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Taste of Tulalip 2013 – Grand Taste

Posted On: December 8, 2013 by ChefsResources

This year at the Taste of Tulalip’s Grand Taste enthusiastic revelers were offered a more extensive selection of excellent food and wine than ever before. With over 20 culinary delicacies to nosh on and over 120 wines to swirl & savor it was indeed an all day indulgence type of outing.

2013 marked the 5-year anniversary of the popular event, and to accommodate more people, food and wine we saw a redesigned layout of the event which expanded into additional areas of the Tulalip special function rooms. This expansion gave the feeling of a much less crowded look and atmosphere.Even with more attendees, the crowd “felt” smaller, and the lines for both food and wine were very short or non-existent.

Since I was already sore from Friday’s event, and the week of prep leading up to this point, I started my day with the typical chef’s breakfast supplement of a triple hit of ibuprofen…repeat for lunch and dinner.

For events such as this, a detailed mise en place list is the lifeblood of success. Without it one small thing is going to be overlooked which could then kill the entire day, causing you to pull your hair out while you scramble to recover from a small but essential oversight in the day’s necessities. A good list includes not only the food items and garnishes, but also the towels, utensils, equipment, sanitation buckets, plate design, and whatever else you plan to use that day.

Going through my list early in the day and double-checking it I noticed that my butane burners were not at the table. Come to find out two different departments expected the other one to get them for me. It was settled by sending someone to the store to buy additional ones for my station…a fatal oversight caught and averted before it became a problem. Tell that bastard Murphy’s Law to piss off!

The Food at the Taste of Tulalip 2013 Grand Taste

We served about 1800 pieces of each item this day and each creation was conceptualized and hand crafted by the designated Chef and his/her crew. Unfortunately my good camera died the week of the Taste so I had to use my iPhone for the pics…but at least you can get a good idea of the food served.

Rock & Roll Challenge

The Rock & Roll Challenge is a fun “iron chef” style cook-off. Three display kitchens (provided by Viking Range) under one tent, three teams of 2 chefs each, the exuberent Carla Hall as MC, jammin rock & roll, and an identical mystery basket for each team! This year’s chef teams were comprised of 4 local chefs and 2 Tulalip chefs. When they opened their mystery baskets they found foie gras, live geoduck, and Chito’s! They then had 10 minutes to work out a menu and battle plan, 30 minutes to produce samples for the judges including Chef Kristen Kish, and then an extended period of time to prepare their dish for the spectators. And the winner was Chef John Jamamec.

The Wineries to Sample

With so many wines to sample many guests opted to stay at the hotel this year, making their travel from beverage to room convenient, safe, and arrest free! Because Tulalip is located in Washington State the majority of wineries featured are from here…part of Tulalip’s commitment to local products and business. Many of the wineries offered second pouts, however I heard that some of the French wines being poured had a dealer cost of $400 – $600 per bottle, so there was a one pour limit on these high-end wines.

**Grand Taste Wines at the Taste of Tulalip 2013**
Washington Adams Bench Amavi Cellars Ambassador Vineyards Andrew Hill Winery Barons Winery Barrage Cellars Bergevin Lane Vineyards Betz Family Winery Boudreaux Cellars Cadence Winery Charles Smith/K Vintners Cahtaeau Ste. Michelle Chinook Wines Col Solare Corliss Estate/Tranche Corvus Côte Bonneville Cuillen Hills Doubleback Dunham Cellars Dusted Balley Efestē El Corazon Winery Figgins Family Wine Estates Force Majeure Furion Cellars Gorman Winery	J Bookwalter JM Cellars Kevin White Winery L’ Ecole 41 Leonetti Cellar Long Shadows Mackey Vineyards Mark Ryan Winery Milbrandt Vineyards Northwest Totem Cellars Obelisco Estate Pepper Bridge Winery Pondera Winery Quilceda Creek Rasa Vineyards Revelry Vintners Ross Andrew Winery SalidaSaviah Cellars Seven Hills Vineyards Sleight of Hand Cellars Sparkman Cellars Spring Valley Tenor Terra Blanca Waitsburg Cellars Waters Willis Hall Woodinville Wine Cellars	Oregon Aberrant Cellars Alexana Beaux Fréres Cameron Domaine Serene King Estate Owen Roe Patricia Green Cellars Penner Ash Wine Cellars Sokol Blossor Willa Kenzie Estate California Amuse Bouche Aubert Gaurachi Family Wines Hanzell Nickel & Nickel Tame Rubicon Estate Shafer Silver Oak ZD Winery	France Boizel Camille Giroud Chateau Palmer Domaine Laroche Domaine Michel Magnien Domaine Nicolas Rissignol Dominique Mugneret Leflaive Lignier-Michelot Nicolas Feuillatte Spain Artadi Bodegas Riojanas Dominio de Atauta Dominio De Tares Gonáles Byass Hidalgo Marques de Caceres Pesquera Winery Resalte Vall Llach

