Sutton's "Salad Days, a celebration of culinary and visual arts
"Ready set go" Chef Christian and his crew of "Bistro Beauxlieux"
By M. Helmuth Starhemberg
For the past three weeks,eight local artists and eight local chefs have turned Sutton into a "Caesar salad town". The event was to be a competition, judged finally on Sunday, September 4, by local foodies and art lovers. The goal: To creat the best Caesar salad or to make the best painting of a salad. Throughout the competition, the salads were available at the participating local restaurants, which also featured not only the salad pictures but a whole range of the eight artist's works. It ended up a smashing success. On Saturday, hundreds crowded the tents set up downtown to sample the salads and view hundreds of beautifully presented paintings
.Many of the salads offered rivalled the visual effects of the paintings, some surpassed them in the expressed opinion of the happy samplers.
Called, "The Emperor of all salads", was the invention of Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant to Mexico, who first offered his famous creation in his restaurant "Caesar's Place" in Tijuana on July 4, 1924. He was a San Diego resident but bought the restaurant across the border to circumvent prohibition. Our readers may wish to get the original Cardini recipe for this fabulous dish and they can find it here:
http://kitchenproject.com/history/CaesarSalad/OriginalRecipeCaesarSalad.htm
Cardini continued to flourish and even marketed his own salad sauce which is still available today in the U.S.,55 years after his death. His grandchildren are still in the business of making sauce, teaching cooking classes and in the operation of restaurants which still heavily rely on the elder Cardini's reputation.
Why this competition? Why in Sutton? Well, someone had the great indea to misinterpret "Caesar" into the French "sixteen arts" and the idea was born to pit eight chefs against eight artists. The community group "Espace Sutton" jumped on it, as did the tourist office and numerous sponsors, and this weekend was living proof that even an obscure idea, if presented with great humor and a lot of free local participation, can generate a festive, cheerful event which has done the town a world of good and cost it almost nothing!
Sunday was judgment day: Phillipe Molle', food writer for the Montreal paper "Le Devoir" and columnist of culinary matters for Radio Canada (left rear) and Wayne Shanahan, owner of "La Rumeur Affame" in Sutton, and also the man who brought Boston Pizza to Quebec, were two of six judges and spent amost two hours sampling the salads while being entertained by the harmonica music of Marie Madore.
And the winner is: Chef Christian Beulieu of the Bistro Beauxlieux, with John Kostuik of the Auberge Appalaches in second place and third winner was chef Lionel Demontis of Restaurant A La Fontaine.
The judging of the salad paintings by the eight participating painters was done by ballot, where every visitor had the opportunity to vote and the awared went to Louise Poirier, representing the "Cafe Tarinizza". Her cheerful rendition of delicate leafes of the Romano salad was everone's favorite painting. Behind Louise is local painter Gerorge Constantin who is having a ball as always.
The organizers were so happy with this event that they vowed to make it an annual affair in town.
Most of the produce used at the Sutton restaurants come from Yannik Houle, Sutton's greengrocer, who had a fine stand of his produce near the show on Saturday
Eight different "salad paintings" were on display to be judged by the visitors
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