Review: Yes, Araxi is a top table

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Araxi

Where: 4222 Village Square, Whistler

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When: Dinner, daily

Info and reservations: 604-932-4540. araxi.com

Three hundred diners expect a posh, delicious dinner, served at the same time, in the middle of a grassy farmers field — what are you going to do? Well, you go forth and do it.

Araxi, along with sibling Whistler restaurants Bar Oso and Il Caminetto, recently pulled off the 11th Araxi Longtable Dinner at North Arm Farm in Pemberton after the no-fun COVID-19 years. Guests were thrilled, especially the lively, wine-fuelled ones at Table 9 who defibrillated nearby guests, somewhat socially out-of-practice. The event was meant for 200 but tickets sold out immediately and add-ons of disappointed, loyal fans resulted in a final head count of 300.

It’s a beautiful sight to behold. Tables, dressed in spanking white, stretched to infinity. Wine-loosened diners have, in the past, crawled under tables to cut a short path to washrooms on the opposite side. Only the airborne could take a single photo of the entire table set upon lush grass with Mount Currie, presiding nearby like a fat Buddha.

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The original Longtable was born after Araxi catered such a dinner for Outstanding in the Field, which produces such dinners on farms. Easy-peasy, Araxi felt, and thus began their own annual event. Most of the makings for the meal come from Pemberton farm connections like North Arm, Goodfield, and Rootdown.

I asked how the blueberry ice-cream bar, one of the desserts, survived the no-freezer event so well.

“There’s a bit of a timing issue,” said Araxi manager and wine director Jason Kawaguchi. “It’s made in our kitchen and delivery is timed for when it’s needed. The pastry chef drives it up with dry ice.”

Other dishes included a charcuterie board featuring salamis, ham hock terrine, duck liver parfait and Iberico ham, caprese salad, pea ricotta agnolotti, beef striploin and birch syrup short rib, both slow-roasted over a barbecue, and a beet and raspberry red velvet cake with cheesecake ganache and beet gel.

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B.C. wines lubricated us from the cocktail reception to the last dessert. Shuttle buses to and from Whistler allowed tippling.

Industry-wide supply chain and staffing issues didn’t spare them.

“I really, really, really had to convince my daughter to come up and help,” Kawaguchi said. “And we brought in staff from our other restaurants.”

Challenges, some years, can be a scorching Pemberton sun — tents are on standby — and the mosquito brigade.

“The bugs can be terrible after sundown and we get out of there quickly after sunset,” said Kawaguchi. They provide bug spray for the marauders.

The most memorable Longtable involved torrents of rain and a tantrum of wind which crashed the event for about 10 minutes on an otherwise sunny day one year. Diners dove under tables; staff scrambled to set up tents over tables and they flailed in the wind.

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“The rainstorm dinner was the most exciting,” Kawaguchi said. “It’s the one everyone remembers most.”

Araxi is but one member of the Toptable Group, which has ramped up the idea of going forth and doing things. The group runs Blue Water Cafe, Cin Cin, Elisa and two Thierry Chocolatier/Patisserie shops, all in Vancouver, as well as Araxi, Il Caminetto and Bar Oso in Whistler, and Oceans in New York City. Luigi & Sons butcher shop/takeout opened this summer next to Elisa and this winter, they will complete an expansion to Bar Oso, and open a yet unnamed casual food venue on the same block. Another Thierry opens in West Vancouver soon and things are “pretty darn close” to them opening a yet unnamed restaurant-in-waiting in Victoria.

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I visited Araxi in Whistler the day after the Longtable as it’s been years since I’ve written about the 40-year-old restaurant, still holding her own as an actual top table in the town. At this top table, I confess I went the washroom and returned with a back-of-skirt malfunction. My husband scanned the room and pronounced “NO-body noticed!” I needed to believe.

A new executive chef, Joel LaBute, replaced Jeff Park recently. In a quick chat with Park at the Longtable, I learn Park will be moving to Victoria with his family and making a career switch to carpentry.

The incoming LaBute hopped over from Fairmont Hotel Whistler last June, where he had replaced exec chef Derek Bendig, who in turn, moved over to hottie, Wild Blue Restaurant and Bar. The latter, alas, wasn’t open on my free day in Whistler.

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Previously, LaBute had worked at fine dining establishments in Ontario, as senior sous at Langdon Hall and exec chef at Cambridge Mill, both in Cambridge.

Having operated an organic farm on the side in Ontario, he’s a farm-to-table chef and plans are for more wilderness to table.

“One thing I want to take a deep dive into is exploring more of what ingredients the mountains have to offer. In Europe, similar places in the mountains take it to another level,” he said

LaBute has started by adding foraged sea buckthorn and elderberries to his larder.

Prices for mains at Araxi range from $34 to $60, the latter for a beef tenderloin steak.

LaBute allows the farmer’s work to shine. A tomato, feta and grilled peach salad featured mind-blowingly good tomatoes. They were from Goodfield Farms where Jesse Fromowitz cross-pollinated tomato flowers by hand, producing this sweet and sexy hybrid. LaBute didn’t mess with perfection, only adding subtle complexity with elderflower and tomato water. For the latter, he used very ripened tomatoes that otherwise wouldn’t have sold.

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“I’m following an ethos that’s already at Araxi,” he said of supporting local farmers.

Another mindblower was a slice of melon with a wagyu beef carpaccio throw. The melon was still warm from the field — another Fromowitz baby. He cross-pollinated Montreal melon with cantaloupe, resulting in a sweet and creamy offspring.

“I took ‘em all. They hadn’t hit the fridge yet,” LaBute said upon tasting what Fromowitz brought to the kitchen.

My mentaiko pasta with bucatini noodles, Humboldt squid, white lemon cream sauce, spicy cod roe, garlic chips and seaweed breadcrumbs was lovely. Mentaiko pasta is an east-meets-west dish in Japan. The creamy sauce clung nicely to the pasta and I loved the subtle levels of umami.

Ginger-braised pork belly and scallops starts with the pork, tenderized in a beer-style ginger ale and ginger and spice marinade, then is braised low and slow. The dish was a landscape of pork belly, grilled scallops, maitake mushrooms and carrots with cauliflower purée and bonito beurre blanc.

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A dish I’ve had before and love-love-love is the miso marinated sablefish with shiitake, daikon, dashi broth, shaved radishes, sesame and chili baby bok choy. Toptable’s Whistler culinary director James Walt created it years ago and it lives on at Araxi and some other Toptable Group restaurants because “it’s plain and simple good,” LaBute said.

Araxi’s extensive and lauded wine list is one of the best in the province. You might want to peruse it on the website in advance because at 45 pages, it’s a lot to take in. There’s a strong showing from B.C. and California but the cellar truly shows its depth in the wines of France (especially Bourgogne) and Italy. There are 40 different French champagnes alone. The one-percenters might fancy a bottle of 2014 Domaine de l.a. Romanée-Conti, La Tâche, Grand Cru for a cool $13,899 but there’s plenty for the rest of us mere mortals too. If it’s all a bit overwhelming, consult Kawaguchi and his team of sommeliers. 

Then there’s the rest of the beverage program — another 20 pages of cocktails, spirits, beers and other drinks. When we visited, the summer program of cocktails featured light and refreshing creations.

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