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Game Time

Each year, a different chef gets the call to prepare this exclusive annual wild feast. This was Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson’s turn.

Each fall, my dear friend and hunting mentor Steven Latner and I get together to solve a difficult recurring problem. Namely, which chef should we enlist to prepare the next edition of his annual game and truffle banquet?

Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson of Restaurant Pearl Morissette.

The long-standing feast marks the culmination of two-months-plus in field and marsh, harvesting woodcock, ruffed grouse, duck, goose, pheasant, venison and moose — a supply often bolstered by spring turkey, wild salmon and halibut and, occasionally, some elk or sandhill crane. And the chefs who, over the last quarter century or so, have taken up the culinary challenge of showing these wild foods at their flavoursome best include Patrick Kriss, Jonathan Gushue, Danijel Dacha Markovic, Jason Bangerter and Michael Caballo — all of them preceded by a long defining run by the estimable David Lee (before he went over to the green side and turned his dignified Queen Street institution, Nota Bene, into the second outpost of the vegan chain Planta). Last year, we elected to hand the reins to Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson of Restaurant Pearl Morissette. As always, it was a feast to remember.

Eric Robertson plating venison consommé with bundles of herbs.

Some exquisite flavour combinations still linger vividly in my imagination — say, the tartare of moose accented with horseradish-leaf oil, minced grilled habanada peppers and a brunoise of mildly dehydrated Badger Flame beet, and the venison consommé with matsutake, meadowsweet and a venison chop on the side. Once again, the dinner was a showpiece for the thoughtful inventiveness of our best chefs — and an impressive measure of the riches of the Canadian wilderness, as expressed on a plate. But which chef to ask this year?

—JACOB RICHLER

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