Don Genova's Blog

Thanks to everyone who entered the ‘Favourite Ethnic Cuisine’ contest.  Ruth Sturz and Sue Silver won the copies of ‘New Greek Cuisine’.  You can read everyone’s comments on the topic by clicking here.  And watch my website for future contests coming up soon!

Last week while I was in Toronto I spent a great afternoon with Aristedes Pasparakis.  Vancouver diners will be familiar with his famous restaurant on Broadway, Orestes, but that was just one of dozens of restaurants Aristedes has opened over the years. 

We walked along the Danforth, which is supposed to be one of the best places to get Greek food in all of Canada…but the Danforth has changed.  To hear us talk about the Danforth, his life in restaurants, and his philosophy of cooking, make sure you listen to my latest podcast.

By the way, if you are looking for one of the really decent places to have Greek food on the Danforth in Toronto, visit Avli Restaurant. I had some excellent grilled octopus and calamari (NOT the ubiquitous battered and deep-fried stuff) as well as delicious Greek sausage, all tossed back with a couple of robust glasses of red  chosen from an extensive list of Greek wines.

Aristedes has come up with a new way of cooking that you can learn about in the cookbook, or by listening to my podcast or Food For Thought.  But you want to win one of the cookbooks, right?

Just click on Comments and tell me what your favourite world cuisine is, and WHY.  I’ll draw two winners at random, contest closes Monday, April 11th at noon PT.

My favourite world cuisine?  I have to say Thai food.  The flavours are so different to my palate, and I love the use of coconut milk, the licorice-like Thai basil, and the tang and aroma of Kaffir lime rind and leaves.  Heck, I even like the fish sauce, even if it is made up of rotten anchovies…and then there are the hot peppers… 

Tuesday morning, March 8th, on my Pacific Palate program, I’ll be talking about Go Fish, the dockside restaurant right beside the Granville Island Fisherman’s Wharf in Vancouver. 

I’ll also relate some of my conversations with the fishers on the wharf as they struggle to make it a vibrant tourist destination, just as the docks are in Steveston.

The idea is that you buy your seafood directly from the people who caught it, or in the case of mussels and oysters, the people who grew it.  I’ve purchased there before, mostly frozen fish, but have been very satisfied with both the price and the quality.

Where is your favourite place to buy seafood in the Greater Vancouver area?  I’d like to compile a list to post to my website for Tuesday morning, so feel free to click on ‘Comments’ and post where and more importantly, WHY.

Thanks for participating in this informal survey….oh, and please see my previous post, Odds and Ends, for news on podcasting and a new venue for my writing.

A bunch of stuff to announce on a quiet Friday afternoon…

First, congratulations to Paul Birch, who entered my ‘Street Food’ contest.  He’s won dinner for two at Vancouver’s Tamarind restaurant.

Volume 2 of my podcast, ‘All You Can Eat’, will be posted by the end of this weekend.  The feature interview is with Kitchen Confidential author Anthony Bourdain.  Check my website and look for the iPod icon to get to the podcast page.

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be writing on a regular basis for the Vancouver-based monthly magazine called Shared Vision.

It’s an honour to be working for Beverley Sinclair, former editor of the Georgia Straight, who has taken on the helm at Shared Vision to build it into an even better publication than it was before.

I will be writing in the Food section, but for March I contributed the back page ‘Footnotes’ column, in which I pay tribute to neighbours, country neighbours and city neighbours.  Give the column a read, I think you’ll like it, and the rest of the magazine as well.

If it’s one thing Canada is lacking when it comes to the food scene, it’s a healthy street food industry.  When it comes to street food, we seem to specialize in hot dog carts and fry trucks. 

Of course, we live in an incredibly regulated society that makes it difficult for anyone to offer food on the street without jumping through so many hoops that make it next to impossible to actually make a decent living.

At least Tamarind and Rubina Tandoori are giving us a bit of a chance to try the street food of India, even if it’s within the food-safe confines of the restaurants.

What is your best, or worst, experience with street food?  It can be from anywhere around the world, or maybe you did have something great in Canada…and food offered on the beach counts.

I think my favourite street food was the grilled swordfish skewers I gobbled down from vendors walking up and down the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  What about you? Was it the takoyaki (fried balls of battered octopus) on the streets of Tokyo?

To leave your entry, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Comments.  I’ll choose one winner at random next Monday night, who will win a gift certificate for two at Tamarind.  Good luck!

Call it an upset, call it well-deserved, call it entertainment, whatever.  Last night on Iron Chef America, Vancouver’s own star chef, Rob Feenie, defeated Iron Chef Masuharu Morimoto in the first Canadian appearance on the show Iron Chef America, as the Food Network attempts to recreate the amazing ratings it received while airing the original Iron Chef show produced in Tokyo by Fuji Television.

The secret ingredient was crab, and Feenie shone with an ingredient he knows so well, although he told me that it didn’t really matter what the ingredient was, because the tension and pressure was so tight it didn’t really give him an advantage.

When the judges’ scores were tallied, it was 45 to 39 in favour of Feenie, and the main difference came in the ‘Creativity’ category.

Last night, Rob invited what seemed like most of the city to come to Feenie’s and watch the show. The place was packed and the drinks were flowing freely.  Folks cheered when Rob and his sous chefs appeared on screen, and booed and hissed whenever Morimoto was featured.

Rob seemed incredibly serious for the first half of the show.  He told me it was because he was very concerned about being able to finish the five required dishes in an hour’s cooking.  During a previous taping, he saw a challenger only manage to complete 2.  He said the show’s executive producer was in his face for the first 15 minutes, pressuring him to make sure he would finish the dishes.  Finally, when everything looked like it would go as scheduled, he was able to relax and crack a few more jokes to camera.  What he didn’t know was that the fridge he was using to gel his peekeytoe crab panna cotta had went on the fritz ten minutes into the chilling, leaving a goopy mess when it came out at the end of the hour.  He had to ask for a ruling on that one, and the producers allowed him to stick the dessert in the freezer before serving it to the judges, but he wasn’t happy with the result.

When Feenie was declared the winner, the restaurant erupted in cheers.  I half-expected the crowd to rush out onto Broadway and stop traffic with the celebrations…

Alton Brown, host of Iron Chef America, said it best:  "When Iron Chefs fall down, they get up mad."  I predict a rematch. 

If you want to listen to my recorded interview with Rob Feenie, check my website within the next few days, as I premiere my new podcast, ‘All You Can Eat’.  You’ll hear my interview with Rob, as well as the feature I created in 1999 when I traveled to Tokyo with chef Michael Noble to watch him compete against Mr. Morimoto in the original Iron Chef series.

p.s. If you missed the show on Sunday night, you can catch it again on Food Network Canada, Wednesday, Feb. 23rd, 6PM Pacific Time.