Everybody needs to get away, look around and see what they think of the world. Most of us simply want more, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the ones who return home — not just because Mom and Dad and all of their friends are there, but because they know it inside and out and love it absolutely. These are the people you want to show you around when you visit.
I first met chef Scott Jaeger at the Bocuse d’Or — a sort of international “Iron Chef Live!” before “Iron Chef” existed, hosted by French living-legend chef Paul Bocuse in Lyon. Here, Jaeger, representing Canada in 2007 in front of legions of fans wearing JAEGER hockey shirts, was in his ideal culinary milieu, with his French-influenced competition-style technical cuisine — food that is incredibly precise and time consuming.
Jaeger found his style in his travels, in the kitchens of London, France, Austria and Switzerland. He could have set up shop in any major city in the world, but in 1988 he returned to Vancouver, where he’d lived since the age of 15, and opened the Pear Tree restaurant in the suburb of Burnaby. Despite Canada’s then-status as a culinary outlier, and his home city’s reluctance to adopt the relative pomp and circumstance of the cuisine he loved, the ingredients were there and he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
“A West Coast suit is jeans, a sport coat and nice leather shoes. People have tried and failed to run fine dining establishments here because they were seen as pompous,” he said. “Vancouver doesn’t do the big city dining where you go for a cocktail, then somewhere else for dinner, then the theater and a drink afterward. Here, dinner is the show.”
Perhaps that is why Jaeger sees the Vancouver dining scene as incredibly competitive.
“If you’re at a price point, the other restaurants in your category hold you to it,” he said. “At $30 a plate, it’s assumed you’re sourcing local, fresh and using the highest quality of ingredients. If not, diners will call you out on it because they have a lot of options.”
On that note, Jaeger sends me out to get the lay of the land. I go to see his former sous chef, Lee Cooper, at L’Abattoir, now considered one of Canada’s top restaurants.
Start with a cocktail, perhaps a barrel-aged hanky panky, at their equally acclaimed bar, then work your way upstairs into the crowded dining room.
The meal gets off to an odd start: Dungeness crab and chickpea toast rolled in a toasted brioche shell with light crab custard plus some carrot pickles is a lot of effort for what turns out to be a bunch of ingredients in a tube of bread. One plate over, however, albacore tuna confit, cooked sous vide, simultaneously melts and holds its form. The star of the meal is pork shoulder cooked in milk, nestled below a dollop of caper-rich salsa verde, accompanied by warm, crunchy baby turnips wading in meat jus. Change nothing about the food here and do the restaurant equivalent of changing from jeans to slacks (say, spread the tables out a little and formalize the service a bit), and you’d be sitting in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
“Next, go see Vikram at Vij’s,” said Jaeger, referring to the Indian spot considered by many to be Vancouver’s most emblematic restaurant. A friend and I share shitake mushrooms in a lightly creamed curry that’s a textural game between the mushrooms and the whole almonds scattered across the top. Our favorite dish, cooked by the all-female kitchen staff, is grilled lamb popsicles, also known as chops, marinated in wine served atop a fenugreek (fenugreek!) cream curry with turmeric and spinach potatoes — a near perfect symbol of fall with the near-unadorned grilled meat sinking slowly into winter’s more complex sauces.
A few days later, I return to Pear Tree, where I learn that although Jaeger talks a casual game, his kitchen is anything but. Dishes are counted down aloud, to the minute, by his cooks (a chicken breast, cooked sous vide, is 22) so everybody in the kitchen knows exactly where everyone else’s dish stands.
Jaeger will use specialized chopsticks to plate the last tomato dish of the year. “The tomato guy’s coming by tonight to pick up his crates,” Jaeger said, and a few moments later, the tomato guy walks in the back door.
I’m served a spot prawn “cappuccino,” and as much as I’d like to put a moratorium on foams and “airs,” this is one reason not to — this is a foamy bisque made from the prawns atop tiny, sweet morsels of their flesh at the bottom of the glass. It’s a concentrate of the sea in sharp focus.
While Jaeger loves his foams, pheasant, and the whole boar he’s gone through in the last few days, he’s not afraid to cater to the surf-and-turf crowd that are his bread and butter. “The ocean’s right here on one side of us,” he said, gesturing west toward the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific, “and we’ve got great meat on the other.”
He also knows that a quarter of his clients aren’t too adventurous and for them he’s got that chicken breast (he calls it “slow poached”) served with down-to-the-second sautéed mushrooms.
