Kelowna mixologist crowned BC Caesar champion

OK, from the top down we have a lemon-marinated prawn, sliced mango, pickled bean, olive, prosciutto-wrapped grilled pineapple, sun-dried pepper, cheddar cheese chunk, pepperoni stick, sliced hard-boiled egg and pickle spear.

It's the contents of the garnish skewer Kelowna mixologist Wyatt Cooper-Brown plunged into the Caesar cocktail that won him the BC Caesar Championships.

"When you're competing, you want to play it up and create the biggest garnish that makes sense," said Cooper-Brown, who is a mixologist and assistant food and beverage manager at Gulfstream restaurant in the Four Points by Sheraton hotel at Kelowna airport.

"The result was a balanced, beautiful Caesar with great presentation and a touching story that resonated with the judges."

Yes, that touching story.

Cooper-Brown called his winning Caesar 'Backyard Picnic' after the outdoor eats he and his mom had when he was a kid in Fergus, Ontario.

"We would just improv and take random stuff out of the fridge and put it in the basket to have a picnic in the backyard," he remembered.

"The ingredients for the skewer reminded me of that. It's very picnic-inspired. So, it had to be named 'Backyard Picnic'."

Cooper-Brown won Caesar Week Kelowna in May with his Hangar 18 creation.

Hangar is a building aircraft is stored in and was a great aviation tie-in to Gulfstream's location at the airport.

The Hangar 18 is now on the menu at Gulfstream in all it's glory.

It features a skewer that includes a slider hamburger, honey chicken wing and bacon.

After Cooper-Brown won the Kelowna competition he thought that was the end of it.

However, KelownaNow had him into its studio for a livestream broadcast touting his win and the Hangar 18.

International Pacific Sales, which represents Motts Clamato (the makers of the tomato-clam juice that makes a Caesar a Caesar) saw the livestream and invited Cooper-Brown to the BC's 'Best Caesar in Town' (aka the BC Caesar Championships) in Vancouver, hosted by Motts Clamato.

Cooper-Brown beat out six other mixologists in the contest and will now be the provincial representative at Motts' Canadian Caesar Championships at Oktoberfest in Kitchener on Oct. 11.

At the Vancouver clash, Cooper-Brown crafted his winning Caesar from 30 ingredients presented to competitors in a mystery 'black box'.

Cooper-Brown honed in on the whole prawn, peeled and deveined it and put it in lemon juice and used it as the base to build out the rest of the skewer and drink.

"Seafood goes well with exotic fruits, thus the mango and grilled pineapple," he said.

"And then the rest followed."

In the drink itself, Cooper-Brown substitued the classic vodka of a Caesar with gin and added clamato juice, pickle juice, green salsa, Worcestershire sauce and some Cattlemen's barbecue sauce.

He rimmed the glass with a blend of piri piri spice and garlic salt and pepper.

The Caesar is the uniquely Canadian take on the Bloody Mary.

The base of the Bloody Mary is vodka and tomato juice, whereas clamato juice is the definitive ingredient in the Caesar.

And, it got the name Caesar after the ancient Roman emperor because the cocktail was invented in 1969 by restaurant manager Walter Chell of the Calgary Inn as the signature drink for the hotel's new Italian restaurant.

Since then, the Caesar has become a Canadian icon with about 400 million of the drinks consumed in the country every year as the ideal hangover, brunch, lunch and in-an-airplane cocktail.

There's even a National Caesar Day every year in May.