Chef Adam Pegg of La Quercia plates the mains – slow-roasted beef, braised chicken and polenta with mushrooms.EMILY COOPER
Name: Bacio Rosso
Location: Spiegeltent, Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park
Website: baciorosso.com
Additional Information: Tickets from $109; Open until Dec. 31, various times
Salvador Dali’s Les Dîners de Gala was reissued two years ago by Taschen Books. Originally published in 1973, the rare cult cookbook was inspired by the surrealist artist’s legendary dinner parties, at which guests dressed in costume and wild animals roamed freely. Stories about the book’s reprint have recently resurfaced on my social-media feeds. And as much as I covet a copy for Christmas, after seeing Bacio Rosso, I almost feel as though I have attended one of those bizarrely opulent fêtes.
Set under a gilded tent in Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park until the end of December, the vaudeville dinner theatre is billed as “Canada’s first ever Gourmet Cabaret Cirque.” An immersive experience, with comedians and jugglers tumbling up to the tables and a four-course meal by La Quercia restaurant served à la Busby Berkeley dance numbers between performances on centre stage, the evening sweeps you away in an eccentric dreamscape of outrageous comedy, sultry torch songs and erotic acrobatics.
I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, especially not when we were tromping through howling wind and lashing rain in a dark park without any discernible signage. Couldn’t the organizers have found a more easily accessible location?
The vaudeville dinner theatre by Bacio Rosso is billed as Canada’s first ever Gourmet Cabaret Cirque.Bacio Rosso
But then we rounded a corner and, feeling very much like Hansel and Gretel, stumbled upon the Magic Cristal Spiegeltent, eerily beckoning with its ghostly red carpet and velvet ropes, unattended yet awash in a golden glow.
Stepping through stained-glass doors, we were greeted by a dashing doorman, who later whipped off his suit and transformed into a dazzling trapeze artist (the show is full of topsy-turvy surprises).
I didn’t check my coat, fearing it would be cold, but you should. Once inside the tent – a glittering marvel of bevelled mirrors, dark wood, reams of red silk and gold trim – you wouldn’t even guess that it’s a temporary structure, albeit one that took three days and a team of engineers from Belgium to erect. Modelled on travelling dancehalls from the 1800s, this particular mirrored palace (spiegel meaning mirror in German) was built by Rik Klessens, a third-generation Spiegeltent maker and restorer, who resides in New York.
The whole magnificent kit and caboodle, several years in the making, was conjured by artistic director Scott Malcolm, who lives in Vancouver and has 15 years of experience directing similar cabarets in Europe and the United States, including the acclaimed Teatro ZinZanni in Seattle.
After predinner drinks in the foyer, we are ushered into the main hall by attendants squeezed into shapely corsets and plumed with feathers.
Thinly-sliced pork loin tonnato, tuna sauce deep with anchovies and garnished with a few curls of pork crackling.EMILY COOPER
The tables and outer booths are ringed around an elevated podium in the middle, where most of the action later takes place. On the far side of the room, Combo De Lux, a local five-piece band, fills the room with swinging bossa nova while a cast of characters ham it up in the aisles.
La Quercia is an interesting choice of caterer. The restaurant’s northern Italian dishes aren’t exactly mainstream fare, which seems appropriate for the venue. The meal starts with thinly sliced pork loin tonnato, its tuna sauce deep with anchovies, yet garnished with a few curls of pork crackling that seem tossed on superfluously.
The eggplant “lasagna” is a nice surprise. It’s actually a gluten-free and crisply fried parmigiana, layered in thin slices between lush béchamel.
The mains – slow-roasted beef, braised chicken and polenta with mushrooms – are hearty and flavourful. But there is no art in the plating or much textural contrast.
By the time a plain lemon cream arrives for dessert, it’s clear this is wallpaper food designed to blend into the background. Perhaps that was the intention, and it certainly tastes better than the average rubber-chicken banquet dinner, but you can’t help thinking that they could have made more of an effort.
Crema di Limone (Lemon Cream).EMILY COOPER
The pacing, however, is terrific. Unlike most dinner theatres, where you eat first and then settle in to watch, the courses keep streaming out between acts, like a performance unto itself.
New York-based cabaret star Lady Rizo (Amelia Zirin-Brown) emcees the evening, which is very loosely wound around a thin story line about two siblings marked by a mythical tale told by their father.
She started off with a clunker of a joke about Vancouver real estate prices, which was just too on-the-nose to be funny. But she soon seduced the crowd with her smoky voice and bawdy improvisation.
Kevin Kent plays her long-lost brother, a globetrotting butterfly hunter who later transforms into a flamboyant, baby-voiced drag queen. He is absolutely marvellous and gentle with his prey – several hapless audience members who get snared in his glittery net.
The clowning and magic are a bit ho-hum. A flute played through the nose evokes memories of a Ping-Pong show in a Bangkok strip club. But it all moves so quickly there is no time to get bored. And the acrobatics truly are stunning. These are world-class acts. And it’s rare to see these dazzling feats in a setting so intimate you can see – and for some folks at the front, actually feel – the sweat dripping.
Bacio Rosso won’t melt your mind with profound revelations or take your breath away with culinary pyrotechnics. But as an entertaining night out, it’s well worth the price (comparable to a Canucks ticket). And if dinner is a form of theatre, this is a glittery grandstand.