Featured photo: Chef Tom Ramsey of the Louisiana Food Prize will co-host a cooking demo with Chef Marco d’Emidio on June 27. Photo used courtesy of Richard Creative Group.
Wine Country Bistro in Shreveport will kick off their Summer Chef Series on Tuesday, June 26 with a dinner featuring Marco d’Emidio, an Oxford, MS-based chef who was raised in Abruzzo, Italy. The five-course dinner will celebrate the cuisine of Abruzzo, which is a region of Italy that lies east of Rome on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, and will also include wine pairings by Wallace McKeel of Purveyor of Fine Wines. Chef d’Emidio’s menu for the night includes such un-Google-able dishes as Timballo di scrippelle alla Teramana (first course) and Agnello alla Franceschiello (second course). A portion of proceeds from the event will benefit the Louisiana Food Prize. Tickets are $125 each and can be purchased here.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of food event that’s designed for taking selfies with your lanyard or doing shots with the guest chef; it sounds like a pretty incredible culinary tour of a geographically isolated region of Italy that we don’t often hear about stateside (read Wikipedia’s entry on the cuisine of Abruzzo). There may also be shots and selfies – who knows – but this looks like one heckuva pure dining experience.
If you can’t fork over $125 for the dinner, there’s also a Cooking Demo with Chefs Marco d’Emidio and Tom Ramsey, both of whom will demonstrate their own versions of gnocchi, on Wednesday, June 27. That cooking demo, which is $35 to attend, will also feature tastings of both dishes as well as rosé wines selected to accompany the dishes.
I’m excited about these events because of Marco d’Emidio’s reputation. During his time at the helm of Saint Leo, an acclaimed Italian restaurant in Oxford, the restaurant was named a finalist for the Best New Restaurant award from the James Beard Foundation, which is one of the highest honors that an American restaurant can receive. If this first Summer Chef Series event is an indication of the quality of chefs who will be featured during the series, we’re in for a pretty delicious summer.
RSVP to the Facebook event for Summer Chefs Series: Marco d’Emidio.
Like Wine Country Bistro on Facebook.
Like the Louisiana Food Prize on Facebook.
