For the second installment of "Meet a Gold Medal Plates Competing Chef", Jenn and I visited Play Food and Wine at 1 York Street. This is one of the restaurants we always recommend to people who visit Ottawa and stay in the ByWard Market area. It is one we recommend to friends who just want to gather together, eat great food, and drink great wine.

Menu

Downstairs Dining Room

Bar

Glassware
Because Play serves "small plates", tapas-style dishes, the restaurant can accommodate just about any palate. Best of all, it lets patrons sample a number of dishes instead of enforcing a rigid appetizer, main, and dessert sequence. Of course, recommended wine pairings are listed on the menu.

There, Jenn and I had lunch towards the end of service, meeting Play's gracious owner Stephen Beckta. We shook hands with its Wine Director Grayson McDiarmid. Like Beckta, McDiarmid is a trained sommelier. He is also the voice behind Play's Twitter account @playfoodandwine.

Jenn ordered the quail and the steak frites.

Quail on house creamed corn with roasted green onion, local peach relish

Grilled and soy marinated hanger steak frites with 4 kinds of mushrooms and house aioli

Cost: $22.60 (because of the 2 plates for $20 lunch special, after taxes, before tip)

Afterward we declined dessert and Chef Michael Moffat (Executive Chef of both Play and Play's sister restaurant, Beckta Dining and Wine), joined us for an interview.

Chef Michael Moffat
Chef Moffat can be best described as disarmingly friendly. The interview felt more like an easy conversation. He, effortlessly answering questions and offering wonderful insight

What's your philosophy when it comes to food and your restaurant?
According to Chef Moffat, "Everyone deserves a great meal." He feels strongly guest experience should be paramount.

"It's not about the chef or entitlements. It's about guests and their preferences."

"Food should be about memories." While, restaurants can't compete with food-related memories from anyone's personal history, they can leverage them to create great guest experiences.

More after the jump...

Jenn and I find ourselves consistently awe-struck by the connections we make by food blogging and the relationships that have developed from them.

It intrigued us when Joe Bougner (@joeboughner), one of Ottawa's pre-eminent practitioners of effectively applying social media to business, put out a blog challenge, Monday. His challenge: What if you could only write one more post? What would you want to say?

After some thought, mine would start with a list of individual thank-yous to the people we have connected with. I would thank Jenn, my better half and foodiePrints' editor, for the countless hours we spent, working together, sometimes amicably. I would end it with a gracious farewell to you, our wonderful readers, urging you to continue to think critically and eat responsibly.

One of the thank-yous would go to Claire. This lovely woman is a friend. She is a food and wine enthusiast. She is someone who has accepted the unenviable task of addressing a subject Jenn and I have been silent about. She will contribute posts to foodiePrints on wine.

Despite foodiePrints having few wine posts to date, we received a "fun little award thingy" recently from generous Lynne (@thetwistedchef) of The Twisted Chef blog. Like other blog awards, the "Versatile Blogger" one comes with rules:

• Thank the person giving it to you
• Say 7 things about yourself
• Nominate blogs you have recently discovered and love

Versatile Blogger

Jenn and I have spoken about ourselves enough.

We take this opportunity to introduce Claire.

First, thank-you Lynne. Suffice it to say, I bend the rule about comments on your blog. Because you write so many great posts, I feel compelled to comment. I will do my best not to comment on every one! I reserve the right to tweet and update Facebook though...

Here are seven things foodiePrints' new wine blogger offered up when I asked her:

• I have so many pairs of shoes my daughter once said “Mummy, can I start a collection of dolls or boxes…. like you have of shoes”?
• I buy nail polish. I buy lots of nail polish. I don’t actually wear nail polish. But I aspire to the life that allows a person to have the time to wait for it to dry.
• I attended four different schools in four different countries on three different continents in the same school year.
• I love acting (something about being the center of attention) and have done plays at the Ottawa Little Theater
• My nine year gets five dollars for her allowance but consistently orders the most expensive item on the menu: the adult menu.
• I have a degree in Law and Political Science but work in neither.
• I love all things Apple: Mac rules!

