It's official. The six James Beard award-winning chefs from Minnesota have cooked together for the first time. Finally.
The occasion was none other than the Taste 50 Birthday Feast on Monday night at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.
In an oak-paneled room festooned with twinkly lights and the comfy glow of oil lamps, the 225 guests sat at four room-length communal tables, wooden chairs occasionally draped with woolen blankets in the spirt of hygge.
You heard that right. These Minnesotans were shoulder to shoulder with strangers.
It took only moments, or perhaps it was glasses of wine, for them to talk casually, even intently, laughing more than once (really!) with others they had just met. Then, with dishes cleared and the evening nearly over, they lingered at the table, chatting before the inevitable launch into the endless Minnesota goodbye.
It brought to mind a comment from James Beard: "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
Yes, indeed, we were all together that night for a communal experience, a celebration of our respect for good food, whether prepared by restaurant chefs or home cooks.
Not so incidentally, both of those culinary approaches are part of Taste, one of the oldest continuous food sections in the nation, which was the whole reason for this one-of-a-kind gathering (50 years comes but once in a lifetime).
