Chocolate Meets Local at Langdon Hall with Chef Bangerter and Cacao Barry
Food and culinary experiences are becoming more and more popular in Canada. Stepping up to the plate, Canadian chefs are working hard to find a way to bring the most authentic food experiences to their guests, while keeping their guests interested and craving more. Innovation, authenticity and true Canadian spirit are all hallmarks of this new trend of dining experiences.
Earlier this month, we were treated to a gorgeous dinner at the renowned Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa, courtesy of Cacao Barry and Chef Jason Bangerter. Recently, the two joined forces to create the new Or’Noir Signature Terrior Noir 70% chocolate, and in honour of this momentous occasion, worked closely with Branding & Buzzing to put on a stellar dining experience that brought together a fusion of local, seasonal flavours and ingenious uses of Cacao Barry chocolate, woven through each dish. Truly, we delighted in the opportunity to try out one of Canada’s most celebrated chef’s intimate creations, and were excited to see how Chef Bangerter imagined dishes with Cacao Barry’s beautiful products.
With a long legacy defining chocolate for 175 years, Cacao Barry has been a prominent figure in the industry. In 1842, Charles Barry travelled to Africa to seek and harvest a selection of cocoa beans that would enable him to become the very first chocolate connoisseur. Expanding into Latin America, Cacao Barry soon perfected the art of transforming raw natural ingredients into the most refined and delicate cocoa and chocolate products.
From table to plate, the evening was perfect – each dish unique and flavourful in unassuming ways, but made lovelier by the specifically paired wines. The table, decorated with foliage and pieces of the first signs of spring from the Langdon Hall gardens: tree bark, moss and pastel-coloured hen eggs from Murray’s Farm nestled into the crevasses of a large tree branch.
The menu was made specifically to incorporate Cacao Barry’s chocolate, making it a very interesting meal. Seeing how Chef Bangerter incorporated a traditionally sweet and bitter ingredient into savoury dishes was a marvel. From a liver parfait with chocolate truffle crumb and chickweed to Champagne hen eggs (a dish Chef Bangerter prepared before our eyes) topped with sturgeon eggs and white chocolate, accompanied by a side of Langdon Hall’s homemade bread, the menu used unique ingredients tied together with chocolate. This bread was unlike any other – specifically because it was flavoured with hen skin and served with a chocolate butter and chicken skin lard.
Work that Chef Bangerter and his team are doing at Langdon Hall truly showcases what a little ingenuity and creativity can bring to your restaurant. Also, with such a strong emphasis on local and seasonal ingredients, it’s a reminder that the Canadian landscape truly provides us with some beautiful, quality pieces that we can easily incorporate into our dishes. All around an inspiring evening, and we thank Branding & Buzzing, Cacao Barry and Chef Bangerter for bringing such a beautiful dinner to us at Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa.
View the beautiful creations in the gallery below!
Gorgeous photography of the evening brought to you by the talented Jeffrey Chan.
