Gold Medal Chef

Jean-Georges Vongerichten

I must admit to being starstruck at a Mondavi wine tasting event at Shangri-La’s Market restaurant during Olympic week in Vancouver.

It wasn’t that HBC designer Tu Ly was there, or that he introduced me to the delightful Gallant Law, the guy responsible for marketing the pants off the 2010 Olympics for VISA (presumably a good guy to know). Or, that I, exquisitely attired in my Olympic costume of jeans and a mustard-splotched Adidas jacket, bumped into the freshly tan and glowing Sarah Bancroft, whom I had the pleasure of working with on The Goods as well as Fashion magazine, along with her husband, restaurant consultant Murray, who had just returned from a dirty Valentines’ weekend in Baja.

No, what threw me for a loop was that I actually clinked glasses with the master chef Jean Georges Vongerichten. I am such a foodie nerd.

Naturally he was totally sweet and completely unassuming–the least likely to star in a remake of Hell’s Kitchen.

As a Torontonian, I just had to razz him a bit about choosing Vancouver over Toronto as his one and only Canadian location, and he took it like a  Belgian–with a shrug. The word however that this absurd state of affairs will not continue much longer as he plans to open a second Market in the Shangri La currently under construction in Toronto.