Iqaluit's Seal Café gets cooking
Seal an underappreciated ingredient says Réjean Vigneau
A Québécois chef is trying to spark interest in a rare ingredient.
Réjean Vigneau is a seal hunter in the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
He recently shared some dishes at Iqaluit's first Seal Café.
While seal meat is already a tradition for Inuit people, Vigneau is taking the cuisine in a new direction. His approach is more rooted in gourmet cuisine than the traditional Inuit way or the maritime home-cooking tradition of flipper pie.
"Tonight we are having people taste seal products in ways that people are not used to. Charcuterie, cooked and smoked," he said.
People at the event tried seal pate with pork and duck fat, smoked seal with cream cheese and even a seal pate with mango chutney.
Well-known Inuit culturalist Aaju Peter organized the café.
She says the enjoyment of seal meat has been unfairly maligned as a result of animal-rights' groups opposition to the seal harvest.
This week Peter invited Vigneau and photographer Yoannis Menge to Iqaluit after visiting the Magdalen Islands for a local festival called the seal celebration
She says the Seal Café is an example of Inuit, Francophone and East Coast cultures discovering common ground.
In this case, a love for a unique Canadian harvest.