Eric Villegas & Scott Allman of the TV show Fork in the Road visited the 2006 Epicurean Classic and offer this video. You can also click over to YouTube to see in high quality. There’s still time to get your tickets for 2008!

More than sixty cooking demonstrations, wine and craft-brewed beer seminars, and cheese classes have been updated to the Epicurean Classic website in the past few weeks and registrations for the September 11, 12, and 13 event are coming in strong. Our most recent addition was Farmer’s Market Inspired Cooking, presented by Eric Patterson and Jennifer Blakeslee, chefs/co-owners of the superb Cook’s House in Traverse City. As we discussed the class description and content, Eric stressed that he and Jen wanted to shed insight on how chefs think when they shop, how they put things together.

Every year, I’m called on to write dozens and dozens of these demonstration and seminar descriptions. Of course, the idea is to make them sound compelling as hell, but they can be a pain if the topic lacks pizzazz. My chat with Eric was eye-opening because he nailed what seems to be the least appreciated traits of a professional chef: nimbleness, open-mindedness, creativity, and inspiration. Culinary education and kitchen experience assure most top flight chefs have the requisite backlog of recipes stored in the memory banks but real genius is revealed on the fly, ie, while walking through farmer’s markets and produce aisles playfully conceiving menu ideas for that night’s dinner service. The dreaded flip side is GOT FRESH, FABULOUS FOOD BUT NO IDEA WHAT TO COOK. I think most of us know how that feels, but I’m certain Eric and Jennifer find the bounty of late summer and early autumn their favorite time to be in the restaurant business because the creative juices are flowing like freshly cut honeydew melon. 

-Matt Sutherland

Once again, Mario Batali will generously offer his otherworldly cooking skills to the Leelanau Conservancy’s annual Summer Picnic auction. It’s your opportunity to be coddled and fed by the great clogged chef himself in a private Leelanau County dinner for you and eleven friends. What’s it worth? Based on numbers from the last couple years, the winning bidder will pay upwards of $50,000. Check out http://www.theconservancy.com/2008picnicauctio.html for more details. Long live the Leelanau Conservancy.

Mario participated in the Epicurean Classic two years ago and put on quite a show. For all the fanfare around him, his restaurants, books, etc., he is unquestionably one of the world’s great culinary talents. I say this based on my conversations with dozens and dozens of nationally acclaimed chefs that have participated in the Classic. Almost without exception, they cite him and his books as heavy influences. He’s the real deal.

Speaking of Italian chefs, one of the 08 Classic headliners is Santa Ynez, CA chef, Leonardo Curti, owner / chef of Trattoria Grappolo. Leonardo recently authored a superb cookbook based on his restaurant. He’ll demonstrate some favorite Italian dishes at the Classic, participate in the Grand Reception on Saturday night, September 13, and also play a guest-chef-of-honor role in a Great Chef Dinner at Trattoria Stella in Traverse City, on Friday, September 12.

A James Beard Award winning author for her first cookbook, Bones, McLagan is also the author of Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes. A guest chef for the 2006 Classic, she lives and writes from her home in Toronto and is excited to make it back to Traverse City for this year’s Epicurean Classic.

The daughter of a restaurant owner, LeFavour is the author of The New Steak: Recipes for a Range of Cuts plus Savory Sides, published recently by Ten Speed Press. She has a Ph.D. from NYU, and writes with warm, witty skill, so her blog at creelefavour.com is widely wide. She lives in upstate NY.

The author of ten-plus cookbooks including the recently released Small Plates Perfect Wines: Creating Little Dishes with Big Flavors, Narlock lives in Napa Valley because she’s an avid, very knowledgeable wine lover and often writes about food and wine for Fine Cooking magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Examiner, amongst other fine publications.

South Korean born then abandoned at three in a marketplace, Sunee lands in New Orleans as an adoptee and begins an independent, food-centric stretch of life culminating in Provence. Her new book, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home is a multi-ethnic journal of self-discovery.

Foose is a Mississippi native and executive chef of the Viking Cooking School where she teaches thousands of home cooks the intricacies of bringing contemporary flair to Southern food. Her new book, Screen Doors & Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook has been hailed by Paula Deen, Matt and Ted Lee, and other dignitaries of Southern cooking.

After cooking and working her way around Greece on a private yacht, Schneider made landfall in San Diego and lost herself in the alluring flavors of Mexico’s Pacific coast cooking, and specifically the Baja. She has spent the last several years working in some of San Diego’s best kitchens and working on cookbooks including Baja: Cooking On the Edge, and Cooking with the Seasons at Rancho La Puerta.