Roar chef Kaelhub Cudmore’s pantry is the ocean as well as Vancouver Island’s larder.
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Roar
Where: Hotel Zed, 1258 Pacific Rim Highway, Tofino
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When: Breakfast, lunch, dinner daily
Info: 250-725-7627. roartofino.com
Roar flickered to life on May 27. It’s the restaurant at the newest of three Hotel Zeds, this one in Tofino, and Kaelhub Cudmore is the chef in the wood-fired kitchen.
Cooking with fire began as a boy growing up on Vancouver Island beaches and later, camping, diving, canoeing and even free diving on the B.C. coast.
While doing a phone interview two weeks ago, he was oceanside, watching kayakers glide by.
“How can you beat this as office space?” Cudmore asked.
The next day, he was departing for a few days into the wild, his happy place. This was before the recent campfire ban went into place.
“I’m going up island with my diving gear, hang out by myself and I’m going to cook on a beach fire. I really think there’s a primal connection to fire. It represents so much — food, safety, security, survival.”
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Cudmore spent his youth planning an escape from the small towns he lived in, but he’s now come full circle and loving Tofino.
Previously, he’s worked at Fairmont Empress in Victoria, the Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, and Thomas Keller restaurants on the Seabourn cruise line.
Fire cooking, he said, isthe simplest way to cook.
“You let the food shine and as a chef, it’s almost cheating. We don’t grow the food. We find the best ingredients and put them on a plate and highlight them. They often get lost in techniques or whatever the trends happen to be.”
Something on almost every dish at Roarhas sizzled on the Spanish Mibrasa grill in a kitchen aromatized by wood and charcoal.
One of his best discoveries for ingredients are a couple of local First Nations fishers.
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“They go and fish for me. Literally, it’s fish on demand,” Cudmore said. “It’s traditional ancestral fishery, DFO approved and they catch by rod and land it on the boat by hand. The ocean’s basically my fridge.”
He gets the fish the same day.
When I visited, he’d bought some cabezon bycatch from them. I’d never heard of it.
“It’s a weird shape with big lips and big old fins. It takes a little more to butcher down. It’s firm like sturgeon and dulls your knife.”
Cudmore described the flavour as a cross between cod and halibut. He’ll often stuff whole fish with aromatics, warp it in seaweed and bury them in the coals to cook.
The rustic comfort food runs from $22 to $30 for main dishes on the dinner menu. They’re simply prepared but he throws in some curve balls.
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“I want intrigue and mystery and to create curiosity,” he said. “That’s why I use the flambadou. I love that little bit of excitement.”
The flambadou, a steel funnel with a long handle, was used to drizzle melted chicken and pork fat over my oysters as they grilled over fire. Cudmore uses grilling tools and cages and baskets forged by a blacksmith in the U.K.
Some dishes are memory flashbacks — his, mostly. The fire-hung chicken with rice cake and sausage gravy dish was inspired by the Peking duck that Asian cooks on the Seabourn cruise ship made for themselves with infinite patience and care.
“They prepared and hung 12 ducks (to dry), sleeping only two hours while tending it. It stuck with me. It was the best I’ve had and I really learned about what matters.”
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The hung chicken is his labour of love too.
“It’s almost like sous vide over fire. It’s slowly smoked over charcoal and you retain a ton of the moisture. The protein fibres don’t tighten up. Once off the fire, it’s broken down, brushed with a gastrique and dusted with crushed coriander as the skin caramelizes over charcoal.”
I regret not having ordered it.
For dinner, along with the oysters, I had the Island Greens salad with beautiful buffalo mozzarella, charred fruit, fire-roasted croutons, and a substantial and lively salad.
My husband’s charcoal beef chuck burger had great flavours going on between the house-made potato brioche buns — including pork crackling and roasted garlic aioli — but required a Jaws of Life to open wide enough for the burger, stacked about six inches high. He took to a knife and fork making for a no-fun, demolished burger.
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Desserts aren’t the same old, same old. Baked Tofino riffed on baked Alaska with a graham sponge and smoked chocolate sorbet encased in soft meringue with lashings of fudge sauce. Doughnut dunkers include three styles of doughnuts and three sauces — coffee caramel, chocolate and marshmallow. Don’t even try to attempt it on your own.
Breakfast and lunch menus aren’t the usual fare either.
“It ties in to the curiosity and mystery,” Cudmore said. “I’ve had pressure to move burgers to lunch but I like things different.”
The lunchtime Big Ash salad is, yes, heaping with greens sprouts, roasted mushrooms, charred veggies, pumpkin seeds and sesame vinaigrette. He kept the name of the dish family friendly by adding ash-cooked root veg. Ling cod and sweet potato cake on ciabatta is from another memory — his girlfriend, from Bermuda, made him a fish cake and banana sandwich with onion sauceon cinnamon bread. He balked but upon tasting, it “blew my socks off,” he says.
Roar’s beverage lineup includes a short but wide-ranging wine list and a solid selection of craft beers. The real stars of the show, however, are the inventive cocktails created by bar manager Dinah Kisil, who’s made many best bartender lists and once worked at the legendary American Bar in London’s Savoy Hotel.
Source: vancouversun.com
