The whole kitchen team is now on board and we’re hard at work testing recipes and eqipment.
The stove works!
Ten days until opening and we are making some great progress. Today we tested the breakfast menu and plated a few of the dinner appetizers as well. We’ve done a ton of charcuterie over the past week (all bacon and sausages are house-made), and we are getting some tasty results. There seems to be a bit of buzz around town about the place, so we’re all excited to get open and start... Read Full Story
More tales from NYC. Check out part one here.
After dinner at Bar Boulud, on the way to dessert at Del Posto, followed by a few bites at Casa Mono (more on that later).
“These vagabond shoes are longing to stray, right through the very heart of it, New York, New York”.
Pastis for breakfast.
She came, she saw, she purchased.
Promoting Voya on the wall of cards at JB Prince, a great cooking equipment store.
Morimoto and his crew get ready to attack a monkfish from head to tail. Check... Read Full Story
Corey Scwartz and Katie Sanders moved to Nelson a couple weeks ago, and have already been foraging around with great success.
Matsutake and Lobster mushrooms.
Corey and Katie are both Vancouver restaurant industry veterans (Corey, Parkside FOH and Katie, Aurora BOH). I’ve been served by Corey a couple of times and also met him at Katie’s family BBQ competition (the best BBQ competition in the world) in Merritt. Corey responded to a request I made for readers to share any pictures of what... Read Full Story
Brad gave me some heirloom tomatoes from his garden and I wanted to show you. Anybody have some pics of their harvest?
“Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we’re young, ’cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”.
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The reason for my trip to NYC was to attend the third annual Star Chefs conference, three days of presentations and classes from some of the worlds leading chefs.
Park Avenue Armory, where the conference took place.
“Hi Marco, I know Thierry Busset”. “Oh, Thierry, he’s a good boy”.
Heston Blumenthal, chef of The Fat Duck in Bray, England.
Blumenthal’s presentation focused on a meal he prepared for a BBC Christmas special last year, which saw him travel to the middle east and Siberia to... Read Full Story
Barbara-Jo McIntosh, owner of Books To Cooks, recently hosted an event at the Salt Cellar with food writers Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, co-authors of the new book The Flavor Bible.
Andrew, Barbara-Jo and Karen.
The husband and wife writing team spent three days in the city last week promoting their new book, a guide to putting complementary flavours together, and I sat down with them for an interview before their event in the Salt Cellar. Thanks to Barbara-Jo for setting up the... Read Full Story
Twenty-three days until opening.
Washing plates.
I will try to do a daily post on all the pre-opening activities at Voya.
Today saw us do some butchery, cure bacon, bresaola, and lomo, prep sausage mix and make a a chicken and veal stock. Tomorrow we will break down a couple of lambs, pump sausages, and make more stocks (lamb, duck, brown chicken). It is quite the luxury to be able to test all recipes, and also just being able to get comfortable in the kitchen. In a lot of places that open... Read Full Story
Maurizio, pastry chef of Voya, tried his brioche out on us today, as we prepare the restaurant for opening.
Brioche is just horrible, really horrible (sarcasm, who doesn’t like brioche?).
Today saw us do odd jobs around the hotel and a little bit of kitchen cleaning in preparation for our first day of cooking tomorrow. Maurizio, Voya’s pastry chef, has been cooking for a few days and was testing his brioche recipe today as well (which did not disappoint). Making stocks is our first order of... Read Full Story
