Jaeger, Meister: A visit to Vancouver on the tips of one of the city’s great chefs
The Daily - Saturday, November 5, 2011
Everybody needs to get away, look around and see what they think of the world. Most of us simply want more, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the ones who return home — not just because Mom and Dad and all of their friends are there, but because they know it inside and out and love it absolutely. These are the people you want to show you around when you visit.
I first met chef Scott Jaeger at the Bocuse d’Or — a sort of international “Iron Chef Live!†before “Iron Chef†existed, hosted by French living-legend chef Paul Bocuse in Lyon. Here, Jaeger, representing Canada in 2007 in front of legions of fans wearing JAEGER hockey shirts, was in his ideal culinary milieu, with his French-influenced competition-style technical cuisine — food that is incredibly precise and time consuming.
Jaeger found his style in his travels, in the kitchens of London, France, Austria and Switzerland. He could have set up shop in any major city in the world, but in 1988 he returned to Vancouver, where he’d lived since the age of 15, and opened the Pear Tree restaurant in the suburb of Burnaby. Despite Canada’s then-status as a culinary outlier, and his home city’s reluctance to adopt the relative pomp and circumstance of the cuisine he loved, the ingredients were there and he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
“A West Coast suit is jeans, a sport coat and nice leather shoes. People have tried and failed to run fine dining establishments here because they were seen as pompous,†he said. “Vancouver doesn’t do the big city dining where you go for a cocktail, then somewhere else for dinner, then the theater and a drink afterward. Here, dinner is the show.â€
Perhaps that is why Jaeger sees the Vancouver dining scene as incredibly competitive.
“If you’re at a price point, the other restaurants in your category hold you to it,†he said. “At $30 a plate, it’s assumed you’re sourcing local, fresh and using the highest quality of ingredients. If not, diners will call you out on it because they have a lot of options.â€
On that note, Jaeger sends me out to get the lay of the land. I go to see his former sous chef, Lee Cooper, at L’Abattoir, now considered one of Canada’s top restaurants.
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