Celebrity Culinary: The Boulud Effect

Image by: Nick Krasznai

The seduction began at noon – a little early in the day for sensual delights, perhaps, but the host was, after all, a Frenchman. There were frogs’ legs, caviar and champagne, just for starters.

The teasing canapés were followed by five courses, each paired with a wine, each building in intensity: ahi tuna sashimi, Queen Charlotte halibut, coquilles St. Jacques, young Quebec pork and a climax of mango-and-passion-fruit pavlova followed by milk chocolate praline napoleon.

It was March 14, and, with this private media luncheon to announce his newest restaurant venture, New York celebrity chef Daniel Boulud had Vancouver’s dining elite eating out of the palm of his hand.

After top chef Rob Feenie’s highly publicized and acrimonious November 2007 split from Lumière and Feenie’s – in which the Iron Chef claimed he had been forced out of his own kitchen by the restaurants’ majority owners, David and Manjy Sidoo – a huge question mark hung over the city’s dining scene. How could Feenie, our culinary darling, possibly be replaced? Four months later, the Sidoos had a definitive answer: Boulud, the iconic chef-owner of four renowned New York rooms (Daniel, Café Boulud, DB Bistro Moderne and Bar Boulud) as well as restaurants in Palm Beach, Las Vegas and Beijing. Through his company the Dinex Group, Boulud would take over the management of Lumière and replace Feenie’s with a DB Bistro Moderne, modelled on his popular New York locale of the same name. If ever there was a culinary coup, this was it.

“I’m really, really, really lovin’ my job right now!” an ecstatic Mia Stainsby crowed in the Vancouver Sun. “Mr. Boulud is the first major celebrity chef to open a restaurant anywhere in Canada,” wrote Alexandra Gill in the Globe and Mail, adding, “The news has sent shockwaves through the culinary community.” At the March luncheon, Wally Oppal, B.C.’s attorney general and minister responsible for multiculturalism, passed on the premier’s regrets and announced that it was “a great day for the city of Vancouver. . . . It truly places our city in the major leagues.” He then presented a bemused Boulud with a plaque reading, “B.C., the best place on earth for entrepreneurs,” and a jacket emblazoned with the government’s ActNow BC healthy living campaign motto: “Every move is a good move.”

Boulud may be the first major marquee celebrity chef to make the move to Vancouver, but he likely won’t be the last. In April word leaked that the Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver was in talks with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the Alsatian-born chef whose four-star New York City-based Jean-Georges Restaurant is one of seven establishments he runs in the city (in total there are 17 restaurants bearing Vongerichten’s imprint across the globe, from Prime Steakhouse in Las Vegas’s Bellagio Hotel to Lagoon in Bora Bora). Jill Killeen, the Shangri-La’s publicist, says only that “we are in discussions, but there is no done deal” when queried about the rumour, but adds, “You can expect something very exciting.” Also working its way through the gossip mill are stories of a potential Vancouver outlet for hot-tempered Gordon Ramsay (of Hell’s Kitchen fame) and a Jamie Oliver charitable restaurant (Oliver’s restaurant project, Fifteen – now in Amsterdam, Cornwall and Melbourne – trains disadvantaged youth to work in the industry).

The city’s ascendance as a culinary mecca – and one that attracts international talent such as Boulud, Vongerichten, Ramsay and Oliver – may come as a surprise to those for whom dining out means a choice between White Spot or the Keg. For dedicated foodies, however, it’s old news; this year, in the latest accolade, Vancouver made Food & Wine Magazine’s list of the 10 Best Restaurant Cities for 2008 – eking in at No. 10. Last November enRoute magazine elected two Vancouver rooms for its Top 10 Best New Restaurants of 2007 list – Kingyo Izakaya and Salt Tasting Room (No. 2 and 3, respectively). Its Next 20 list includes six more Vancouver eateries, including Fuel, Gastropod, Shore Club, So.Cial at Le Magasin and the Taco Shack. Critics from the New York Times, the London Times and the Seattle Times have all dedicated column inches to Vancouver dining, with the London Times’s Nick Wyte remarking last August that “Vancouver . . . has long been one of the world’s best kept food secrets.”

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