Chef power

Top local chefs team with a Food Network star to collaborate on a meal worth savoring.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published May 23, 2007

	Fellow chefs are starstruck by Food Network's Masaharu Morimoto as he works on a tuna appetizer at the Wine & Food Festival. Ferrell Alvarez of Mise en Place assists.
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Scott Keeler] Antonio Cartagena, left, of Carrabba's, and Courtney Orwig and Jeannie Pierola of SideBern's prepare farro risotto.

ST. PETE BEACH

The unfortunate latecomers to the $250 gala of the first Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival missed the seafood and cheese tuiles from 717 South in Tampa and tiny tuna Nicoise canapes from Rusty's Bistro in Clearwater. And that white cheddar soup with truffled popcorn.

Yet they got the first taste of the gourmet cooperation behind their meal as they moved through a gantlet of chefs toiling in a makeshift kitchen in a corridor of the Don CeSar Beach Resort. It was Day Two of the three-day festival to benefit Abilities of Florida.

As guests sped by, chefs assembled artistic formations on large plates: flattened squares of finely shaved toro tuna, dots of caviar, bowls of handmade dashi, mirin and soy, and smaller square plates striped with wasabi, sour cream, guacamole and salsa.

The busy hands were not those of ordinary worker bees.

The gentleman with the shining black tresses, full Japanese working robes of sage and khaki and slipper thongs would be Masaharu Morimoto, the New York culinary TV star and Iron Chef, who had landed the tuna from suppliers in Spain.

Alongside were champions of local kitchens, plus top hotel chefs, senior executives from Outback, and the apprentice chefs who dream of succeeding them.

They brought their best china, including Jeannie Pierola's big ruby plates from SideBern's and John Harris' new Lucite tubes from Rusty's at the Sheraton Sand Key. The only noticeable breakage was cliches.

Too many cooks spoil the broth? Not if you tasted the syrup of fig and balsamic on the duck. All leaders and no followers? No time for that; someone had to be in charge. Each course partnered chefs, with one taking the lead. In the first course that was Morimoto, with assists from B.T. Nguyen-Batley of Cafe BT and Marty Blitz of Mise en Place.

In overall command was Eric Neri, the Don's executive chef and the host with the most troops and view of the entire battlefield. That included kitchens on three floors and every elevator, closet and back way between them and the assembly ground outside the grand ballroom.

Once the first-course ingredients were positioned and four ranks of chefs lined up on each side of two long tables, Neri called for attention. "Does everyone have their place? Are you comfortable with what you're going to do? Okay, we're going to start, and we'll do it over and over until we're done."

In minutes, 240 plates had been passed out to a score of servers carrying one in each hand.

A round of applause and a brief respite for autographs from Morimoto had Nguyen-Batley and Blitz as happy as the student chefs from the Art Institute in Tampa, who got inscriptions on their white coats.

Second course, and places changed. "Do one plate for us so we can see what you want, " said Maryann Ferenc, Blitz's partner in Mise en Place. They took their places and did it again.

What the passersby couldn't see was the advance preparation of hours or, in the case of the duck legs, the days chef Tom Pritchard marinated them at Salt Rock Grill in Indian Shores.

Also less dramatic was the cooperation and respect between the independent chefs and the corporate executives from Capital Grille and big Outback operations. "These guys are very successful at what they do, " chef-owner Chris Ponte of Cafe Ponte said with admiration. "It's on a different scale."

Texan Damian Mandola, the founder of Carrabba's, who did more clowning than cooking, explained his role. "I did what I knew and then I got out of the way."

He savored with fascination the spoonful of corn herb jus given him by his partner for the night, Pierola of Bern's Steak House and SideBern's. She had made it for the primavera he suggested. To the other chefs in the kitchen he boomed, "I taught her everything she knows" and added a broad stage wink.

For a version of surf and turf, Neri and the Don provided Kobe beef short ribs while Bonefish Grill's chief forager, Robert Novotny, found what he called "fantastic Alaskan king crab." Crabs with legs as long as his arms, and with 2 pounds of meat in each leg that could be cut like thick slices of French bread.

The final course was Outback's signature chocolate indulgence, the Thunder Down Under, but deconstructed and rebuilt with the modernist genius of Ponte and the happy complicity of Outback corporate chef Pauly Dauterive. "It's all our same ingredients, " he said, smiling under a red Outback cap, with a twist, including chocolate boomerangs in primal stripes.

By the end of Friday evening, organizers and sponsors Frank De Lucia of Abilities of Florida and Gene Sullivan of Southern Wine & Spirits were beaming. With still another day to go, their biggest problem was that success had outrun parking.

For three days, chefs competed and cooperated, wine lovers sniffed seriously in seminars and took their shoes off for barefoot tastings in the sand, adults paired Rioja and tapas, children cooked with pros, and jesters entertained in kilts and on stilts. After the last party, the attendance figure had reached 5, 000. On Monday, organizers were still tabulating the proceeds.

"We thought it was time Tampa Bay had a signature wine food event, " said Sullivan, whose company started similar affairs in Miami and Aspen, Colo.

It does now. The chefs are ready, but first they'll cook up another collective banquet, the Fork Fight for the Second Harvest food bank at the Tampa Waterside Marriott on June 11. Then they'll line up for next year.

They don't tire easily. "It's what we do, " Neri said.

Chris Sherman can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or e-mail csherman@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 23, 2007, 07:07:12]