Inside The Kitchen
Author: Carla Breer Howard
January 2007
Food + Beverage
Each religion offers a definition of Paradise. Fervent foodies might visualize something like this: Start with a traditional seaside English-style resort hotel. Furnish it with window seats, deep club chairs and crackling logs on the hearth.
Set the resort atop a windswept (but sun-warmed) cliff, laced with strolling paths and pairs of white-painted wood Adirondack chairs. Top it with the strangely haunting lilt of bagpipes at teatime.Then—critical to the vision—populate this Valhalla with some of the world’s most honored chefs and Master Sommeliers, who not only prepare feasts fit for the angels, but also demonstrate their vaunted techniques to the seraphim, while they’re at it.
Oh, it’s died-and-gone-to-Heaven stuff, all right, but it takes place right here on this earth, once a year over an autumn weekend at The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, 30 miles south of San Francisco.
Welcome to “Inside the Kitchen,” rightly subtitled, “One weekend that will inspire the next 51.” In fact, this extraordinary annual event—a fund-raiser for Meals On Wheels of San Francisco—might just be the fabulous and truly unique incentive offering to inspire exceptional performance in your group.
Time for name dropping: The inaugural 2005 event featured San Francisco Bay Area culinary stars including: Michael Mina (Michael Mina), Nancy Oakes (Boulevard Restaurant) and Roland Passot (La Folie).
2006’s star-chef roster had a Las Vegas slant: Bradley Ogden (Bradley Ogden at Caesars Palace and Lark Creek Restaurant Group); Damien Dulas (Restaurant Guy
Savoy at Caesar’s Palace); Bruno Davaillon (Mix at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay); Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys, Mandalay Bay).
The Bay Area was well represented by Laurent Manrique (Aqua); Gerald Hirigoyen (Piperade, Bocadillos); Melissa Perello (the Fifth Floor); Elizabeth Falkner (Citizen Cake); and a returning Roland Passot. This stellar team was hosted in the kitchen by the genial Xavier Salomon, executive chef at The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, who is the fourth in his family to earn the Maître Cuisinier de France designation (and only second in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company). Google any of these folks and feel your waistline expand.
2006’s wine experts—Richard Betts, M.S., which stands for the devilishly hard-to-earn designation Master Sommelier, (of The Little Nell in Aspen, Colo.); Larry Stone, M.S. (Rubicon Estate, Rutherford, Calif.); Robert Smith, M.S. (Picasso at Bellagio, Las Vegas), Luis de Santos, M.S. (Spago, Las Vegas), among others—shared their multilayered insights on how the same varietals can arrive at such astoundingly different tastes.
The black-tie, Friday Opening Night Gala was the 2006 kick-off. The celebrity chefs joined the Master Sommeliers in creating a five-course wine dinner, while working
amid a labyrinth of restaurant-grade Viking appliances situated right in the middle of the “stainless steel”-decorated ballroom.
The gala was followed during the next two days by 15 cooking and wine classes given by the guest chefs and sommeliers. Saturday night, a once-in-a-lifetime Four Star Grand Cru Wine Dinner was created by San Francisco’s Four Star chefs and visiting Master Sommeliers. Sunday night finished con brio with The Chef’s Challenge, a timed battle-of-the-sexes, complete with a secret ingredient: goat cheese. (It won’t do to tell who won.)
Over half the seats at last year’s Gala were quickly taken by corporate groups; a block of 25 to 50 is ideal, according to Diana Gil-Osorio, director of public relations for the hotel. “It’s perfect for a meeting planner who is looking for a solution. At this event, every banquet room in the hotel is dedicated for the weekend. You don’t have to do anything, it’s totally planned. You look great and your attendees have an unforgettable time. You can’t duplicate this experience anywhere else,” she says.
There’s a growing interest in opportunities to experience food and wine demonstrations, tastings and team-building, evidenced by the installation of dedicated spaces like Bellagio’s Tuscany Kitchen and The Ritz-Carlton, Cancun’s new kitchen. Programs are similarly offered at The Broadmoor, which just finished its new demonstration kitchen last spring. The Scottsdale Celebrity Chef, Golf & Spa Invitational, now in its sixth year, used the facilities at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess for demonstrations.
Gil-Osorio noted that her team started planning 2007’s program back in early November, so it’s not too early now to contact The Ritz-Carlton, as rooms and seats sell out fast. But, she adds, groups can either come to Inside the Kitchen, or have an individual corporate event as a team-building exercise. They can take a class or compete as different teams, working with the hotel’s chefs. “The challenges are a blast!” Gil-Osorio enthuses. “Participants have stoves; they are timed and are given a basket of secret ingredients, which all have to be used. These are judged, and winners are picked. We excel at groups; it’s 60 percent of our business!”
Should your group be part of the Inside the Kitchen weekend this fall, they may share Diana Gil-Osorio’s favorite memory of last year’s event. “It was watching during the Four Star Grand Cru dinner with the chefs working silently and very carefully—with actual respect for each other—on each other’s dishes, making sure the product was the best it could be. It was magic; it was so wonderful, it gave me goose bumps. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” (ritzcarlton.com/hmb)
