Vancouver chefs capture the beauty—and taste—of cherry blossoms for Sakura at Home
The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s virtual fundraiser features take-out meals by some of the city’s best restaurants
On the Sakura at Home menu by Burdock & Co is a dish of cherry leaf-cured scallops with cherry-blossom gel and shiso cracker with house-cured sakura gel and ice.
Sakura at Home, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s virtual fundraiser, presented by McMillan, takes place April 25 from 6 to 7:30 pm PDT.
THE VANCOUVER CHERRY Blossom Festival is all about appreciating and celebrating the gorgeous trees that adorn our city—whether by picnicking under one, dancing with them, or simply strolling under a pink street canopy to take in so much delicate beauty.
Chefs pay tribute by using petals on the plate; bartenders incorporate blooms into beverages.
Sakura at Home is the festival’s 2021 virtual fundraiser featuring take-out menus by some of Vancouver’s best chefs, tasked with creating dishes that capture the beauty of the blossoms. Some of the meals come with sakura-inspired cocktails.
Taking place April 25, the event includes evening programming with appearances by Bard on the Beach artistic director Christopher Gaze, who’ll share some of the fest’s winning haiku; and drone pilot Patrick Weir of Peacemaker Filmworks, whose In Full Bloom drone short will have its world premiere. The Keefer Bar’s Amber Bruce, vice president of the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Professional Bartender’s Association, will teach people how to mix the Akebono cocktail.
Here are some of the culinary highlights.
Burdock & Co. chef-owner Andrea Carlson is cooking up a cherry leaf-cured scallop-and-shiso rice crisp with house-cured sakura gel and ice to start. The main course is burdock-and-sakura sausage, koji-cured pork jowl and collar with ume glaze, shallot-and-beet salad, and potato cream. To finish is sakura-milk custard with meringue-sour cherries and salted-cherry blossom sorbet. The Main Street farm-to-fork restaurant’s Cherry Cherry Bang Bang cocktail is made with Artisan Sakemaker Sake, jasmine tea, and cherry vodka.
Burdock & Co’s Cherry Cherry Bang Bang cocktail.
Sakura at Home with Salmon n' Bannock features candied salmon with maple drizzle and sweetgrass infused cherries; duck confit with cherry glaze and stewed cherries served on Ojibway wild rice with signature Bannock Bella Bella seaweed butter; and cherry walnut cake.
Chefs Meeru Dhalwala and Vikram Vij from Vij’s Restaurant have created an appetizer of papri chaat with sprouted lentils, potatoes, and organic blueberry chutney; the main dish is a choice of either Vij’s family creamy chicken curry or green onion, tomato and coconut-curried vegetables, each with cherry blossom basmati rice pilaf. Coconut pudding with fruits and rose water is for dessert.
Chefs Will Lew, Ocean Wise Sustainability Leader, and Clement Chan, Canada’s 2010 Chef of the Year, are teaming up for Sakura at Home; they’ve collaborated with Ocean Wise to select recommended restorative species.
The pair’s Edible Beach appetizer consists of edible pink scallop shells and smoked-salmon motoyaki with kelp. Their main course is sake-kasu honey-glazed Gindara sablefish on buckwheat soba with wild mushrooms, spring vegetables and smoked bacon dashi nage Sakura Sweets consist of matcha-white chocolate truffle, cherry blossom soy panna cotta, black sesame mini mochi cake, and umeboshi streusel.
Aburi sushi is on Miku Restaurant’s Sakura at Home menu.
At Miku Restaurant, Kazuya Matsuoka, corporate executive chef of Aburi Restaurants, is offering a platter with items like ebi fritter, white tiger prawn in herb-beer batter with sweet chili aioli, and pan-seared Hokkaido scallop and aburi sushi such as aburi salmon oshi (wild sockeye salmon), aburi ebi oshi (pressed prawn with ume sauce and lime zest), and sakura roll with spicy tuna, shiso, konbu dashi gelée, and salted sakura flower. Head pastry chef Kiko Nakata has come up with a silky white chocolate mousse with red berry ume shu compote, yuzu curd, almond sponge, ume meringue, ume shu gelée
Wild Origins is different. That’s the name of chef Paul Moran’s new Tofino-based foraging and wild-food company. This Inspired Primavera dinner for four meal kit will be mailed out and includes hand-foraged Yukon morel mushrooms, Haida Gwaii bull kelp, Saskatchewan wild rice. You’ll need some everyday ingredients from home and will get a video link to "cook along" with Moran.
Tickets, $150 (with a $100 tax receipt for Canadian residents), include one three-course take-out meal per ticket (with the exception of Wild Origins, which is the kit for four) and a link to the evening event. Funds go toward the festival’s arts and cultural programming, most of which is free
For more information, go to Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival.
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