Featured Photo: Chef Hardette Harris leads a cooking demo at the first installment of the Seasons & Traditions Dinner Series. Photo: Chris Jay
Two upcoming food events will take very different approaches to celebrating one of the South’s most iconic foods: fried chicken. The second installment of the Seasons & Traditions Dinner Series, a collaborative project of Chef Hardette Harris and Mahaffey Farms, will feature fried chicken as well as seasonal meat, vegetables and other produce from Mahaffey Farms. Mahaffey Farms raises, among other things, pastured broiler hens that will be served at the Seasons & Traditions: Summer Harvest dinner on May 22.
“I’m going to be frying whole chickens, using the legs, thighs, the back – all of it,” Chef Hardette Harris told me. “When we were growing up, you didn’t just go buy a package of wings. You used the entire chicken. This dinner series is about cooking what our ancestors would have slaughtered or pulled from the garden and cooking it how they would have cooked it.”
The family-style dinner, which will also include a cooking demo and a farm tour, will take place at Mahaffey Farms at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 22. Tickets are available now and are $40 each. RSVP to the Facebook event here or purchase tickets here.
A dramatically different take on fried chicken will be featured at Lucky Palace on Wednesday, May 18 at the Kuan Fried Chicken Dinner. The event’s name alludes to Kuan Lim, the owner of Lucky Palace, and it may also allude to the name of a certain national fried chicken chain. The inspired menu for this dinner includes traditional Southern food items re-imagined through the lens of Asian cuisine, including “Hot XO-style” fried chicken, Hoppin’ John fried rice, braised collards and kimchi, biscuits with Schezuan honey, and more. Because Lucky Palace is well-known for its wine program, the dinner will also feature wine pairings. An emphasis will be placed on Riesling wines. The family-style dinner will cost $75 per person, wine pairings included, and reservations can be made by calling Lucky Palace at (318) 752-1888.
If you love local food, you may be interested to know that the second edition of Eat Here: A Food Lover’s Guide to Shreveport-Bossier can now be viewed online. This photo-filled guide to beloved local eateries is one of the most-downloaded publications ever produced by the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau.
