Ottawa should have taken gold at Canadian Culinary Championship 2025 but winner Vancouver is still pretty great
5 February 2025
By DARREN ATWATER
We were robbed.
Not us personally. We enjoyed ten absolutely splendid dishes, and a few cocktails, and could not be more satisfied.
But Ottawa’s civic honour was tarnished after Chef Lizardo Becerra of Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine not only did not win the Canadian Culinary Awards but was not even chosen to place. Given the choice to select a winner, we would have gone with Becerra, even after giving a discount for local bias.
The Canadian Culinary Championship 2025 was held last Saturday at the newly renamed Roger Centre, featuring winning chefs from 10 regional competitions.
Invited to attend for the first time, the ottawan was unsure of what we would be witnessing. We expected maybe a competition like Masterchef, where the chefs would be given ingredients and compete with each other, then judged by a panel.
No, instead the ten chefs, their teams, and their kitchens were placed around the perimeter of the hall and we punters queued up for a plate of something, before moving on to the next station. ‘No double dipping,’ our handler warned.
It was good advice but not for the reason she thought. In the two hours allotted for sampling, we barely had time to make it through. And after the first dish – as it happened, Chef Lizardo Bercaerra’s creation – we realized that we’d have to share everything else or we would run out of time.
the ottawan kept a running leaderboard as we ate, and after we finished, it didn’t need to be changed. Keep in mind that all ten dishes are easily added into the category of the best food we’ve ever had, so ranking them is somewhat pointless. However, rank them we did and here they are in reverse order.
9. EDMONTON
Chef Doreen Prei, Riverview Restaurant
Lobster and scallop, sea buckthorn panna cotta, micro sorrel, peas, uni vinaigrette
We were unsure about an Edmonton restaurant featuring a lobster dish a thousand miles from the nearest coast, and our fear was not unwarranted. It’s hard to knock lobster, and chefs are not required to create dishes representative of their region, but in this case it could have been a more interesting experience.
8. MONCTON
Chef Jordan Holden, Atelier Tony
Rabbit ballotine, stone fruit and rabbit liver tartlet, hazelnut and parsnip purée, smoked rabbit kidney tuile, spiced jus
Rich, rich rich. It was a good plate of food that you’d be thrilled to have at your anniversary dinner. But like a few others, we didn’t see the creativity or technical brilliance.
7. SASKATOON
Chef Taszia Thakur, Calories Restaurant & Pique Cafe
Duck four ways: liver crémeux mille-feuille with fermented blackberry; smoked duck prosciutto-wrapped rillette; Saskatchewan sour cherry pickled gizzard salad; fennel marmalade, port gastrique, hazelnut and Northern Saskatchewan wild rice tuile
Saskatoon has ducks, we’ll give her that. Each chunk of duck was a feat of skill, and we appreciated the presentation. As a dish, we found it lacking in flavour – the ducks beat the bunnies on technique rather than taste.
Not that it affected our tastebuds, but the ottawan does think that Calories is an odd name for a restaurant. It’s kind of like naming a restaurant Ingredients or Reservations.
6. TORONTO
Chef Ryan Lister, The Dorset
Slow-cooked Wellington County pork belly, BC spot prawn, black pudding, Ontario pears, celeriac, Kozlik’s mustard, Minus 8 sauce
After so many years living in the UK, it would be hard for us to believe we’d ever find a superior blood pudding but Lister pulls it off. Easily the best blood pudding we’ve ever had. But neither of us really likes blood pudding. Everything else was prepared well without surprises.
5. MONTRÉAL
Chef François-Emmanuel Nicol, Tanière³
“Beef of the fall with memories of summer — Picanha of beef served with preserved memories of Canadian summer”
Oooh, it’s Montréal. They’re the one to beat. Oooh. Oh, it’s actually Québec City? That’s much harder to taunt (although keep your mittens off our Sens).
You’ll notice that this dish has an off-piste description: Beef of the fall with memories of summer. That was the cleverest part. The beef itself was delicious, the jus quite sassy, and the single mushroom flavourful. This was the third ‘good plate of food’ after Moncton and Toronto, but the best one.
4. CALGARY
Chef Matthias Fong, Primary Colours
Vegetarian ‘foie gras’ with walnut, sea buckthorn, black truffle, fennel tuile, Riesling pearls, parmesan shortbread
You may ask yourself why would you ever want vegetarian foie gras? This dish doesn’t have the answer but it is a technical marvel. It has all the texture and flavour of a force-fed goose liver without the needing to consider that you’re eating a force-fed goose. Neither of us like foie gras. We loved this. The riesling pearls – think bubble tea beads made from dry white wine – and the parmesan shortbread were both very tasty. Fong showed himself as the most technically talented of the night.
3. ST JOHN’S
Chef Nicholas Walters, The Merchant Tavern
Newfoundland bluefin tuna tartare, foie gras crémeux, Partridge Berry lime compote, green onion, jalapeño, sesame brittle, squid ink tuile, ponzu
Now we are in the realm of displaying good technique, creative cooking, and great taste. The mix of tuna, jalapeño, and sesame brittle was kind of exciting. And that cute fish bone tuile, made of squid ink, tasted like (unsweetened) Oreo cookie wafers.
2. VANCOUVER
Chef Alex Kim, Five Sails Restaurant
Wild sablefish and Cortes Island scallop terrine, sidestripe shrimp mandu with Dungeness crab and Okanagan apple, Kusshi oyster on sea lettuce tartlet, Pemberton salsify, six-month fermented doenjang, shiso
Kim’s dish was three gorgeous seafood treats, skilfully combined and beautifully presented. The server reminded us twice: 'the oyster shell is edible'. And it was! Despite that warning, there was an initial hesitancy of fully expecting an experience of teeth on seashell.
1. OTTAWA
Chef Lizardo Becerra, Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine
Escabeche demi-glace drizzled over the cured sous-vide Gitanyow sockeye salmon
Salmon is native to the Ottawa River, right? Despite what we said about a landlocked resto serving seafood, Becerra’s dish was fun and tasty at first glance. The individually made tuile surrounding the salmon is made from peppers, adding a spiciness to the sauce when knocked in. The not-raw-but-actually cooked salmon was light and flavourful.
We started with this dish and thought it was the one to beat all night.
There was one dish that we did not include in our ranking – a cake.
♾️ WINNIPEG
Chef Austin Granados, Cake-ology
Burrata mousse, strawberry kombucha confit, Japanese sweet potato cake, Manitoba bass bone tuile, duck fat caramel, kombu and shiitake black sugar dust, apricot kernel cream, basil and kaffir lime oil, microgreens, and a dehydrated milk chip
Remember we said that we were sharing all the dishes? Well, we each took our own plate for this one. It was as delicious as it looks, and we’re all the happier that we didn’t notice that the caramel included duck fat. It took skill to create this, more so than any of the savoury dishes. We don’t think this should have been number one, but neither could it be number ten. Or any number in-between. It just exists, outside the realm of dining competition, in its own cake-y universe.
The decisions of the judges of the Canadian Culinary Awards did not align with ours. Gold was awarded to Chef Alex Kim, Five Sails Restaurant; Silver to Chef Jordan Holden of Atelier Tony; and Bronze to Chef Francois-Emmanuel Nicol of Tanière³.