He may have been here only a few hours, but Jean-Georges Vongerichten is already smitten with Vancouver.
"I had three types of salmon for lunch, a dozen different oysters, scallops, sablefish - it's pretty amazing what you can get here," he enthuses. "If I was younger, I would probably have started here. I'm a big skier - it would have been a great time for me."
The celebrated New York-based chef speaks fast - in the manner of a man who doesn't waste time. How could he? He has 21 restaurants worldwide (eight in New York, including flagship Jean Georges).
And with more concept rooms being rolled out, it's surprising that Mr. Vongerichten pauses for breath, let alone conversation.
His first Canadian enterprise, Market - due to open in January at the Shangri-La Hotel - is only one of a number of new ventures on the slate for his Culinary Concepts empire. This month, the 51-year-old chef opened another Market in Mexico's Cabo San Lucas, and earlier this year he opened Spice Market restaurants in the W Hotels in Atlanta and Istanbul, with a third due in February in the W Doha.
He has never been to Vancouver before, he admits with a shrug. Well, that's not quite true: He used to land here when he had his Hong Kong restaurant, Vong. "Fifteen times, I think," he smiles. "I never got out of the airport. I had a favourite noodle shop."
Nor did he have any idea that his fellow New Yorker, Daniel Boulud, was expanding into the city until he had signed the contract with Shangri-La.
Did the Olympics figure into his decision? "No, no," he insists. "I actually didn't know the Olympics was coming until recently - after Beijing."
Just as he starts sounding a little too much like Sarah Palin, he claps his hands together and exclaims: "Thank God for Obama."
Last weekend in New York, following the U.S. election, his restaurants saw their biggest volume of customers since May. "I don't know if it was just celebration, or a real sense of hope."
Whatever it is, he welcomes it. The economy is a serious worry and it is no accident that his new restaurants take a less formal - and less expensive - stance than his Michelin-starred New York rooms.
In Vancouver's saturated restaurant market, it's hard not to see the arrival of two celebrity chefs as something of a showdown. They are friends, and Mr. Vongerichten is coming for the opening of Mr. Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne and revamped Lumière in December. But business is business.
"The question is, who will be more successful?" says Alan Richman, food and wine critic for GQ magazine. "Daniel's food appears simpler, but I have never seen anyone take basic, farmhouse-style French food and elevate it to haute cuisine better than he does."
On the other hand, he says, "Jean-Georges is a more complex culinary animal - you could argue that he is the most creative and successful chef ever to work in America."
For Mr. Boulud, speaking by phone from New York, the difference will be evident. "We are not going into a hotel," he says. "Lumière is independent and we are creating a local restaurant. Of course," he adds, laughing, "Jean-Georges gets to come check us out first - so he has an advantage."
Born into a coal-mining family in Alsace, France, Mr. Vongerichten walked away from the family business after his 16th birthday, when his parents took him to the late Paul Haeberlin's three-Michelin starred Auberge de L'Ill.
He apprenticed under Mr. Haeberlin, then the feted Paul Bocuse before moving to Bangkok's Mandarin Oriental hotel.