Claire also adores the colour pink. She even managed to turn her iPhone pink!

Blog-wise, here are three blogs Claire nominates for the "Versatile Blogger" award:

• Theappleblog
• The Shoe Girl's Blog
• Billy Munnely's "Billy's Best Bottles

Coming up from Claire, her thoughts from attending Debbie Trenholm's recent "A Taste of BC Wines" event, which was held at Thyme and Again's Exposure Gallery.

On August 17, 2010, residents of Gatineau gathered at various locations in Vieux Hull to watch Hollywood movie crews transform some city streets for a large ($28 million) production, the screen adaptation of author Jack Kerouac's On the Road. According to the CBC, director Francis Ford Coppola's company, American Zoetrope, worked with Ottawa/Gatineau's Film Corp to choose the locations.

One happened to be the Vite Vite pataterie (poutinerie) on rue Wellington (61).

Vite Vite
It is an eatery my colleagues frequent almost weekly. Accordingly, its chili cheese fries are a must try. I have never been.

That morning, the section of rue Wellington in front of Vite Vite was blocked off by Gatineau police. The building, which existed during the "Beat Generation" era (1950's), was temporarily re-finished. Then, period cars were brought in. Crews dulled their paint and carefully positioned them along the street.

Here is how the completed transformation looked before filming started.

Transformed
This photo was taken by Catherine (@MsCatou) during her lunch break. I didn't have a camera with me that Tuesday.

I did however bring my camera the following day.

50's Vite Vite

Pataterie turned Coffee Shop

and Snacks

Removed Sign

Everything was restored two days later.

Present Day Vite Vite

If you want to know what characteristics distinguish a food blogger, while crowds gathered to catch glimpses of the film's A-list stars (Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortenson, Amy Adams, and Kirsten Dunst), I only wanted photos of the set.

Particulars:
Vite Vite Patate
61, rue Wellington, Gatineau
(819) 770-9888

The weekend of Food Day Canada, a friend from the publishing world visited Ottawa for the long weekend, Bonita (@boneats). An Ottawa native, who now makes her home in Toronto, she is also a fellow food blogger. She happened to shake hands with Chef Thomas Keller at a book event last year.

Where do you think we had brunch that Sunday?

Did we go to big-box restaurant chain Milestones (1080 Baxter Road) where a signature "Traditional breakfast" of 3 scrambled eggs, double smoked bacon, breakfast potatoes, seasonal fruit and multi-grain toast costs $8.99

Milestones

Milestones Traditional Breakfast
Think slightly over-scrambled eggs, greasy potatoes with jarred tomato sauce, super market fruit, cool to cold toast, and thinly cut and under-crisped bacon.

Also on the menu, a breakfast hash of "slow roasted and thinly sliced" prime rib, tossed with crispy potatoes (remarkably similar to breakfast potatoes), bell peppers, sweet onion, roast corn and their specialty (mystery) "hash" seasoning. Everything, topped with two poached eggs, "real" hollandaise, roma tomatoes and toasted herb "Filone" for $12.99.

Prime Rib Hash

Poached Eggs

Prime Rib
Think hunk of oily baguette, deep fried potatoes (re-heated on the griddle with the white onions, red pepper, and the night before's prime rib leftovers), cool-ish hollandaise, pre-poached and re-heated eggs, and watery tomatoes. The mystery seasoning was intensely acidic, tasting oddly of barbecue sauce.

I'm not getting into the dated decor that was once cutting edge for big box restaurants 10 years ago. Milestone's service, however, was attentive and friendly.

More after the jump...

The following guest post is the first in a series of "Meet a Gold Medal Plates Competing Chef" interviews you will see on foodiePrints and our partnered blogs for Gold Medal Plates Ottawa. It comes from one of our favourite food bloggers Rachelle of Rachelle Eats Food.

And without further ado...

