My Dinner With David Suzuki

Okay, so it wasn’t just me having dinner with Dr. Suzuki: the dinner at Borealis Grillhouse & Pub in Kitchener included 100 or so other guests, but it was still a pretty intimate evening with a Canadian icon. And he showed the David Suzuki that most people know.

Presented by the good folks at World Accord, Dr. Suzuki spent a solid six hours here in Waterloo Region and joined us for a Borealis meal of great local food: Melissa and Dennis Baer’s Vibrant Farms organic beef, Barrie’s Asparagus, Pfenning’s organic veg, Floralane Produce of Elmira, Smoyd Potato Farm, Mapleton’s organic ice cream, Organic Meadow Dairy, and Southbrook Vineyards.

Suzuki said a lot of thought-provoking things, and when it came to poking at the federal government, he didn’t pull any punches. Our economic system, according to Suzuki, is the culprit behind our ecological decline. He’s brutally honest in the way he speaks the truth.

It was pure David Suzuki, the one many of us grew up with though with a more urgent and perturbed message: he’s pissed off. We’re on a road to disaster, he stresses but not stridently, and we’re not doing anything about it. It’s a crisis we’ve brought on ourselves: we are the biosphere’s major predator and much of it starts with our hyper-consumerism. We just want stuff. Stuff we don’t need.

Suzuki had a lot more to say, but let’s leave it at that and move into some food. Why? Because the idea of local food–and people dedicated to the idea of local itself–is I think part of what Suzuki sees as a solution. The varied people in the 120 year-old school room at Borealis are Suzuki’s hope that we can break a tyranny driven by our institution’s ideologies. Ideology is a lousy way to live–and it doesn’t taste very good either.

So the food …

Borealis exec chef Matthew Foote and head chef Jaret Flannigan and their brigade started everyone off with a cheeky amuse that popped into the mouth easily and tastily.

Tongue-in-cheek amuse of beef tongue with luscious guanciale (jowl) on brioche with a delicious sweetish jus.

A first course uses Vibrant’s tenderloin in a smoked beef consomme “Shabu-Shabu,” the onomatopoeic Japanese dish of thinly sliced raw meat over which is poured hot soup to cook it. The phrase shabu-shabu is said to describe the sound of the liquid as it seeps through the meat. The cup of bright yet mild consomme is electrified with smoked and meaty maitake mushrooms and a fine julienne of nippy horseradish.

Shabu-Shabu: Yummy-Yummy. Baer/Vibrant Farm tenderloin julienne with smoked maitake mushrooms cooked by a beef consomme. Fresh threads of horseradish add zing.

So rich and fresh, so sweet and meaty, this seemingly simple plate of veg as a second course could have been a first course with a few extra golden and Chiogga beets from Pfenning’s Organic & More.

The Chiogga beet gets a capital “C” because it hails from Chiogga, near Venice in Italy’s northeast in the Po Valley. It has alternating rings of colour and is quite stunning in its beauty.

Pfenning's organic golden beet carpaccio with Chiogga beets julienne: stellar.

The dish is alive with tastes: sweet from Hawkins Honey, smooth and creamy thanks to a River’s Edge Goat Dairy goat cheese cream, and peppery with scallion grass and arugula. The beets themselves added a blend of slight sweet and slight tangy.

Grass-fed beef: it is probably the way cows should be fed, but often we feed them, or finish them, by letting them nosh on corn. But grass-fed beef is different meat, and Vibrant Farms’ is organic and wholesome too. There are some flavour and texture differences but ones that I generally enjoy: a stronger meatiness and a pleasing chew.

These samples of beef-hip “Bourguignon” were prepared as such. And joining them were a delicious and smooth potato-leek puree and an assortment of the veg including the inestimable Jerusalem artichoke–or Canada Potato. The plate presentation had a casualness to it with baby beet shoots strewn about and a drizzling of Southbrook red wine jus. The end result was good textures, flavours, some acidity, and a light yet hearty nosh.

Baer's/Vibrant Farm organic grass-fed beef: beefy flavour and pleasing texture.

Dessert got a bit playful with Mapleton’s Organic vanilla ice cream as the base ingredient for a pour of Stonehammer and Planet Bean coffee stout–yep, a beer float with coffee and beer combining perfectly along with a deep chocolate brownie and a bit of Southbrook’s Bioflavia. This latter is a new healthy product: organic grape skin powder which is concentrated flavour and chock full of antioxidants.

See if this floats: stout, coffee, chocolate. They work very well together.

There is nothing like a fine meal and a stimulating conversation: Dr. Suzuki certainly provided that. He knocked down some myths and shredded up some ideologies but it was nothing to upset the digestion–unless you are a member of the Conservative Party of Canada.

At the end of the night, during the Q and A session, this Canadian icon said some very simple things: He has hope. He believes we are in a transition period. Don’t get yourself all worked up about having to use a plastic bag at the grocery store because you forgot re-useable ones. Try not to drive your car as much, but don’t lose sleep over it if you have to. He’s passionate, sometimes militant and angry, often sarcastic and biting. But he was also balanced.

It is perhaps a testament to what we are doing here in Waterloo Region that this busy–and now 75 year-old–icon travelled from Vancouver to spend six hours with us. Kudos to the World Accord folks for accomplishing that. And thanks to Borealis Grillhouse & Pub and our great local farmers and producers for feeding him–and us–so well.