From a distance, chocolate sculpture might seem like magic as you wonder how simple chocolate can be turned into such spectacular shapes and colours. In the interest of helping you understand it a little better, I’d like to explain a few basics of chocolate sculpture.

Like a lot of art, chocolate sculpture has some science mixed into it. In this case, the science of “tempered” chocolate. Once you understand what tempered chocolate is and how to achieve it, creating a chocolate showpiece is relatively easy if you’re a “crafty” sort of person.

Tempered chocolate is the chocolate you buy in the store, the shiny hard snapping chocolate that doesn’t melt in your hands easily. It’s a complex emulsion of cocoa fat, cocoa mass and sugar melted, cooled according to a very specific set of rules to create a particular type of fat crystal. This crystal contracts when cooled and sticks similar crystals fiercely.

If you have ever melted chocolate, let it cool on your counter and noticed white powdery swirls form on the soft textured mass that feels greasy on your hands, you have experienced untempered chocolate. It doesn’t contract, doesn’t snap and will not shine because the fat crystals are the wrong type with the wrong shape, formed in a mixture at the wrong temperature.

The first thing that a chocolate sculptor has to do is to learn how to temper chocolate so that they can create the shapes needed for their piece. With this knowledge, a world of sculpting options are opened up.

A showpiece is a structure of chocolate pieces put together in such a way as to create an emotional experience, whether that be shock and awe or a profound “how did they do that”. In my experience, the best chocolate showpiece has a balanced composition: flow and movement are critical and colour and contrast are equally important.

There are two broad types of showpieces: competition level, all original structures fashioned by a true artist, a structure utilizing a vast array of techniques and custom hand fabricated moulds or intriguing pieces made quickly with commercial moulds and colour sprays. Either way, chocolate showpieces are surely an art form, and a great tasting one.

The photo galley includes some examples of chocolate showpieces created at The Dockside for various functions and you can look forward to another original creation to be unveiled on the Grand Mother’s day Brunch Buffet this Sunday.

Enjoy!
Chef Simon James McNeil

Dockside Legendary Jazz & Blues Brunch continues…

Due to the enormous popularity of the Sunday Jazz & Blues Brunch, we are continuing it in the New Year! All your favourite entertainers will continue with their weekly live sets during our fabulous Sunday Brunches. Stay tuned for our updated dates & be sure to make your reservations.

Upcoming Featured Artists

• May 05 – Dave Webb / Piano Bar
• May 12 – Dave “Double D” Dykhuizen / Trio
• May 19 – David “Boxcar” Gates / Solo
• May 26 – Brandon Isaak / Solo

Coal Harbour Liquor Store is pleased to present the Pelican Bay Spring Wine Tasting May 16th from 5-8pm at Dockside Restaurant in the Granville Island Hotel. Fifteen of the best wineries and distributors in British Columbia will be on hand pouring over 60 wines in Dockside’s award-winning waterfront setting.

The wines being poured will span the great wine growing regions of the World from Europe and South America to Australia and California. Of course, plenty of fantastic BC selections will be poured as well. Guests will also enjoy hors d’oeuvres from Dockside’s kitchen and the chance to win draw prizes from the Coal Harbour Liquor Store, Dockside Restaurant and the Granville Island Hotel.

Buy your tickets now before it’s sold out!

This year, celebrate Mother’s Day with the Chef’s Grand Mother’s Day Brunch at Dockside Restaurant in the Granville Island Hotel. A sumptuous menu created by Chef Simon McNeil served in Dockside’s award-winning waterfront setting is guaranteed to make this year’s Mother’s Day a special one.

The buffet selection spans everything from brunch classics like fresh-made omelettes and waffles to crisp salads, fresh-baked bread and pastries to Ocean Wise seafood,  a ham and roast beef carvery and enticing desserts. True to Chef Simon’s philosophy, the buffet will burst with dishes will be made from scratch– something mothers are also sure to love. Click HERE to view the full menu.

If the sun is shining, there’s no better place to enjoy the day than Dockside’s patio, voted “Best Patio in Vancouver” in the past two Georgia Straight Golden Plate Awards. Regardless of the weather, the dining room offers panoramic views of False Creek from the marinas of Granville Island to Science World. Once brunch is over, a brisk walk along the seawall or a wander through the artisans of Granville Island is a great way to get the blood moving again.

Two seatings, 10:30AM and 1:30PM will be offered for the Mother’s Day Buffet and reservations are strongly recommended to avoid disappointment. The buffet is $59.00per person (tax and gratuity extra) for adults, and $25 per child 6-12yrs (5 and under free). An 18% automatic gratuity will be charged for all cancelled reservations.

Call 604-685-7070 to reserve soon!

I’m talking about Eggs Benedict: the versatile framework that can be plugged with so many different combinations; the oh so tasty  treat on a Sunday morning with fresh juice and tea.  Does it get any better?

Eggs Benedict are a pain to make for most people, so we go out to enjoy them at a restaurant where someone else makes them for us. These days, sadly, commercial powdered hollandaise has become so cheap and prevalent that it’s hard to find a really good hand crafted Benny.

The Vancouver Foodster Eggs Benedict Challenge was a welcome chance to turn back the bad benny tide. Vancouver Foodster has solicited a plethora of entries from reputable kitchens across the city, but we think that Dockside has got the winner and we’re serving it up for breakfast and lunch daily. Pulled Ancho pork belly and smoked cheddar potato cakes are the foundation for a charred lemon hollandaise and rich omega eggs.  Our fire-roasted pepper sauce and fresh arugula give a foil to the fatty goodness that is the Dockside Benny.