Meanwhile, I try the twice-cooked pork belly (still having its long-enjoyed moment) and scallops on a bed of “cassoulet” made with dozens of the tomato guy’s tomatoes. The pork is sweet and crisp but there’s a point where a drop of that cassoulet falls on my arm and my initial reaction is to lick it from my sleeve. The dish
I first met chef Scott Jaeger at the Bocuse d’Or — a sort of international “Iron Chef Live!” before “Iron Chef” existed, hosted by French living-legend chef Paul Bocuse in Lyon. Here, Jaeger, representing Canada in 2007 in front of legions of fans wearing JAEGER hockey shirts, was in his ideal culinary milieu, with his French-influenced competition-style technical cuisine — food that is incredibly precise and time consuming.
Jaeger found his style in his travels, in the kitchens of London, France, Austria and Switzerland. He could have set up shop in any major city in the world, but in 1988 he returned to Vancouver, where he’d lived since the age of 15, and opened the Pear Tree restaurant in the suburb of Burnaby. Despite Canada’s then-status as a culinary outlier, and his home city’s reluctance to adopt the relative pomp and circumstance of the cuisine he loved, the ingredients were there and he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
“A West Coast suit is jeans, a sport coat and nice leather shoes. People have tried and failed to run fine dining establishments here because they were seen as pompous,” he said. “Vancouver doesn’t do the big city dining where you go for a cocktail, then somewhere else for dinner, then the theater and a drink afterward. Here, dinner is the show.”
Perhaps that is why Jaeger sees the Vancouver dining scene as incredibly competitive.
“If you’re at a price point, the other restaurants in your category hold you to it,” he said. “At $30 a plate, it’s assumed you’re sourcing local, fresh and using the highest quality of ingredients. If not, diners will call you out on it because they have a lot of options.”
On that note, Jaeger sends me out to get the lay of the land. I go to see his former sous chef, Lee Cooper, at L’Abattoir, now considered one of Canada’s top restaurants.
Start with a cocktail, perhaps a barrel-aged hanky panky, at their equally acclaimed bar, then work your way upstairs into the crowded dining room.
The meal gets off to an odd start: Dungeness crab and chickpea toast rolled in a toasted brioche shell with light crab custard plus some carrot pickles is a lot of effort for what turns out to be a bunch of ingredients in a tube of bread. One plate over, however, albacore tuna confit, cooked sous vide, simultaneously melts and holds its form. The star of the meal is pork shoulder cooked in milk, nestled below a dollop of caper-rich salsa verde, accompanied by warm, crunchy baby turnips wading in meat jus. Change nothing about the food here and do the restaurant equivalent of changing from jeans to slacks (say, spread the tables out a little and formalize the service a bit), and you’d be sitting in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
“Next, go see Vikram at Vij’s,” said Jaeger, referring to the Indian spot considered by many to be Vancouver’s most emblematic restaurant. A friend and I share shitake mushrooms in a lightly creamed curry that’s a textural game between the mushrooms and the whole almonds scattered across the top. Our favorite dish, cooked by the all-female kitchen staff, is grilled lamb popsicles, also known as chops, marinated in wine served atop a fenugreek (fenugreek!) cream curry with turmeric and spinach potatoes — a near perfect symbol of fall with the near-unadorned grilled meat sinking slowly into winter’s more complex sauces.
A few days later, I return to Pear Tree, where I learn that although Jaeger talks a casual game, his kitchen is anything but. Dishes are counted down aloud, to the minute, by his cooks (a chicken breast, cooked sous vide, is 22) so everybody in the kitchen knows exactly where everyone else’s dish stands.
Jaeger will use specialized chopsticks to plate the last tomato dish of the year. “The tomato guy’s coming by tonight to pick up his crates,” Jaeger said, and a few moments later, the tomato guy walks in the back door.
I’m served a spot prawn “cappuccino,” and as much as I’d like to put a moratorium on foams and “airs,” this is one reason not to — this is a foamy bisque made from the prawns atop tiny, sweet morsels of their flesh at the bottom of the glass. It’s a concentrate of the sea in sharp focus.
While Jaeger loves his foams, pheasant, and the whole boar he’s gone through in the last few days, he’s not afraid to cater to the surf-and-turf crowd that are his bread and butter. “The ocean’s right here on one side of us,” he said, gesturing west toward the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific, “and we’ve got great meat on the other.”
He also knows that a quarter of his clients aren’t too adventurous and for them he’s got that chicken breast (he calls it “slow poached”) served with down-to-the-second sautéed mushrooms.
Meanwhile, I try the twice-cooked pork belly (still having its long-enjoyed moment) and scallops on a bed of “cassoulet” made with dozens of the tomato guy’s tomatoes. The pork is sweet and crisp but there’s a point where a drop of that cassoulet falls on my arm and my initial reaction is to lick it from my sleeve. The dish
