Culinary Exchange - Day Six

Today was a long and busy day. We got up early to go to a nearby Farmer's Market. Without totally thinking this through - we wore our chef whites to the market, and immediately became celebrities and the talk of the town. After the market we headed to a local famous tv food network chef's house. She prepared brunch for us. testing out new baked good recipes for her upcoming holiday cookbook. We even got a tour of her kitchen, and she was happy to give us a lot of advice.

Then we had a big day at the Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration event. We went to the school and packed up all our prep from the day before - all of the food and equipment we would need to pull off this event off-site. We had a refrigerated box truck, a catering truck, and a tent in a parking lot with folding tables to pull this off. The majority of the prep had to have been done in advance as we had very limited space, utilities, and equipment. The plates also had to come together easily and quickly, and be stable as servers had to walk about 200 meters across grass to deliver food.

The menu was a six course meal, each course pairing well with a chardonnay wine. Each course was also designed and prepared by a different chef/winery team in the area. So we had a team of about twenty chef in total - which was a lot of hands for plating assembly-line style, but also left a lot of opportunity for head-butting. It was unwrapping, polishing, stacking, and laying out thousands of plates, cutlery, and more. But once the meal began, the execution and service just flew by!

We finished up late in the night, then got together as a group to unwind.

Farmers Market

Brunch at the celebrity chef's house

chardonnay festival

Dinner tables

Salad course

Dessert platter