We sent a writer to sample food at the second annual UBC Chef Challenge, and this is what he had to say:
So what do we talk about when we talk about UBC food? Residence dining halls? Messy Subway sandwiches? Sub-par SUB food? (The pun never gets old.)
Say what you will about UBC food, but if you’ve ever been to UBC events such as the Vanier Formal Dinner, you know that UBC food can pretty good when it wants to be.
The second annual UBC Chef Challenge on July 10 gave three UBC food vendors -- UBC Food Services, AMS Conferences & Catering and Mahony & Sons -- a chance to show off their most prized canapés. The three groups competed in a globally inspired cook-off, and audiences voted to select the winner.
Last year, UBC Food Services won the challenge.
The rounds were split into three categories: seafood, veggie and meat, and each group served one canapé per round. In total, each person sampled nine canapés.
For the seafood round, UBC Food Services clearly had the best showing. Their UBC’eviche (the puns never stop) consisted of local halibut, scallops, lime, avocado and mango cilantro; it tasted great and I don’t think anything I ate afterwards managed to top it.
The AMS and Mahony and Sons made decent delicacies, but the standard wasn't quite as good. The AMS’s umami tuna tasted a too fishy, whereas Mahony and Sons' incredibly-good-looking smoked salmon on rye bread had its taste cancelled out by a cucumber cream cheese spread that tasted too strong.
Next up: the veggie canapés. UBC Food Services made a caramelized pear and gorgonzola pizzette, while AMS made a potato and egg yolk snack. Although food allergies kept me from eating them, they both looked very good, and everyone around me seemed to agree that both of them -- especially UBC’s -- were excellent.
I did get to try Mahony and Sons' sweet and spicy summer salsa featuring blueberries, strawberries and mangos on pita bread, but I found it a bit of a dud. I love salsa, I love blueberries and I love pita bread, but together they just aren't as good.
After these came the meat canapés: UBC served a crispy fried pork-belly slider, AMS served a pork terrine (one of my favourites from the whole night) and Mahony and Sons made a lamb slider on a brioche bun. Once again allergies barred me from eating UBC’s canapé, but it looked great, and many people seemed to love it.
The audience voted for their favourites in the end, and UBC Food Services once again came out on top. They won the “Golden Whisk Trophy” (actually a giant star) and got the losers to cook them dinner.
Even if I couldn’t eat all of their canapés, it’s clear that UBC Food Services deserved to win: their UBC’eviche was the best thing I had there, and there seemed to be a general consensus that their canapés were the best.
In the meantime, the MC played a game where audience members who danced, lip-synched or guessed the names to various food-themed songs (“Brown Sugar,” “Raspberry Beret," “Cherry Pie." etc.) won prizes. I managed to win a Molson Canadian hat by calling out The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar," so I left satisfied. However, it was a bit disappointing that nobody could do a killer drunken lip-sync to “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”
Ultimately it was a pretty good event, but it ran a little too long: starting at 4:30 p.m. and ending just before 7:30, I can’t see why it needed to last almost three hours.
If it ran just a little bit shorter and the canapés were less hit-and-miss, I would definitely recommend attending next’s years event.