Whistler’s Araxi restaurant just experienced the most successful summer season in its 28-year history, thanks in large part to the exposure it’s received on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s popular reality TV show, Hell’s Kitchen.

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ON THE PLATE: Chef from ‘Hell’ is a blessing for Whistler restaurant

It’s been an almost perfect year for Araxi. It began last winter when, after dining there, potty-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay declared the 28-year-old Whistler restaurant to be the best in Canada.

The comment raised many a local eyebrow. Most restaurant people I spoke to rightly doubted that Ramsay had crisscrossed the entire nation — dining extensively enough along the way in Gibsons, Guelph, Gaspé, and Gander — to make such a claim. Assumptive hyperbole wasn’t the sort of thing one would expect from the lips of Ramsay, a famously exacting chef, so this was weird.

Still, he may be right.

For my part, two of the top five meals I’ve ever had have been at Araxi. Both were lengthy, multi-course affairs showcasing locally sourced ingredients, from dry-aged Pemberton Meadows beef and crispy veal shortbreads to un-gnarled globe carrots and golden-coloured beets. Without a moment’s hesitation, I would count its executive chef, the quiet and unassuming James Walt, among this country’s greatest culinary assets.

Some confirmation of this can be found in the restaurant’s just-released cookbook, Araxi: Seasonal Recipes from the Celebrated Whistler Restaurant. It’s Walt’s magnum opus, an edible treatise on his long relationship with the restaurant and its many local suppliers, and the best cookbook that has landed on my desk so far this year. Local food writer and Montecristo magazine editor Jim Tobler provided much of the tome’s ancillary text, ably telling Araxi’s story in the voices of the people who’ve worked there over the years. It features over 30 recipes, each one emblematic of the restaurant’s locally-minded philosophy, laid plain for the home cook alongside stunning images from acclaimed food photographer by John Sherlock. All of Walt’s greatest hits are here, including my four favourites: cake-like herb-crusted halibut, earthy wild-mushroom consommé, gorgeous cheese-stuffed squash blossoms, and chilled English pea and mint soup.

But Araxi itself is lit by more than just the high wattage of Walt’s abilities as a chef. It’s a team effort, with pastry chef Aaron Heath’s superb desserts and petit fours softening the blow of the bill, and seamless front-of-house stage direction making for memorable evenings (and the desire to linger long). As for the room, it remains a timeless, leathery reserve of terra-cotta and taupes, an environment expertly served without being too formal.

But possibly the most impressive thing about Araxi, especially considering the town’s high turnover of workers, has been its uncanny ability to retain top-quality staff. Many on the payroll have been clocking in and out at Araxi for years, including one of Walt’s sous chefs, Tim Pickwell, who was a member of the opening crew back in 1981.

Clearly, Ramsay hadn’t just pulled his grand statement about Araxi from his arse. He’d dined there and been very impressed, but he also had good reason to pump it up. He would soon divulge that the winning chef from the sixth season of his Hell’s Kitchen reality TV show would be rewarded the ‘head chef’ position at Araxi, working directly under Walt. Since 99 per cent of the show’s millions of viewers would never have heard of Araxi, Ramsay’s declaration was more an exercise in justification than a tabling of considered opinion. He was genuinely smitten by the place.

“They source everything within 100 miles.” Ramsay gushed to Toronto’s CityNews, calling it a “template for every restaurant to follow.” When hosting Walt at his eponymous Los Angeles restaurant, Ramsay laid out an equally locavore spread that included all Californian ingredients and Californian wines — even Californian bottled water. “I think he was saying ‘thank you’ in a really cool way,” says Walt, who describes Ramsay as a “super-nice guy”.

The show, which closed out this week after airing every Tuesday night since July 21, has been good to the restaurant. According to Steve Edward, the restaurant’s director, after a dreadful winter Araxi enjoyed “the best summer since forever.” Speaking at last week’s cookbook launch (hosted high above Vancouver on the 58th floor of the Shangri-La Hotel), he told me that “all the best things that can happen have happened, all at the same time.”

For the show, Araxi installed TVs around the restaurant so their guests could watch while enjoying a “Hell’s Kitchen” menu of four courses for $35. “You had to book three weeks in advance,” he said, smiling as he remembered how his guests “were so engrossed by the show that they wouldn’t even move their elbows for us to put their plates down”.

Walt appears to be taking it all in stride. “What’s going on is pretty crazy,” he exhales, “but at the same time it’s all stuff that I like doing.”

And Araxi’s great year isn’t over yet. Walt will very soon be presented with an opportunity to prove Ramsay’s comments right: Should he beat out nine other top local chefs on October 23 at the Vancouver Gold Medal Plates cooking competition, he’ll move on to the Canadian Culinary Championships at the Sheraton Wall Centre on November 28, for the chance to be named the top chef in Canada.