This year’s special guest line-up and agenda

Chef Kristen Kish – winner of season 10 Top Chef Seattle.
Chef Carla Hall – Top Chef contestant in seasons five & eight, and co-host of her the TV show The Chew.
Chef Lois Ellen Frank – culinary historian, anthropologist, award winning author and photographer.

Saturday, November 9th
VIP Beer Seminar – 11:30 am
Kristen Kish Cooking Demo – 12:30 pm
Magnum Party with 250 attendees – 1:30 to 4:30 pm
Grand Taste with 2,000 attendees – 2:30 to 6:30 pm
Rock -n- Roll Challenge – 4:00pm

Taste of Tulalip 2013 – Celebration Dinner

This year marked the 5^th annual Taste of Tulalip, an event which is being hailed as the “Aspen Food & Wine show of the Pacific Northwest”. It has been awarded the Washington Wine Restaurant Award for “Best Event Featuring Washington Wine” by the Washington Wine Commission, and each year the event endeavors to be better than the previous year.

The Taste of Tulalip is a celebration of signature food, wine and tradition featuring unique, upscale tastes crafted by the eight chefs (yes, 8 chefs!) hired to oversee the property’s food venues. The Tulalip chefs (full disclosure…I am one of them) go above and beyond to serve unique, flavorful bites which leave you aching for more! We are not talking about the Bruschetta and soup you see served at a lot of food shows. This year the selections included elk tenderloin, seared pork belly, red sear Ahi sashimi, and Diver Scallops to name a few. The event is geared towards culinary and wine aficionados, but it is also a great place for newbies to try cuisine and wine which they have not been exposed to before. And the atmosphere is friendly and casual…not snobbish or elitist.

This year’s special guest line-up included

Chef Carla Hall – Top Chef contestant in seasons five & eight, and co-host of her the TV show The Chew.

Chef Lois Ellen Frank – culinary historian, anthropologist, award winning author and photographer.

Each year a new wine bottle and charger plate are creatively designed by a tribal artist. This year’s artist was Jason Gobin. Pictured on the left is the magnum bottle, but 750 ml bottles are also designed. The wine is available for sale, but the chargers are only available if you attend the Celebration Dinner and are given as a gift to all attendees.

For the chefs, this event means prepping a plated course for 400 people on Friday, amuse bouche for 2000 on Saturday, and for me, a special Native American Brunch for 75 on Sunday. Below we are making the pine spheres, using molecular gastronomy techniques, for my Friday night dish Huckleberry Sockeye Lox Tartare with Pine Sphere. I took fresh new spruce pine shoots, cut the needles off and discarded the stems (which contain sap and a resin flavor). I then added water to the needles and pureed the heck out of them (love the Vitamix blender!). Strained through a chinois. Added the pulp back to the blender with more water, and repeated the process 2 more times. Then I added a little simple syrup and a pinch of sea salt. This made my pine sauce. (note: I had to do this in June when the pine shoots were fresh and young, then I froze the sauce).

Friday kicked off the 3 day culinary marathon with the Celebration Dinner, a 7-course indulgence featuring dishes which explored traditional tribal ingredients worked into modern interpretations and specifically paired with some fantastic wines.

