Dining Out
Karl Wells
Barsky ready for battle
Mike Barsky is a chef who is not comfortable blowing his own horn. He just likes to cook and let the food speak for him. I say to heck with that. If I think a chef is good then I have no problem blowing the horn for him – or her. (I’ve promoted dozens of local chefs via print and television over the past 20 years. If you’re an artist with a brilliant product then people should know about it.) So, I now climb onto my soapbox to sound the trumpet for Chef Mike Barsky of Bacalao, 65 Lemarchant Road.
Barsky accomplished something very significant this past November. Among an extremely competitive field of chefs – several award winning – he took home the gold medal at Gold Medal Plates St. John’s. That is a big deal. (Gold Medal Plates is part culinary competition and part fundraiser for the Canadian Olympic Foundation.)
Because of the win he and his Bacalao team will travel to Kelowna, British Columbia next month to represent Newfoundland and Labrador at the Canadian Culinary Championships. (I am obliged to tell you that I am a Gold Medal Plates judge and also a judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships.)
Mike Barsky’s dish was as local as Alan Doyle’s particular Newfoundland brogue. In fact, the only ingredients that did not originate on this island were the spices, cooking oil and panko breadcrumbs. Wilson’s Newfoundland goat (various parts, including tongue and brain), locally made goat cheese (from Five Brothers), partridgeberries and Fagan’s Farm turnip all figured in Barsky’s remarkable dish. It featured seared goat loin, panko-crusted goat rillettes, pickled goat tongue, mousse aux cerveaux or goat brains, crumbled goat-cheese sablé, saffron goat milk pudding, turnip Parisienne, Brussels sprout petals, partridgeberry and Pelee Island pinot noir demi-glace.
Beautiful
In the past three Gold Medal Plates St. John’s competitions all of Chef Barsky’s dishes have been quite competitive; but this year, to use the hackneyed phrase, “he knocked it out of the park.” His dish was original, it displayed beautiful harmony, it tasted great, and was beautiful to look at. Mike Barsky set an example at the competition that’s worth highlighting here. He proved that even though a chef might compete for two, three or more years at Gold Medal Plates and not place, it is still possible that one year everything will come together and result in a gold medal – including an opportunity to compete against the best chefs in Canada at the Canadian Culinary championships.
I had brunch at Bacalao this week and over a plate of fried green eggs (that’s eggs with pesto), and lamb sausage we chatted about the upcoming event in Kelowna. I asked him how he feels going up against some of the best chefs in Canada like Vancouver’s Rob Feenie and Ontario’s Jonathan Gushue.
“It’s an honour to represent Newfoundland, and we also feel some pressure because we want to be good ambassadors of Newfoundland cuisine to the rest of the country. We have an amazing culinary scene in this province and this is another opportunity to share it. We’re fans of Rob’s from his TV shows so it’ll be fun to meet him. We’re also looking forward to meeting Jonathan Gushue, the gold medallist from the Toronto competition who’s originally from Newfoundland.”
Barsky will take his gold medal plates gold winning dish to Kelowna but I was curious about the process of creating a dish for a high level competition like Gold Medal Plates.
“There’s a lot to consider. It has to be something that can be plated at essentially a makeshift kitchen and that can be plated quickly enough to serve 400 plus guests in 90 minutes – but also be a potential gold medal winner! So you have to try to compose a dish where most elements are made ahead with perhaps just one or two elements left to cook on-site. (We fried the rillettes and seared the loin on site, everything else we could warm.) It has to be beautiful; easy to eat while guests are standing and holding a glass of wine; for the judges, there has to be a “wow” factor, and of course, it has to be delicious. For Bacalao we impose another restriction on ourselves. The ingredients have to be local. Every single ingredient, with the exception of the spices, oil and panko, were local.”
The team
Team Bacalao in Kelowna will consist of Barsky, former Gold Medal Plates gold medallist, Ivan Kyutukchiev, Matt McDonald, and Bacalao’s co-owner Andrea Maunder – who is also married to Mike Barsky. Maunder is going because she knows wine and her knowledge and experience will be critical in Kelowna. One of the challenges of the 2-day competition will be creating a dish that pairs perfectly with a mystery wine. Barsky calls Maunder his “ace-in-the-hole”.
“Her skills as a wine expert will really help us with the wine pairing competition. We’ll be given an unmarked bottle of wine to taste the first night and then have to prepare a matching dish for around 300 people the following day. I’ll have the good fortune of having a wine-expert in my hotel room!”
While Barsky and company will receive an allowance from Gold Medal Plates to cover the cost of 2 people, ingredients and transport; they still need to find money to pay the expenses of remaining team members. To help with that Barsky says Bacalao will host a special fund raising dinner for 75 people on Feb. 2.
“We’re calling it our “Run the Goat to Kelowna” fundraising dinner. So, if your readers would like to be part of the Newfoundland team in Kelowna, they can support us by coming to the dinner or by donating a silent auction item.”
Cost for the dinner is $125 per person (taxes in) for a seven-course menu with paired wines. To reserve a seat, call Bacalao at 579-6565.
Published in The Telegram, Jan. 21, 2012




















