British Columbia’s Iron Chefs

Clockwise from left: Scallops with a ragout of corn, mushrooms and spot prawns; the view from the beach at the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, which, as our writer discovered first-hand, is the ideal spot for storm-watching; Matthew Stowe, executive chef of Sonora Resort, attempts to grill the scallops over an open fire on the beach.

The idea: throw a big party on the beach by the Wickaninnish Inn, invite some of the West Coast’s best chefs, have a few drinks, cook some food alfresco and generally have a good time on the seashore. No immersion circulators, no Pacojet purée machines – nothing but fire, water, rocks and sand.

To get an invitation, the chefs were going to have to get primal. You want to dig a pit? Knock yourself out. Cook something over hot stones? Fill your boots. Steam goose-necked barnacles in cauldrons of boiling ocean water? Be my guest. Want to spot-freeze chocolate goji berry “air” with an anti-griddle? Go back to your restaurant.

And then it started to rain.

A bit of rain I can handle, but this was a Tofino special, coming in sideways. The prospect of huddling around a pathetic fire in a drenched slicker while trying to keep the ocean out of my chardonnay was dampening my enthusiasm. Luckily, Wickaninnish co-owner Charles McDiarmid had a backup plan: a groovy weathered-wood hideaway that his family built over 30 years ago, a kind of beta version of the Wick. (The three-sided living room inspired the inn’s Pointe Restaurant.) The Brady Bunch-meets-Robinson Crusoe house – complete with shag carpeting and an orange-tiled kitchen – looms high above black rocks on a spit of land jutting out into the Pacific. Back then, the hardy McDiarmids would walk the kilometre in from the highway with a bottle of wine, a bag of steaks and their suitcases over their shoulders for storm-watching weekends in the cabin.

The chefs take the whole thing in stride. John Waller, looking, with his fiery red hair, more like a Norse Viking than the executive chef of the Pointe Restaurant, takes shelter outside under an awning where he’s spit-roasting meat over a pile of coals on a barbecue the size of a pool table. He knows his way around a beach party: He and his crew host crab boils on Chesterman Beach a few times a year. “I had the guys in maintenance build this for me,” he explains. “This is the first time we’re using it. It’s big enough to do a whole pig, but we’re just doing rolled pork bellies and loins.”

Andrew Springett, the brawny executive chef from Black Rock Oceanfront Resort in Ucluelet, seems equally blasé about the driving rain. Aside from being a terrific cook, he’s also the kind of guy who, for kicks, engages in an activity called “bouldering” that involves climbing up and over large rocks and cliffs on the edge of the ocean. Sonora Resort’s executive chef, Matthew Stowe, who just published his first cookbook, is trying to grill some scallops on the beach over a homemade fire despite the weather. Then again, he cooks on a private island at a luxury lodge hemmed in by the Yaculta Rapids on one side and the Great Bear Rainforest on the other that’s so remote, he has to come and go by helicopter.

The food writer and his girlfriend find a way to take cover from the rain.

Lisa Ahier, chef and co-owner with her husband, Artie, of Sobo restaurant, refuses to so much as acknowledge the deluge and keeps insisting that the weather is about to break any minute. Ahier made her reputation cooking incredible food inside a converted chip wagon on the edge of the forest. Today, she sets up on the patio and starts grilling oysters over a simple kettle barbecue. “These are Pacific beach oysters from Out Landish Shellfish Guild on Cortes Island,” she tells me, referring to the large, gnarly bivalves that are sputtering and occasionally exploding on the grill. “I’ve never roasted oysters this way before,” she admits. Down on the rocks she has corn, which will become part of a vegetable platter, brining in a tidal pool.

Sinclair Philip, our sommelier, has commandeered a couple of Wick staff members to act as porters, and they come in laden with cases of wine. Philip has been known to strap on a wetsuit and wade into the ocean out in front of his hotel, Sooke Harbour House, to dive for sea urchins when the uni urge strikes him. As he explains, “They’re only good when they’re less than 24 hours old.”

After a valiant effort to grill scallops in the pouring rain, Stowe returns to the house and sets up a searing station on the family’s old four-burner propane stove. “Taste this,” he says, proffering a spoon. “It’s a ragout of corn, matsutake mushrooms and spot prawns that will go with the scallops.” Beside him, Springett has found an old skillet and is heating up the duck confit on the barbecue. “I’d intended to do these in big skillets over the fire, but this works just as well.”

Ahier has mastered the oyster-grilling technique, and she brings in a platter topped with miso mayonnaise and salmon bacon. Paired with JoieFarm Reserve Chardonnay, they are officially out of control: smoky and briny with a deep, slick hit of miso and some bite from the “bacon” – salmon that she has cured and smoked into profound savouriness. They immediately earn a place in my pantheon of Greatest Things Ever Eaten, and I devour six.

The chefs gathered in the kitchen strike up the kind of conversation that chefs have when they get together. “We’re down a cook this week,” says Springett. “The kid nearly cut his finger off cleaning fish.” Ahier nods in agreement. “Those young cooks straight out of school buy these Japanese knives and end up cutting themselves silly,” she explains. “I keep telling them it’s too much knife for them, but they want to go straight at it.”

Chef Lisa Ahier braves the storm to check on her corn, brining in a tidal pool; the dinner party relocates to the McDiarmids’ original beach shack, which inspired the Wick.

Waller serves first. He’s sliced the spit-cooked pork into rounds and layered it in a hemp-seed hoagie with fresh apple and his own Wick’ed Guys Hot Sauce. The result is a kind of West Coast take on the Chinese pork bun: soft and meaty and just spicy enough to make you notice. The pork, slow-cooked over hot coals and basted with local beer, B.C. honey, vinegar and rain, has a nuance that you couldn’t get with even the most expensive appliance.

Stowe brings out his seared scallops and personally spoons a creamy ragout around each guest’s portion. The dish is earthy (from the mushrooms), briny (from the scallops) and sweet (from the fresh corn). Philip pairs the course with a pinot gris from Averill Creek – “the best pinot gris produced on the island and one of the best ever made in British Columbia,” he says. Oenophiles like to wax poetic on the subtleties of “terroir” – the ineffable characteristics of wine that are imbued by the soil and weather where the grapes were grown – but this whole dish is redolent of terroir. It tastes of rain and ocean, forest and field.

Chef Springett serves his confit on square black slates. There’s a half moon of duck and apricot sausage beside a slice of roasted squash. We pass around warm loaves of plum focaccia and the ocean-brined corn from earlier in the day, perched on top of a mound of grilled vegetables.

Despite Ahier’s unflagging optimism, the rain never does let up, but the all-star chefs have weathered the storm. After dinner, there’s nothing left to do but break out the marshmallows and sticks and gather around the hearth. We’re cooking with fire now.

Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net

+ Check out the behind-the-scenes video of our beach cookout.