For the chefs, this is the culmination of multiple tastings to get the food & wine pairing right, and hellacious hours prepping & planning every detail to try to make this dinner service go as smoothly as possible. For a typical plated banquet function like this, the entrees are pre-plated and held in a hot box a short time before service. But not this event. We want this to be as close to restaurant service as possible, hot from the stove to your table! Our mandate is to plate 400 covers (plates) in 15 minutes right into the waiting hands of the waitstaff. 400 covers in 15 minutes ala minute service!

To accomplish this we set-up 5 plating lines (so each line only had to plate 80 covers). Each line had 6 – 8 people on it and each person did only one thing, which means about 40 people helping to plate! (We are very fortunate to have a good relationship with Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute…they provide us with some willing students each year for this event who are essential to making this a success. It’s a great experience for the students…and it provides us with the skilled hands we need to pull this off). So using my plate as an example, one person did each of the following steps then passed the plate down the line:

Chefs understand that creating this ?assembly line? makes the process go very quickly, and since my dish was not hot I had the luxury of being able to take 20 minutes to plate it and let it sit at room temp for a few minutes, giving me the time to fine tune presentations.

One very cool thing about this year was that they had a camera set-up in the kitchen and would periodically show the guests the “heat in the kitchen” as we worked to slam the different courses out. They had multiple large screens to display this to the dining room while they enjoyed their food and wine. If I can find a recorded copy I?ll post it here.

2013 Event Schedule

The festivities typically spans two days, but this was a special year celebrating the 5^th anniversary of the event and an extra day was added for the occasion.

Friday, November 8^th
Celebration Dinner with 400 attendees – 7 courses pared with superb wines
Reception 6:00 pm, Dinner 7:00 pm

Sunday November 10^th
VIP Native American Brunch with Chef Lois Frank – 11:00 am

Taste of Tulalip 2012

Taste of Tulalip Celebration Dining Room

If you live in the Pacific Northwest then you have probably heard of the four diamond Tulalip Resort Casino. This year was the 4^th year of the now regionally acclaimed Taste of Tulalip, a two day food and wine experience which surpasses many such events on the West Coast. Each year we try to do something just a little bit “bigger or better” than the year before. Friday November 9^th featured the 7-course Celebration Dinner for 400 people (tickets sold out about 2 months before the event, so plan ahead for next year!). And Saturday November 10^th was the Grand Taste event, featuring 135 wineries and a plethora of tasty bites, all prepared by the talented Tulalip chefs.

In addition to these two main events, there were numerous additional special features which made this year’s Taste of Tulalip one of the Pacific Northwest’s must attend events. Special features included:

Taste of Tulalip Celebration Dinner – Go Big or Go Home!

The Celebration Dinner was a 7-course food & wine pairing with each of the seven Tulalip chefs (yes, Tulalip employs seven professional chefs, each to oversee a specific venue at Tulalip, with Executive Chef Perry Mascitti overseeing them all) preparing one of the courses and a team of about 45 kitchen staff helping to plate each course, and 30+ waitstaff to deliver plates.

As chefs we are by necessity creative thinkers. We are constantly in situations which require us to think outside of the box. For us there are no problems, there are only challenges for which we need to provide a solution. Every chef has victory stories which are the result of a night from hell. A very few of my challenges have included: “Two of the four ovens are down?! Run the menu with plan B.” “The power is out but the gas still works…we cook by candlelight tonight!” “13 banquet functions within 30 minutes… WTF!? OK, I’ll make it happen.” “Feed 30,000 people lunch? We’ll get the plan in place.”

Our job as chefs constantly has us overcoming obstacles in order to produce something incredible for our guests. To be honest, when other service providers (such as my cell phone company) tell me that they “can’t” help me, it pisses the hell out of me. It means that they are too stupid, or too lazy, to offer proper customer service. They don’t know customer service like we do.

Each of the Tulalip chefs had their own special problem to tackle this year. Chef JP (John Pontichelli) had the unfortunate task of pairing a salad course with a red wine! Good luck buddy! His solution was a wonderful pairing (see below).

Banquet Chef Gerry Schultz’s challenge was to produce fine dining quality plates throughout a seven course dinner for 400 expecting guests with only 15 minutes to plate each course. He did this by setting up five serving lines and having around 45 kitchen staff cooking and plating. He drew upon staff from his own crew, from the various resort restaurants, and from the stewarding department. Executive Chef Perry Mascitti also arranged for a number of volunteer culinary students from the Cordon Bleu culinary school to assist.

