Not the average foie gras: Ottawa prepares for Food & Wine Festival
- Travel News
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- Friday, 12 October 2012 16:42
The Ottawa Wine & Food Festival will take place from November 7 to 11, and famed Montréal chef Martin Picard is making an opening night appearance, putting a rather unique spin on the decadent foie gras: topping it with maple sugar.
"Everything is possible," Picard told the Ottawa Citizen. "[I] like to marry foie gras with maple syrup...Actually, maple syrup can be married with anything. If maple syrup was a woman, I would be married to it."
While he cannot reveal the rest of his four-course menu, which will be the opening meal to the festival on the evening of November 7, Picard and festival producer Joan Culliton are working all hours of the day to perfect each dish. This particular event will set visitors who travel to Ontario for the festival back $125 - which is well worth every penny because each dish is more extravagant than the next.
Following the opening dinner, foodies can pick and choose from any of the following series set to leave them satiated and filled with knowledge about Canada's culinary scene:
The Tasting Alley
Wine lovers will be in grape heaven for five full days during the festival, especially if they get tickets to the Tasting Alley on November 9 and 10. For a mere $85, visitors can enjoy two full hours of tasting and sampling more than 75 wines from around the world. Of course, there will also be food tasting areas so that guests can see how each wine complements a slab of stinky cheese or fruits.
A Taste of Kingston with Chef Clark Day
For three nights of the festival, chef Clark Day will create a three-course meal highlighting the culinary traditions of Kingston, which is located on the ST. Lawrence River. This region's fascinating cuisine merges native influences with Western cultures, and Day will be serving up dishes like water buffalo and Tamworth pork meatloaf along with duck and rabbit terrine.
Demonstrations and discovery
Even non-foodies will leave the festival with a newfound investment in the culinary world. After taking a few seminars in kitchen basics and farming techniques, visitors may soon have a deeper understanding of every single bite of food they take.
