The ideal world’s Dine Around is about two things: A promotion that plants bums in seats in the slack season—and leaves us crowing “wotta deal!”—and a showcasing of what a kitchen can do for an uninitiated public.
That means going the distance. It all falls apart with delinquent restaurateurs and restaurants that simply repackage their a la carte menus, occasionally—outrageously—at higher-than-original prices.
One envisions tumbrels transporting the scoundrels down Government St. to the Inner Harbour, where on Saturday afternoons, to the roar of the mob and a merciless pelting with untrimmed sweetbreads, they’re obliged to walk the plank.
The chefs at the Copper Rock Grill in the Westin Bear Mountain Resort won’t be among them. If Panache is the resort’s luxe dining room, the Grill is its all-day, all-purpose restaurant and purveyor of salads, sandwiches and salmon. Just not at Dine Around time, when the handsome room framed in fireplaces comes packed with diners in the throes of surprise.
The amazing thing is how this kitchen kicks up its heels on a $25 menu. Ingredients are tops throughout. The plating is as artful as you’d find in the best high-end restaurants in town. There’s nary a house salad or gussied-up chicken breast in sight. Wotta deal.
A starter of lamb carpaccio brings two good slices of raw lamb, the edges barely seared with cumin and coriander, the flesh more flavourful than beef, a liberal sprinkling of sel de gris tickling the palate. The accompanying baby frisee and snow pea shoot salad dances the yin-yang, and you can bet the pickled forest mushrooms actually came from a forest.
If the toques are out to impress, they’re succeeding. A meld of deeply smoked tuna and diced red bell pepper comes garnished with fresh pea sprouts and baby curly endive, literally spiked with a prosciutto chip—this could be addictive—and dressed with olive oil infused with minced olives. These flavours add up to way more than the sum of their parts. And that’s what it’s all about.
Here’s to a menu where two of three mains are fish, the measure of any kitchen. Beet-marinated fillet of coho salmon arrives the colour of blood orange, roasted rare as ordered (for once) and with a consistency bordering on the unctuous. Israeli couscous adds pearls to the plate and chunks of Indian candy add the flavour boost. The dish is beautifully conceived.
Ever-so-delicate sablefish, a goodly hunk, gets equal respect. Gently poached in anise coconut broth, it falls apart at the tap of a fork. The Technicolor veg—potatoes, asparagus, baby carrots—couldn’t be better.
To finish, raspberry tart with white chocolate mascarpone is vastly less interesting than it sounds, but dark chocolate banana creme brulee, crust cracking like thin ice over chocolate quicksand, is a star.
VQA wine pairings—generous pours, too—are suggested with all three courses. If they don’t appeal, consider the Calona Artists Series Pinot Blanc ($26) from the wine list. Winemaker Howard Soon’s Burgundian bent dances with fishes, and splendidly.
Copper Rock Grill, 1999 Country Club Way, 250-391-7170