Chef Gerry was an organizational sage! He had to instruct 40 people how to plate 7 courses they had never seen before, and each course had to be precisely presented & completed in about 15 minutes! He had each chef photograph their dish a month earlier and provide a plating diagram so each of the five plating lines would know how to execute each dish. He had diagrams, photos, and great communication so that nothing was left to chance. All his preparation left minimal chance for that bastard “Murphy’s Law” to show up (I hate that guy!).

My challenge was to prepare 400 hundred portions of perfectly cooked king salmon using a new method in which the salmon is semi-poached from the bottom up leaving the top eighth of an inch raw. In the Pacific Northwest we like our salmon MR to M, and the idea behind this dish was to put the MR on top of the salmon rather than in the middle. The dish was called “naked salmon” and it appears like sushi on the top, but is cooked on the bottom three quarters. This method gives it a stunning presentation with the glistening red-orange raw flesh on top, and it retains the wonderful natural flavor of the salmon.

I mentally labored over the firing time as if it were my first soufflé. Fire it too late and the entire event goes on hold while everyone waits for my dish to be ready, making for an awkward stall in the flow of service. Fire it too early and the salmon dries out and turns to dog food, ruining the reputation of the entire event. (Damn it! We should have eaten at McDonald’s!).

To pull this off, I used multiple improvised poaching stations and had all my salmon staged in 2” perforated hotel pans. One Tilt Skillet held 4 pans, four 6” hotel pans set over a flat-top griddle was my second station. And finally, another 6” hotel set over a broiler created my last station. All were set at about 190°. This allowed me to cook 200 of the needed 400 portions, then quickly rotate and get the second batch of 200 fired, timing it so it was done as my course was being plated.

Of course, I had done a dry run with 8 portions… but not with 200 fired at a once! Cooking time would certainly take longer. In the end, I fired the first half of my salmon during the plating of the second course (I was the fourth course). I stored it in a hot box set at 135° for 20 minutes and pulled the second batch of salmon as we started the plate-up for my course. Whew!!! Even though I’m a heathen I thank God for help on this one! Perfectly cooked salmon is Awesome! Overcooked salmon is dog shit.

Another challenging course was the Wagu Filet Mignon Pair. Chef Perry wanted it served on a small metal plate so that it was still sizzling when it hit the table. These little plates were at 750°! As this course was served you could hear 400 sizzling steaks, and the aroma of the wagu coupled with the wine made your head spin with pleasure.

The evening involved hours of preparation followed by a 3 hour adrenaline rush during plating. At the end… a great sense of relief and satisfaction of not only completing the challenge, but having done so with excellence. Thank-you’s and pats on the back all around, then I slammed an Upside-down Old Fashioned (made w/ Knob Creek Bourbon) and a double Absolute Cran to start the wind-down.

Rock-n-Roll Challenge Cook-off

This is a fun mystery box style challenge which paired two teams of chefs against each other. When they opened the mystery box they found Live Maine Lobsters! They had 10 minutes to create a menu, then 30 minutes to compose a dish for the judges, followed by samples for the crowd.

Team Bun Jovi consisted of chefs Gerry Schultz (Tulalip’s reigning Rock-n-Roll Challenge champion), Robin Leventhal from Top Chef season 6, and Jeff Euteneier from Seattle’s Le Cordon Bleu Culinary College. Team Appetite for Destruction included chefs Brent Clarkson from Tulalip Resort’s Cedars Café,Brian McCracken and Dana Tough, both from the restaurant group of Sput, Tavern Law, and The Coterie Room.

Team Bun Jovi took the prize, giving Chef Gerry his third victory. Although, I heard that the judges were hard-pressed to choose a winner and that the count was close. The winning dish was a Saffron cous cous with lemongrass, herb and butter Main lobster Medallions, Micro green and Apple Salad, with Hazelnut vinaigrette & Holmquist Hazelnuts.

