Tonight: Dine LA Quickfire Competition Champion Crowned in Battle Dessert

Tonight at Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill at LA Live, Chefs Mark Peel (Campanile), Akira Hirose (Maison Akira), Octavio Becerra (Palate Food + Wine), and Eric Greenspan (The Foundry on Melrose), the four finalists in the Dine LA Quickfire compeition, will duke it out for the title of Champion in the final round of the competition, Battle: Dessert. Judging them will be Sherry Yard, the author and pastry chef at Spago, Russ Parsons from the LA Times and Evan Kleiman from Angeli Caffe and KCRW's Good Food.

Each chef in this battle won their preliminary round to advance to the finals.  The championship battle will be held from 6 - 8 pm tonight (Tuesday) and will be open to the public, so bring your sweet tooth as well as your camera. Savory food will be on offer as well, including $6 appetizer specials of spicy tuna tartare and slider trios.

Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill at L.A. LIVE
800 West Olympic Boulevard. Phone: 213.748.9700 Web site: here.

Dine LA Chefs Roundtable @ REDCAT

Last night six of the most prominent and successful chefs in LA participated in a roundtable discussion organized by DineLA, the team who brings you restaurant week. The participating chefs (from left to right in the photo below) were Wolfgang Puck, Karen Hatfield, Joachim Splichal, Susan Feniger, Josiah Citrin, and Mark Peel and the panel was moderated by local radio personality Lisa Foxx of 104.3 FM.

Food for the event was generously catered by the new local restaurant Starry Kitchen, led by the husband and wife team of Nguyen and Thi Tran. Their signature crispy tofu balls were very much in evidence. Starry Kitchen held an online contest two win tickets to the roundtable and the winning entry was this very cool game.

The event was held in REDCAT, in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The free tickets "sold out" in only 45 minutes according to event organizers. Wolfgang Puck's comments were very personal, speaking about how he got his start in kitchens at the age of 14 and how he overcame being fired from his first apprenticeship to his stepfather's not believing he should be a chef (he wanted him to be a mechanic). Feniger and Peel spoke a lot while Hatfield was mostly silent; it was like pulling teeth for Foxx to get her to say anything. She did say when asked what it takes to open your first restaurant, "Desire alone is not enough. You have to fight for every dollar you make." A group of culinary students sat in the first few rows and listened attentively.




The dining scene has evolved significantly since many of these chefs who are now major players and businesspeople in the dining industry in LA got started. As Puck put it, "when I came to LA it was an open playing field. The high end restaurants were all serving Continental cuisine." He was able to open Chinois without even knowing what fried rice was; something unimaginable now as the broader range of "ethnic" cuisine and flavors has filtered to the general population. Ingredients that were hard for even fine dining restaurants to obtain in the 80s are now readily available in your local supermarket.




Foxx was an unusual choice for a moderator. She is apparently a foodie and an investor in Citrin's Cache, which she brought up way too many times. Her style is perhaps more suited for drive time radio than moderating a panel of culinary heavyweights as she did not display a depth of knowledge about the dining scene in Los Angeles.

One potential grenade did not explode, as over the past week Peel has been in a nasty online imbroglio with a local writer/editor for LAist about a negative review she wrote about his new bar/restaurant The Tar Pit. No questions were asked about bloggers, yelpers or critics, and the author in question chose not to attend the panel.

It was interesting to see how many of the panelists had worked for either Puck, Splichal, or both. They have been godfathers/mentors to the younger generation of chefs that followed in their footsteps. Puck's honest responses were both entertaining and felt very genuine; there was nothing canned or rote about them. I'd happily sit through a Q&A with just him and a host any time, although next time bring in someone from the LA Times, Los Angeles magazine, Jonathan Gold or Ruth Reichl to moderate please.

The entire one hour talk can be viewed online here via streaming video.

Note, I assisted the Starry Kitchen team in their preparation for this event.

Santa Monica Farmers Market Panel Series - Spring 2010

Thursday evening the Santa Monica Farmers Market had its Spring 2010 quarterly panel series entitled Menu Minuet: How Chefs and Farmers keep seasonal produce on the plate while maintaining consistency on the menu. LA Weekly restaurant critic Jonathan Gold moderated a panel of restauranteurs Akasha Richmond of Akasha Restaurant in Culver City and Mark Peel of Campanile and the Tar Pit in Los Angeles and farmers Alex Weiser of Weiser Family Farms and Romeo Coleman of Coleman Family Farms.



The Weisers have been at the Santa Monica Farmers Market since its inception in 1981, when they started out by selling apples. Since then they have diversified their offerings, a strategy also employed by Coleman, which is known for their lettuces and herbs. Both farmers emphasized that offering a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs enables them to diversity their risk and offer more unusual varieties without the danger that the failure of any one crop due to weather or customer tastes would ruin their season.

Mark Peel said that "he is too lazy not to use what is in season. With seasonal ingredients you just don't need to do a lot to them."



In the photo above Chef Mark Peel speaks with Farmer Alex Weiser while Jonathan Gold looks on.

The farmers market has expanded the range of produce available to both restaurants and consumers and many of the farmers have taken it upon themselves to introduce new varieties to the market. Cavallo Nero was virtually unknown here until it appeared at the Santa Monica farmers market. Akasha Richmond said she goes to the market to "but what we need and to buy what is new. I love buying local produce. It is fun; it makes it exciting."

Both farms featured on the panel each grow over 100 varieties of products over the course of the year. Seasonal produce means that products are only available for part of the year, although the growing season here in Southern California is much longer than in other parts of the country. As Peel said, "Peaches in July are exquisite. An epiphany. That's when summer is over, when the last peaches are gone."

Grilled Cheese Invitational - 2010

This is the last cheese related post of the day. This past weekend about 8,000 Angelenos lined up to attend the 1st 8th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational. Unlike at the innagural LA Street Food Fest, the lines to get in moved very quickly. Admission was $10 and entitled attendees to a sample of a Tillamook grilled cheese sandwich and the opportunity to purchase mini grilled cheese sandwiches from a variety of vendors.

The lines for purchasing sandwiches/food was frequently very long, a consequence of less than 10 vendors selling grilled cheese sandwiches and the capacity crowd of 8,000 excited fans and judges.
The best of the sandwiches I ate was the fresh burrata with cherry tomatoes and salsa verde from the Campanile/Point booth. It was $4, double the price of the other sandwiches. Spendy but tasty. Chef Mark Peel was there in person working the grill.

Chef Eric Greenspan of the Foundry on Melrose and the upcoming Grilled Cheesery was also there grilling up with his staff. His line blended in with the Hot Knives folks, making it confusing.

It was fun and a good vibe but it was too hard to actually get some of the product. Waaaay better than the LA Street Food Fest, but there was still room for improvement if your goal was to sample several grilled cheeses that you couldn't normally get. I skipped the Grilled Cheese truck as their product is available all the time - why wait an hour in line in the heat for something that I can get another day without the wait?

Also sampled the Greenspan sandwich and one called "band Camp" from the Hot Knives folks which included cheddar and apple butter. I found it way too sweet - the apple overpowered everything else. The lines at Hot Knives were also the worst and most confusing as there was one line to pay and another to get your sandwich. As the lines were so long and the Hot Knives folks changed their offering each hour, when you got in the ordering line there was no way to know what sandwich you were likely to get when you finally made it to the front of the food line.


The photos to the left are of Mark Peel at the griddle and Eric Greenspan at his tent.