by Steven Doyle photos by Robert Bostick
What a long strange trip its been. Not many years ago Iris Midler and Matt McCallister started their five-star festival that is centered on the the Dallas dining scene with a long table event held out in a field of a local farm just outside the Dallas city limits. An event they called Chefs for Farmers. From there this grew into a festival of fun of fantastic proportions that will culminate this October 25th at Lee Park where 2,500 revelers will enjoy a plethora of chef stations paired with fine wines and spirits. We hear that this year there will even be a special biscuit station as well as an oyster lounge. All this to benefit our local farming community.
The tickets for this even have been on sale, and are actually half way to being sold out already.
To spark interest it has been tradition to allow a group of talented sous chefs to compete for their own booth at the big event. And one talented bartender was elected by another group of revelers this past weekend in the Dallas Design District in the annual Mix Off and Sous Chef Competition.
The setting was spectacular, and was held in the event center, DEC on Dragon. This is a fantastic building that has a beautiful bar and a spiraling staircase that leads to a rooftop party scene as well. Here we enjoyed the afternoon as the talented chefs passed plates of their finest, representing top Dallas restaurants such as Uchi, Blind Butcher, CBD Provisions and FT33. Cocktails were made possible by the talents of the young ladies and gents from Henry’s Majestic, Remedy, Midnight Rambler, FT33, The Rosewood Mansion, Standard Pour, Bolsa and Dish. All served their respective restaurants and pubs well, but this was a heated competition.
The winner of both Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice in the sous category was Brian Bell, sous chef at Blind Butcher, for his Hatch chili chicken sausage that wooed the crowd.
Collin Phillips from FT33 took down the bartender category with his cocktail called the Solar Eclipse, a boozy Maker’s Mark drink studded with sunchoke and cardamom syrup, sage, and a sunchoke chip.
Be sure to mark your calendars, and buy your tickets today for the October event. You will not want to miss this one.