Last week I paired up with Ottawa-based food bloggers Shari from Whisk: A food blog, and Don and Jen from foodiePrints to see what we could do to get everyone talking about the Gold Medal Plates event set for November 16th. Being the ultimate celebration of Canadian Excellence in cuisine and wine, not to mention athletic achievement (net proceeds from Gold Medal Plates are given to the Canadian Olympic Foundation), it seemed like a natural fit - and of course, a very exciting one. Our goal is to feature one of the competing chefs, or any other interesting fact about the event, on every Friday leading up to the event. Here is our first one.


Chef Marc Lepine of Atelier

You know how some people are just so nice you want to scream out to the world about them? That's how I felt today after meeting Chef Marc Lepine from Atelier restaurant. This soft spoken, modest and genuinely friendly man made this first-time interviewer feel at ease. I imagine working for him must be the same. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

What's your philosophy when it comes to food and your restaurant?
"I'm not much of a philosopher. I don't take it that seriously I guess. But if I had to answer that, I guess I'd like to not take myself too seriously and not have our diners take the restaurant too seriously. I like using high quality ingredients but having fun with it."

What inspires you? How do you come up with ideas for the dishes that you create?
"We get asked that a lot and I think they're all random things. It's always something different. I have a 5-year-old daughter and, sometimes I'll be at home on my day off playing and an idea will strike for a dish. I get inspirations from that - just from something she's playing with...Sometimes from other chefs, going out and eating and just the slightest thing that someone has done... It can be a movie, we've had dishes based around movies... Seasons definitely, like the produce that's coming out - the amazing cherries that we had this year. That's the easiest inspiration, you get that and your dish makes itself..."

I know your menu changes often. With the current one you have right now, what's your favourite dish on the menu and
why?
"Probably the tomato salad. It's something we call Tomatrix Revolution. Visually I love it and there's something going on there that really appeals to me. I think because it feels really seasonal and being tomato season it just brings me outside. That's corny but I really like that, and because of how intricate it is and I don't think it's something you could find in many restaurants."

"I also like a dish called Subterranean Homesick Alien that we have on at the moment. Which is the name of a Radiohead song, but it's a dessert based on star anise and cherries. I like the visual, the artistic side of plating something."


Tomatrix plating

What's the ingredient you can't live without? (other than basics)
"I don't think I have one honestly. Whatever the ingredient is we use it. I guess part of the larger philosophy of this style of cooking is that there's no ingredient that has superior culinary value over another ingredient. I mean, you can take any ingredient and turn it into something quite amazing if it's treated right."

"We could never have a menu that doesn't have a minimum amount of fish and meat on it because Ottawa wouldn't go for that... if we had no restrictions we could do a menu that had no meat on it or minimal meat and still be as happy with it just because whatever the season, the ingredients that are coming in are all amazing."

Is there anything you won't eat?
"McDonald's or Burger King. I don't eat foie gras... (but) there's nothing I don't eat because I don't like the taste, I just choose not to eat certain things."

Guilty pleasure?
"Potato chips."

What was your most memorable meal and why?
"Hands down it would be the 24-course dinner at Alinea in Chicago. It was very inspiring. It made my head spin. Overwhelming in an enjoyable kind of way. To this day I still think about some of the things that went on."

What would your last meal be?
"Big bowl of grapefruit. Simple. I would love it - grapefruit is one of my favourite things to eat."

If you could travel to just one place in the world for food, where would you go and why?
"Spain. Because I haven't been there yet and there's so many amazing restaurants that I'd like to try there. Particularly Roca."

Describe your perfect Sunday.
"Spending time with my kids. That's pretty perfect. And a nice dinner out that night would be good. With or without the kids."

If you've never been to Atelier, it's definitely one of those places you must add to your go-to list. The entire experience is like no other. I was there earlier this year and had an amazing time. I'm so looking forward to my next visit!



Facebook Page: Gold Medal Plates Ottawa

To purchase tickets for Gold Medal Plates, contact Sue Holloway (contact information below) or click here.

Particulars:
Gold Medal Plates Ottawa
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 6:00 pm
National Arts Centre
53 Elgin Street

Sue Holloway
818 Nesbitt Place
(613)274-3107 phone
(613)274-0851 fax
hollowayjoy@rogers.com