Slow Food Baton Rouge‘s annual farm-to-table dining experience has assembled a top-notch team of chefs from around the Capital City this year.
Dinner in the Field is this Sunday, April 28, at Baton Rouge Gallery. On its roster are Ryan André from Soji, Phillip Beard from the just-opened Bumsteers, Jonathan Breaux from The Overpass Merchant, Chris Motto and Barrett Meeks from Mansurs on the Boulevard, Justin Lambert from The Gregory at Watermark Hotel and Danny Santana of Bin 77.
Motto, the executive chef at Mansurs on the Boulevard and a Hell’s Kitchen veteran, is vice president of Slow Food Baton Rouge and has been heavily involved with planning this year’s event.
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His main goal? “To get chefs working together and collaborating,” he says. “Not as much competition, you know, we’re all doing this together.”
The menu for this six-course dinner reflects this collaboration. Each chef designed their own course and personal touches. But all the dishes work together to form a cohesive menu created with fresh, homegrown ingredients, including an appetizer by André, a soup by Beard, a salad by Breaux, a vegetarian course by Motto and a main course by Lambert. It will all be capped off with wine pairings by Santana and a dessert by Meeks.
Since its first edition in the spring of 2009 at Oakland Plantation, Dinner in the Field has been Slow Food Baton Rouge’s premier fundraising event. The local chapter of Slow Food USA promotes a sustainable, local food system, and Dinner in the Field showcases these values while celebrating culinary arts and Baton Rouge food traditions.
Motto got involved with the slow food movement with his sights set on preparing this dinner. From the beginning, he saw this dinner as an opportunity to bring chefs and consumers together while highlighting the fresh, local ingredients available in the area. Relying on these types of ingredients allows restaurants to produce higher-quality dishes. And because chefs will need to make use of available ingredients, it keeps menus seasonal and pushes chefs to constantly evolve their craft.
“You are what you eat in a sense, so people should be getting fresher vegetables,” Motto says. “And there’s such a great local supply of these things with local farms and with seafood and everything else in the area. It’s just promoting local business all together—one hand washing the other.”
The evening at Baton Rouge Gallery begins with a cocktail hour including live, acoustic music by Toby Tomplay and Shelli Brown and a round of hors d’ouerves by Motto at 4 p.m. with dinner to follow at 5 p.m. The dinner, hosted on the gallery’s lawn in BREC’s City-Brooks Community Park, also features an exclusive chef’s table experience for a group of eight.
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“They’re going to be guaranteed a great meal, and hopefully the weather’s nice,” Motto says. “But if not, we’re prepared for rain either way.”
Early bird tickers are on sale for $125 until Friday and can be purchased here. After Friday, tickets are $150 and can be purchased here. The chef’s table option is $1,600, and tickets can be purchased here. Proceeds from the event benefit Slow Food Baton Rouge’s Greauxing Healthy Baton Rouge program, a farm-to-school program currently in its seventh year at Dufroq Elementary School.
Baton Rouge Gallery is at 1515 Dalrymple Drive.