Eateries join Beard education drive

Usually when the talk turns to the James Beard Foundation, it is in the spring. The annual James Beard Awards are to chefs, restauratuers, cookbook authors and food writers (and broadcasters) the Oscars of the food world. Of late, the Beard Foundation has gradually become a year-round presence. In selected cities the organization sponsors cooking collaborations and this year, a challenge.
In 10 cities across the country – the closest being Boston – Chef’s Table nights were held this fall. At an additional 100 or so eateries, the Taste America Local Dish Challenge took place during the months of September and October. Chefs at restaurants in major food cities nationwide each created a special dish exclusive to his or her own location that became the Taste America Local Dish. The restaurant ownership then made a pledge to donate one dollar from every dish sold to the Beard Foundation’s Taste America education drive.
The idea is for patrons to visit the restaurant and not only order but photograph the local dish, then post to the social site Instagram. There is a local-pride rooting interest with a single city winning a donation of $10,000, or 10 percent of the proceeds raised nationally – whichever is larger – for a local food charity. Providence is one of a very few participating cities in New England, joining Boston, Portland and Bridgeport.
The local dish at Hourglass Brasserie in Bristol created by chef Rizwan Ahmed was butter-poached lobster with celery, bok choy, beech mushrooms, shrimp ravioli and lobster broth. Rhode Island’s local charity was Farm Fresh Rhode Island. Also representing Rhode Island in the competition was Farmstead on Providence’s East Side where chef and proprietor Matt Jennings squeezed in the competition between a trip to Nantucket to host an event, featuring his passion charcuterie, called HOGtoberfest. One of Jennings’ fellow Rhode Island chefs, owners and James Beard Award nominees Champe Speidel of Bristol’s Persimmon modern restaurant, was creating for the Taste America competition one of his ingredient- and technique-driven specialties reflecting American cuisine.
Lydia Shire of Boston’s Scampo restaurant and Towne Stove and Spirits hosted a group of chefs at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts in mid-October. The group collaborated on a multicourse dinner. Eleven chefs each prepared a course or created a signature canapé for the pre-event cocktail party. Shire made lobster bisque topped with New England finnan haddie.
Most of the star-studded lineup were chefs with kitchens in Boston, including James Beard award winner Brooke Vosika of the Four Seasons Hotel. Also on hand was Joanne Chang, from Flour Bakery and Café, who has enjoyed some national notoriety on reality-chef competition shows.
Featured guest chef was “Top Chef” Season Six winner Michael Voltaggio from Los Angeles. Voltaggio, one of the up-and-coming chefs on the national scene, is one of the foundation’s all-stars on an expert panel of culinary celebrities. He joins such notables as Jacques Pepin, Rick Bayless and two chefs with Rhode Island connections – Suzanne Goin, also from Los Angeles, who started her culinary career at Al Forno while a student at Brown University cooking on the line with executive chef Jaime D’Oliveira, and Wylie Dufresne, whose father ran a long-forgotten spot on Thayer Street in the 1960s and 1970s called Joe’s Upstairs.
These chefs from varied disciplines have in common an undying affection for the Beard foundation. As Shire said in an interview on my radio show, “There is nothing I would not do for the James Beard Foundation. They have done so much for the culinary world and it is remarkable how that original, little brownstone has been kept up.” She was referring to The James Beard House, the great man’s home in New York’s Greenwich Village that has become a mecca to chefs and foodies around the world. The home now features a state-of-the-art kitchen and hosts frequent dinners featuring selected chefs working in the company of foundation members and industry professionals.
Shire was honored by the Beard Foundation as Best Chef Northeast in the years following her landmark opening in the early 1980s of The Seasons at the Bostonian Hotel, in collaboration with one Jasper White, himself a Beard Best Chef Northeast award winner. That partnership followed Shire and White working together in Providence.
White recalled meeting Shire in 1978, when both were chefs together at the Providence Biltmore Hotel at what would have been Staniford’s, one of the notable eateries in the city during those pre-restaurant boom years.
In addition to raising funds to support the national foundation, a portion of proceeds from each dinner were donated to a local charity. The event in Boston benefited the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter and soup kitchen.
The entire philosophy of so many chefs is summed up in one series of James Beard events: Eat well, recognize achievement, especially among young, emerging chefs and above all, give back. The James Beard Foundation exists to call attention to the pursuit of all three. •


Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard on WADK-AM 1540, WHJJ-AM 920, online and on mobile applications. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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