De Luca's - Cooking Demonstration

Life imitating art. On an almost daily basis, as I am running around Winnipeg trying new restaurants, I find myself wondering just how this chef was able to infuse such incredible flavour, how they were able to transform ingredient X to Y, or how they can eloquently weave a story through their different courses. The same curiosity that moved me to start a food blog has also transformed me into a home chef. Although it seems that my dining out adventures are excessive, there are some ... infrequent ... times when I do like to stay home and cook. Therefore I was thrilled when my residency association hosted a cooking demonstration at De Luca's.

Standing handsomely on Portage Avenue, De Luca's touts themselves as a specialty foods cooking school and restaurant. At their heart De Luca's is inspired by Italian cuisine and tries to instill Italian culture and food through its numerous cooking classes and demonstrations. I applaud establishments in trying to accommodate and foster new generations of gourmet chefs.

De Luca's demonstration that particular night was in their cooking studio. Nicely decorated, the basement was a combination of huge open kitchen with banquet style dining hall; this allowed you to view the chefs as they demonstrated each dish. I was slightly disappointed that they only chose to show small segments of each dish ... a dressing here, a sauce there. I would have much preferred they start each dish from scratch ala a cooking show. It seemed at times that De Luca's was more interested in showing off their cooking talent rather than actually teaching the participants anything worthwhile.

One of the major barriers of a home chef is the daunting task of starting from scratch using fresh ingredients and I wish De Luca's would have used that as the initial point of view for the cooking demo. Nevertheless onto the food itself!

Mixed Greens with Pears was the starter for the group. Served with cambozola, pecans and finished with their champagne vinaigrette, this was completely, utterly average. On one hand I enjoyed the textural contrasts of the pears, greens, pecans and smooth cheese. However, on the other I did not care for the vinaigrette. For all the pomp and circumstance De Luca's made in their vinaigrette, it was bland, monotonous, too citrus-y and inferior to anything at your local grocer.

Pasta with Vodka Sauce was the next course. Tender tortiglioni and back bacon are mixed in their house "vodka" cheese sauce and finished with fresh Parmesan. This was a highlight of the dish as they paired tender pasta with a nice cream sauce. The addition of bacon worked well to add more fattiness but also a hint of saltiness and crispness. Overall tasty and well done.

Our main was the Chicken with Spinach & Ricotta with a white wine sauce and served with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. This was a table-wide disappointment: tender chicken breasts were stuffed with a tasteless spinach and ricotta mixture, paired with a soup-y sauce and completely average vegetables. For all the spectacle and work they made of stuffing the chicken, it turned out to be laughably dull in flavour, so much that it forces the viewer to wonder if its even worth any effort at all to stuff the chicken breasts.

Chocolate Nutella Lava Cake was the dessert of the night. The best part of the meal, a small ramekin full of airy, chocolate-y cake with a nice tart blackberry. The cake was well cooked with the inside exquisitely moist and contrasting the almost crisp outside well.

Overall De Luca's made too much adieu about nothing. If you are to educate and show people how to cook, I cannot understand why they would showcase such average dishes. There were strokes of deliciousness in this meal (i.e. lava cake and the pasta) but for every positive, De Luca's gave just as many negatives. At the end of the night I left with no more cooking knowledge than prior and was largely disappointed in the purported "specialty food cooking school". Do yourself a favour, there are higher quality demos on YouTube.