Its been just over a month since the second
annual CATCH Nova Scotia Seafood Festival put on by the NS Department of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Aquaculture. This year was just like the last… a great success!
This year was even bigger, with more exhibitors, and so much great Nova Scotia
Seafood!
Last year, I was working at Bear
Restaurant when the festival was going on, and Chef Ray Bear was the Host of the
Great Chef Challenge, so myself and a few other staff were enlisted to be the
chefs assistants in the 8 Chef battle royal. (here's a post from the 2009 CATCH Festival).
This year was a little more hectic. On
top of being in four chef battles, I competed in the oyster shucking contest, as well as trying to promote my new business venture Halifax
Restaurant Deals.
I represented HRD in the Oyster
Shucking Challenge and placed third with the least amount of time penalties. In
other words, I took a little more time, but I had the nicest oysters.. and for
me that’s what counts. It was at a seafood festival after all… I wanted to make
sure the final product was the best oyster possible. Next year, I'll be more
practiced and will be back to again to compete.
The Chef's Battle was hosted again this year by Chef Ray Bear, and 3 of my 4 battles were assisting Chef Peter Dewer, a culinary arts instructor at (NSCC Kingstec campus) and currently a key member of the Canadian Culinary Olympic Team. It was an honour to work with him. He was very relaxed, organized, focused… and prepared. He was a lot of things in a short space of time, and that’s probably why he was crowned the champion.
His food was beautiful, and he used the black box seafood items in a unique way (he glued mussels together to make a flat sheet of meat), and everything was very tasty…the carrot caramel sauce was amazing. He was a very gracious winner even though he had every right to gloat… in the final he faced Chef Louis Clavel of the Holiday Inn Harbourview's "Cafe 101", a great friend and colleague, and bragging rights were also at sake on top of the grand prizes of worth over $10000.
I was honored when he presented me with a hand crafted Japanese knife he had made during his travels overseas and gave a very nice Thank You for assisting him in the competition. He actually insisted on me for the final, and for a moment, I felt like one of the boys up there with all of the accomplished Chefs, and it was a great reassurance of all the hard work that I have been and still have to put in to be an official member of the club. But it felt great.
On top of all of that, I was also
trying to promote HRD. We ran a Sweepstakes contest on Facebook called Taste, Dine & Cook like a Chef. We gave away tickets for the event
with tasting tokens, dinners at MIX Fresh Kitchen, Chef Ray Bears new
restaurant that I will be working at (more on that later) and some of Chef
Bears Q Gourmet BBQ sauces. I got a chance to present the Grand Prize winner with her prizes and got a chance to tell the crowd about HRD.
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