Dinner meets art with Whistler's Alta Bistro and Audain museum – Vancouver Sun

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Alta + Audain Fine Dining Art Experience

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Where: Audain Art Museum, 4350 Blackcomb Way, Whistler

When: Every Friday evening to Sept. 3

Info: audainartmuseum.com/alta (marketing@audainartmuseum.com); and altabistro.com/audain (604-932-2582)

Food aspires to be art. Art, on the other hand, isn’t keen to be a foodie. But the Audain Art Museum in Whistler has a thing for Alta Bistro, inviting the restaurant to its breathtaking property for dinner every Friday evening.

This summertime romance involves an haute four-course dinner inspired by artists and a “sampler” tour of the museum, as director and chief curator Curtis Collins describes it.

This year, the event has become very price-friendly, with the menu whittled down to four courses from the previous six. Collins is one of two tour guides introducing the B.C. art, and he also visits diners during the meal (groups are staggered for tours and dinner).

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I was touched by the tour as it features a number of historic and contemporary First Nations items. And in this time of reckoning over residential school horrors, the art opens doors to thousands of years of First Nations culture. The most stunning of the works is a wall-sized contemporary carving — The Dance Screen (The Scream Too) by Haida chief and sculptor James Hart — a plaintive howl against the current-day plight of salmon, which has been central to Haida culture. 

The museum, small in scale and big on drama and intimacy, somehow amplifies the voice of art. “As a boutique museum, our strengths are in carvings, paintings by artists such as Emily Carr and Jack Shadbolt, photo-based art by Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham,” says Curtis. “These sampler tours are exactly that. They’re a taster to get you back. Everyone who attends gets a free pass for that weekend, and hopefully they will return and take in the collection. The longer-term goal is that we become a regular stop.”

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Better yet, it will trigger generosity. “We received an email today (from an attendee of the event) offering a major donation of a work of art,” he says.

After the tour, guests go outdoors, descending stairs to an open space under a floating portion of the building, framing a meadow and grove of trees. Alta Bistro chef and co-owner Nick Cassettari gets to display his haute skills, elevating locally driven bistro food with a touch of whimsy. “It’s an opportunity to have flair and exercise culinary inspiration,” he says.

He has cooked at Quay, one of Australia’s leading restaurants, and staged at Michelin-starred spots in Europe. In Whistler, he has cooked at Araxi and Nita Lake Lodge. I’ve always adored his spot-on bistro-style food and love to see his creativity unleashed. And if you ask me, the fresh, aromatic mountain air adds another layer of delicious.

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Picasso kicked off the dinner. “Toward the end of his life, he became quite a hypochondriac and only ate porridge, fish and vegetables,” says Cassettari. The dish gives us an upscale hypochondria: an arrangement of wild rice croquettes, halibut, grilled octopus with roasted grape escabeche and Pemberton crudités.

The second course conjures Andy Warhol with a panzanella salad do-over served in a Campbell’s soup can. Lift the can for the reveal: house-made bread, flattened, moulded into a tube, then dehydrated and baked. Inside this cracker-like cylinder sits a tomato salad. A server pours concentrated gazpacho dressing over it. “Who expects there to be a salad under the can. It took a tremendous amount of work to figure out,” Cassettari says. He adds a bit of tomato stem to the gazpacho. “It’s full of crazy aromatic oils. I bash up a little of it and throw it in the blender.” Good tip.

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Next up: Vittore Carpaccio, an early Venetian Renaissance painter, the namesake for the thinly sliced raw meat. Chef made a gorgeous Wagyu beef carpaccio, served loosely over roasted and sliced forma nova beets (they’re long, not round shaped), smoked goat feta with wild blue spruce, and sour cherry vinaigrette. Carpaccio, the dish, was first served at Harry’s Bar in Venice to a countess whose doctor recommended she eat raw meat, and named after the artist who used a lot of reds and browns, the colours of raw meat.

And for dessert, aJackson Pollock scribble of sauces over a plant-based cashew and vanilla mousse with an assertive circle of orange from a grilled peach half.

The dinners, which continue to Sept. 3, cost $99, and wine pairings can be ordered by the glass or paired with each course for $49. The menu will change with another roster of artist-inspired dishes on Aug. 13. 

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“Bookings are going really well,” says Alta Bistro co-owner Eric Griffith. “If you book last minute, you’re not going to get in.” In other words, you snooze, you lose.

SIDE DISHES

Some hearts grew bigger during the pandemic. Organic Ocean — a premium sustainable seafood supplier to discriminating, conservation-minded, high-end chefs locally and abroad — stepped up its charitable program just as restaurants and chefs had to cut back drastically on orders.

The company started an online retail store to sell product and keep employees and fishers employed. It turned out to be a hit. “After it was clear, online was going to be a permanent part of our business, we wanted to build in a social component. It’s part of our DNA,” says company president Guy Dean. “People think sustainability is associated with the environment. We think it’s more. It’s environment, economics and social.”

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So the company created Neighbours Helping Neighbours, donating two meals worth of seafood for every online order received. (A typical order is about $200.) It has donated to The Vancouver Aquarium and the Kelty Patrick Dennehy Foundation which helps those with social and mental issues. As well, it has donated seafood to A Loving Spoonful, Union Gospel Mission, Goodly Foods Society, Growing Chefs, Squamish and Langley Food Banks, and The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto. Since late December, they donated more than $15,000 worth of seafood, or 5,647 meals via A Loving Spoonful and The Stop Community Food Centre alone.

Now, they’ve made the charitable donations permanent, relaunching the program as Until We Are All Fed, donating seafood “for as long as it takes to end hunger in the community.” That, Dean says, appears it will be “in perpetuity.”

mia.stainsby@shaw.ca

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