with, alongside their secret ingredients: agar agar and goat cheese.
Competing restaurants included Blue Canoe Restaurant, Beyond Restaurant & Lounge, Cibo Trattoria, Diva at the Met, Fairmont Airport, Mosaic at The Hyatt, Papi’s Restaurant, Raincity Grill, Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center, Tapenade, and Wild Rice, with Chef Javier Alarco (Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center) winning the competition. Cibo came in second and Dino Renaerts and Jeff Van Geest (Diva at the Met) came in third. ~ JK
