Star Chefs at Spagio, Part 2

The 11th Annual Celebration of Wine, Food & Dining with the Stars to benefit Nationwide Children's Hospital took place on Monday evening.  I was lucky enough to be invited to take pictures of the fabulous treats the chefs prepared.  The event included numerous James Beard award-winning chefs as well as Certified Master Chefs & Pastry Chefs.  A few of you have emailed to find out how they can find out about next years event - it seems to me that the event usually takes place the day after the Oscar's.  You can email Hope from Children's: wellis90atyahoodotcom or Heather at Spagio: hewitt.hATgmailDOTcom.  Maybe next year they can have a website?  Click for part one.

The first thing we had at Star Chefs was this foie gras brulee, from Spagio - Husband took a bite before I could take a picture.  This was really great:

And here are Spagios' Chefs (Robert Knox, Sous Chef, left & Richard Steward, Chef de Parti):

Continuing in the foie theme were these yummy shitake mushroom & foie gras potstickers with braised Asian pears, from Chef Handke:

and here's Mr. Handke himself:

and his Sous Chef, Asa Rodriguez, looking very skeptical of me:

We had warm scallop ceviche with wild mushrooms from Chef John Hogan of Keefer's in Chicago:

We had these amazing crab cakes - little to no filler, just rich and sweet crab with an acidic relish to cut the richness, all topped with skinny little fries.  These came from Tom Fleming, of Central 214 in Dallas. We had to go back for seconds:

We had a puff pastry cup filled with Veal Sweetbread Ragout and topped with butter-poached lobster chunks from Chef Allen Sternweiler, currently working on opening a new restaurant in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  Talk about indulgent and beautiful:

We had a variety of treats from Ghyslain, from chef Ghyslain Maurais:

We had a savory cauliflower cake with Teleggio foam from Chef Shawn McClain of Spring, Custom House and Green Zebra:

Saving the best for last: Pistachia Vera's perfect macarons (almond mascarpone) with (black raspberry?) pate de fruit (perfection, once again), a marsala cherry, and a lemon verbena black pepper sauce.  The balance of rich, sweet and a hint of acid and citrus flavors was flawless:

a line of macarons:

And here's Chef Budros:

Of course, I had to jump on the line and take some pictures of the chef - "Oh no!  There's a waitress on the line!"  I said "throw her off!"  the kitchen boys just laughed and said "that's okay."  "Wow, I said, you're way nicer than the kitchen boys at my restaurant."  Don't be offended, kitchen boys, you know it's true.  Except those of you who know who you are:

 
The kitchen at Spagio was huge, clean, and full of artwork and fun things (wacky coloring, all apologies):

The man himself, Hubert Seifert:

My friend Sam pouring wine:

And of course, everything would come to a grinding halt without the most important job in the place:

Comments

[Hope]

For information on next year's event, you can go directly to www.pleasureguild.org and click on "Special Events." This year marked the 11th year these phenominal chefs have loaned us their time and talents, and they'll be back again in 2009! Thanks to you, Lisa, for such great coverage of our event!

[Hope]

For information on next year's event, you can go directly to www.pleasureguild.org and click on "Special Events." This year marked the 11th year these phenominal chefs have loaned us their time and talents, and they'll be back again in 2009!

[Libby]

Okay, the foie gras brulee has me intrigued. What was caramelized on top of it, and how was it flavored?