Come in and enjoy one soon!

–Chef Simon McNeil

The entire family will be dazzled by the choices on offer: from soups, salads and fresh-baked goods, to waffle and omelette stations, a dazzling Carvery and tempting house made desserts. Click HERE for full menu details.

The buffet will be served 10:30AM-2:30PM on Easter Sunday, March 31st. The cost is $45.95pp for adults and $21.95pp for children 6-12yrs. Call 604-685-7070 and reserve early to avoid disappointment.

Every day is the same: you go to work, set up your station and make plates for guests. If you’re unlucky enough to work in a corporate chain kitchen, you’ll be assembling the same four or five plates, and if you work in a seedy pub it will be for the same four or five guests.

In the Spring, the menu might change a bit with dried fruits and nuts giving way to peas and tomatoes and the braised lamb shank changed up for grilled rack, and back again in the fall. Occasionally the kitchen might get pounded with orders if its sunny or if a bus load of Shriners show up and they all want half orders of fish and chips, but essentially it’s the same routine day after day. Line cooks that don’t work in the Hawksworths and the L’Abattoirs of the city for the most part get to work, get changed, set up, act out the menu, clean up and go home. No exaggeration.

Not so at Dockside.

At Dockside we can seat almost seven hundred people at once. We have almost thirty menus in print, with 95% of our products made in house, and a fridge that could double as Noah’s Ark (sans Noah and any “live”stock, if you know what I mean).

Take banquets, for example: we offer plated banquets for up to 220 guests with a choice of starter, main and dessert when you sit. Most hotels offering banquet service to large parties will offer menu number one, two or three to the host months before the actual function. You can expect all of your guests get the same plates and if there’s a choice, your guests will most likely be asked to pre order.

At Dockside, we do things differently.

Last  night was a night like any other night: we did a plated dinner for 180 guests and offered them their choice of appetizer and a choice of Halibut, Beef Tenderloin, Rossdown Farms Chicken Supreme or Grilled Asparagus Risotto entrees. At the same time, we did a smashing in house made dessert buffet, an off site catering for 150, a la carte dinner service, and, of course, room service.

Here are some pictures of the crew plating the main course banquet service and a few of the dessert buffet going up.

This level of daily change and flux certainly presents us with its fair share of stress and challenges but I’m proud to have a team which thrives on this changing environment, staying interested and at the top of our game no matter what comes our way!

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, please return your seats to the fully upright position and stow your tray table, because at The Dockside we’ve lost cabin pressure, every day  is a strap down blow your mind culinary rocket ride through the needles eye and back again, and though occasionally  we might pray for death, we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Hockey fans can watch the game on our HDTVs while they enjoy their cold beer and piping-hot pizzas, while those more interested in chat and company can settle into comfy seating by the a fireplace and enjoy the waterfront views from the warmth of the lounge.

There’s no excuse to stay home on Tuesdays and no better place to be than Dockside Restaurant and Brewing Company.

For service management, the planning for Valentine’s Day began months ago, writing and costing menus, proofing copy for advertising, dining room maps and reservation procedures for a night that is very different from any other service of the year. We call it “Deuced to Death”.  A table for two is called a deuce in the industry, so on a normal evening of two hundred covers we might have only 35 tables to service, a large party or two some eight tops, a six and lots of fours and only a dozen deuces.  But Saint Valentine prepares very different plans for February 14th.

I’ll explain: if a medium size restaurant is going to do 100 people for dinner and each person is going to have an appetiser, a main course and dessert, that’s 300 plates.  All these plates have between 3 and 9 components each, all with different holding temperatures and cooking times, and the kitchen and service staff have to expedite those plates all with in a few hours, but not when we want to send them, we have to do it when YOU want them.

A chef or expediter has to keep control of this mayhem in a kitchen that is usually too small (the acreage in the dining room generates revenue in the form of bums in seats, so the kitchen is as small as possible in most restaurant designs). Too hot, he or she has probably been there for too many hours and those hundreds of plates, being prepared by others with different build times and temperatures have to be synchronized to arrive at the right time every time so that every guest has to be happy.

This only gets more complicated when you have a room full of deuces: .there are more chits (the paper your table order is on), more decisions, the possibility for more mistakes and more calls for pick up on more courses.

Not fun, you might say? Chefs love it, in fact we thrive on this stress. While the general perception is that servers are mostly about the money, Chefs, those of us that chose our profession, actually welcome the stress and the constantly-changing tasks.  I am not sure if the industry makes us nuts or if you have to be nuts to get into it, but we wouldn’t be happy at a desk or even performing the same tasks day in and day out.

So Happy Valentines Day, I hope you enjoyed whatever you did and wherever you went.  Just remember the money you put down in trade for the mints or chocolates on your bill buys not only your dinner, it buys our time and passion. We work so you can love!

Thanks for reading,
Chef Simon

Here’s a preview of one of the appetizers we’ll be passing around during tonight’s Vancouver Foodster Food Talks event.

Take a Mini French Fry Cup, filled with Crab and Corn bisque and topped with melted Cheddar, it becomes….
Mini Crab Poutine!!!

You saw it here first!