For his online food and wine event with The Tasting Club, the Brasserie Sagana chef and owner Marc Aubry shares his no-nonsense approach to pairing his food with fine wines, ECQ-style.
During this time of great uncertainty, we find ways to keep our sanity by indulging in simple joys. Many have taken up new hobbies, such as baking. People have used the free time to get into shape or at least maintain their physique by staying active. While those who long for company have turned to technology to keep in touch with family and friends.
Online events have truly filled a void, and while it can never replicate the same exuberance of a packed room, it seems to do the job of bringing people together and allowing us to enjoy a few beloved pre-pandemic activities. The Tasting Club is Kevin and Adrienne Charuel’s events company that does exactly as the name implies. They offer guests a taste of delicious food and drink while making it as much of a learning experience as possible.
The husband and wife team’s recent collaboration with Chef Marc Aubry’s Brasserie Sagana had guests sampling some of France’s highly ranked red and dessert wines. The Charuels brought in sampling tubes direct from various wine chateaux to be matched with Chef Marc’s regional French cuisine.
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While our current situation might seem complicated and make a highly typical activity more of an intricate production, Chef Marc decided it best to simplify when it came to menu planning. “I pretty much left it to Kevin to decide,” he says. “I gave him the dishes that travelled well enough and he worked on pairing them.”
These dishes are plucked from Sagana’s French bistro favourites—casual, homey, and very easy to love. But, most of all, they are not overly complex to assemble so that guests at home would not have had to spend hours in the kitchen. “Because it has to be delivered, I actually tried to come up with a menu that would be easy for the participants to put together,” Chef Marc explains. “I wanted something tasty, of course, but also practical and simple. I wanted the experience to be as close as possible to having it in the restaurant.”
The package of food and wine tubes came with instructions from both Marc and Kevin regarding food preparation and wine storage. While the food and wine stayed chilled in the refrigerator, participants enjoyed a quick run-through of the evening’s components. When that was done, the event guests were free to indulge in their dinner at will.
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