Raphaël Peruvian Cuisine’s chef-owner, who will compete at the upcoming Canadian Culinary Championship in Ottawa, sat with reporter Peter Hum for an exclusive video interview.
In the four months since his regional victory, Becerra has consulted with some of Ottawa’s top chefs about how to improve his dish.
“We’re still working and tweaking,” Becerra says of his dish, which features B.C. salmon with an escabeche demi-glace.
The Peru-born chef, who has been cooking for the past dozen years in Ottawa, divulges more about version 2.0 of his winning dish in the video interview that accompanies this story.
He explains that he’s made the dish more seasonal, appropriate for February rather than September, and simplified it, given the new brigade that will help him serve nearly 600 portions of the dish on Saturday night at the championship’s grand finale at the Rogers Centre Ottawa.
Whereas Becerra was surrounded by his restaurant’s crew at the regionals in September, he will work this weekend with just one chef from his restaurant plus students from Algonquin College’s culinary arts program.
This weekend, Becerra will cook off against nine other finalists who won their regional competitions from Vancouver to St. John’s.
While some chefs have a lot of competition experience, Becerra is new to such culinary exploits. “I cannot deny that we all feel nervous,” he says.
But Becerra says he’s been preparing for the championship’s ancillary black box and wine-pairing events while at the same time trying to smoothly operate his restaurant.
He also describes what makes Peruvian food so unique and potent, as well as his ambitions for his restaurant, which has grown over the years from a ghost kitchen in City Centre to a Clarence Street eatery to its present incarnation on Elgin Street.
In addition to promoting culinary excellence across the country, the national championship gives a portion of its proceeds to support national and Ottawa-area charities including MusiCounts, Spirit North, Ottawa Network for Education (ONFE) and BGC Ottawa.
Canadian Culinary Championship
When: Jan. 31 and Feb. 1
Where: Rogers Centre Ottawa and Collège La Cité