Chef Claudio Aprile and Guest Chef, Curtis Duffy of Grace, Chicago, at Toronto's Colbourne Lane Restaurant

This special dinner event, at Chef Claudio Aprile's Colbourne Lane restaurant, was a blend of the cooking philosophies of 2 very prominent north american chefs who are cooking at the leading edge of current gastronomy. Chef Curtis Duffy, who formerly worked at Charlie trotter's, was a long time sous at Chicago's Alinea and was exec chef at Avenues in the Chicago Peninsula Hotel where he garnered many rave reviews. He is now about to open his own resto, Grace, in Chicago.

Tonight, my eating partner was the always delightful and perceptive free lance food writer/scientist, Renee Suen.(http://www.flickr.com/photos/sifu_renka/sets/72157630771230310/). I was lucky to be eating with her as my photo capture device (my trusty Blackberry) battery went dead!

We began with housemade pretzels topped with grainy mustard, olive oil and butter. Very tasty pretzel bread knots appeased our immediate appetites.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Lemon grass pudding with broken milk emulsion infused with kafir lime, lemon grass, galangal, finger limes and pureed, poached aloe. A refreshing beginning, but the ingredients were a bit too subtle to achieve any wow of flavour or texture for me.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Sweet corn soup surrounded a frozen, white hemispheric shell that had incorporated coriander blooms and was covered with recado nero (black burnt pepper paste, in this case more of an ash). The shell, made of coconut milk and ginger (the shell, somewhat reminiscent of a recent experience that I had at El Bulli) covered some cherries and a very tasty pieces of torn corn bread, raw and freeze dried corn. This was not only a work of art, it was a gustatory tour de force, with highly pleasing, lingering flavours, the most prominent being the wonderfully intense coriander which was the perfect complement for the very rich, sweet tasting corn soup.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Tomato salad. Reading such a simple description hardly prepared me for the blend of exquisitely enhanced, intense flavours of the poached and pealed, green and red cherry tomatoes, accompanied by a basil gel that captured all of the pungent flavour elements of that makes basil such a perfect complement for tomatoes. The crunchy texture of the toasted black quinoa combined with creme fraiche, black olive meringue, all dressed with a frozen vinaigrette brought this dish to even higher heights and was another major culinary highlight.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

A single, perfectly cooked scallop, poached at 118 degrees and seared on one side, accompanied by sambuca saturated tapioca pearls, hoja santa (a leaf found in middle America which has slight peppery and liquorice like flavours), puree of toasted goat's milk, root beer greens (which had a very mild fennel like flavour), shaved fennel bulb stock and fronds and a puffed, crispy tapioca cracker, all surrounded by a mildy tart hibiscus sauce. A beautifully presented, interesting dish with intriguing flavours and textures.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Braised and caramelized maitake mushroom, cocoa pudding, strawberries poached under pressure in strawberry liquid, sheep sorrel with African, South African and purple varieties, all covered in fried potato "strings". The strawberries had a wonderfully intense, lingering flavour that I felt somewhat overwhelmed the taste of the mushroom.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Tea smoked and cured arctic char that was perfectly "cooked", with thai flavours,  a delicious mango ketchup, tamarind puree, curled thin cucumber ribbons and puffed prawn crackers.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Rib eye steak with pressed, dehydrated and fried welsh onions, rye oats, black garlic puree, smoked parsnip puree, charred mustard greens and beef demi-glace. The flavours of the beef and it's accompanyments were thought provoking and delicious. Regarding the steak experience itself, the steak was properly rare but rated on the "beef boys" scale of 1-10 (10 being best) for taste/texture/juiciness, 7/5/6.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Berries: dulce de leche, crystallized wild flowers with frozen fruits: pomegranite seeds; blackberries; currants; kalamanci lime and crystallized wild flowers.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen

Carmelized sudachi (a citrus fruit related to the mandarin orange) with shaved cucumber ribbons, cucumber juice, crunchy peanut brittle, a baby cucumber with it's flower attached and African blue basil, a lovely still life all in it's own glass enclosed world. This was a very refreshing, creative dessert which I really loved. That was me that Renee captured in the background.

Image Courtesy Renee Suen