Allez cuisine! The Gold Medal Plates black box competition

Last night, I attended the first night to the The Gold Medal Plates competition. Part culinary triathlon, part Olympic fundraiser, the GMP is a meeting of seven top chefs from across the country and they duke it out over three days in a series of challenges. The first event was yesterday's Iron Chef-like black box competition: The chefs are handed a mystery box of six ingredients and then given ten minutes to devise a menu of two dishes that use all the ingredients. They then announce their menu, submit it to the judges (comprised of food writers and chef-instructors), and create two dishes within the one-hour time limit.

James Chatto, food critic for Toronto Life, is the head judge of the competition and was responsible for choosing the six mystery ingredients. Five of them were local – organic flank steak, Georgian Bay whitefish, celery root, honeycomb and Ontario-grown peanuts – and one was the exotic import – plantains. Why this combination? "I wanted to make it difficult but keep it local," he said. "I added plantains because it can be both used as something sweet and as a starch." One of the competing chefs – Paul Rogalski from Rouge in Calgary – announced he had a peanut allergy upon declaring his two-dish menu. I asked Chatto later if he ever thought of the nutaphobes in his ingredient-selection and he blushed a bit. "It never crossed my mind."

The event took place at the culinary school at George Brown College. There were about 50 guests and judges, crammed into the school's kitchens, watching the chefs sweat out the challenge. It was like watching Iron Chef live, sans commentary and multiple camera angles, so it was a bit difficult to see what was going oe. Also, there were a throng of chefs, restaurateurs and foodie hanger-ons who were more amped about the free wine than about watching the competitors sweat it out, which made it even more difficult to decipher what was going on.

The chefs who took part:

· Anthony Walsh of Canoe (Toronto)
· Martin Ruiz Salvador of Fleur de Sel (Halifax)
· Roland Ménard of Manoir Hovey (Montréal)
· Melissa Craig of Barefoot Bistro (Vancouver)
· Paul Rogalski of Rouge (Calgary)
· Judy Wu of Wild Tangerine (Edmonton)
· Michael Moffatt of Beckta Dining and Wine (Ottawa-Gatineau)

Check out my preview of the GMP competition.

Also, here's a video of Anthony Walsh declaring his menu after his ten minute brainstorming period.