Other articles and blogs about the 2012 Taste of Tulalip:

Posts from Previous Years

Taste of Tulalip Gala Dinner 2011

Third Annual Taste of Tulalip is Another Success

This year Tulalip Resort Casino held their third annual Taste of Tulalip Food & Wine Event. It was a 2 day food and wine experience, kicking off with Friday’s Taste of Tulalip Gala Dinner, hosted by “Thirsty Girl” Leslie Sbracco. Saturday followed with the Grand Tasting featuring the Tulalip Chef’s exquisite cuisine samples and 65 wineries from Washington, California, and Italy. This post is about Friday’s Gala Dinner.

The Taste of Tulalip Gala Dinner is a seven course food & wine pairing featuring fantastic food and exquisite wines. According to F&B Manager Lisa Severn, Tulalip’s philosophy regarding culinary events is “Do it right or go home.” The menu for this year’s dinner again shows that the Tulalip Chefs and Sommelier Tom Thompson know how to do it right. There were 400 seats available and the event sold out several weeks in advance, a testament to the growing popularity of the event.

In The Kitchen for Taste of Tulalip

For the Chefs, the challenge was, ”How do you serve 7 courses of restaurant quality food to 400 people at once?” Each course had to be plated and served to order. For a typical plated banquet function for a large group, there are usually only 3-4 courses (soup, salad, entrée, dessert) with only the soup and entrée courses plated to order. And the entrée course is usually pre-plated 5-15 minutes ahead of the serving time and stored with covers in a hot box, ready to be served en mass to large parties. But we wanted the food served from the oven to the guest with no holding time. So we set-up six plating lines with 6 people on each line so we could mass produce 400 plates directly into the waiting hands of the service staff.

We had prepped, planed, organized, and were now ready to execute service. Towels in hand, 7 professional chefs, 36+ support staff to help plate, additional crew to man the ovens, and an army of servers, we were ready to dance. Now we impatiently wait for the word “Go!” wondering if you missed anything.

Your mind is racing, going over the plate-up for the n^th time, trying to discover the one thing you missed, the one possible obstacle which you didn’t make a “plan B” for. Your crew looks at you sideways as you explain again what your expectations are.

The first course is supposed to be served at 7:35 pm, but, of course, things run late, 15 minutes late. Now you’re recalculating your firing times and communicating it with your staff. The kitchen is set to go with over 45 staff crammed into it. I can’t simply walk over to my oven crew, it’s too crowded. So I walk around the back hallways 3 or 4 times to communicate new instructions to my staff. The other chefs are doing the same.

Then, its go time! Everything is in high gear now, commands are short and direct. “Get that food moving!” “That’s too much sauce, use less!” “Line 2, speed up!” “Clean up those plate edges!” “More garnish on Line 2!” “Sauce on 4!” “Lamb on Line 3!” “Why the f___ are you giving me rare lamb racks, I want medium-rare. Fix it!” “Only 20 more for this course” “Done! Stop! Clean-up and prepare for the next course. Good job everyone!”

Each course only took about 15 minutes to serve. For each course, all six lines and 40+ kitchen staff worked to produce that one course; then clean, reorganize, and do it again until after 3 hours of riding an adrenaline wave, we slammed through dessert. Our work was successfully completed, we could finally take a deep breath, relax… and suddenly realize… ” holy hell am I tired!”

What Other Blogs have to Say About the Taste of Tulalip 2011

Taste Of Tulalip 2010

Tulalip Resort Casino recently held their second annual Taste of Tulalip event featuring a two day gastronomic and wine experience. In 2009 the Taste of Tulalip was awarded the Washington Wine Commissions “Best Wine Event” featuring Washington Wines. This year on Friday November 12^th the event kicked off with the Taste of Tulalip Celebration Dinner, featuring a six-course plated culinary adventure orchestrated under the direction of Executive Chef Perry Mascitti, and paired with wines carefully selected by Sommelier Tommy Thompson.

Saturday November 13^th continued with the Taste of Tulalip Grand Taste featuring a large variety of gourmet foods prepared by the Tulalip chefs, and more than 60 Washington wineries and 20+ Napa Valley wineries invited to pour.

Chef Perry oversaw his team of professional chefs execute the Celebration Dinner for 400 guests, serving each of the six courses in about 20 minutes per course. Banquet Chef Gerry Schultz set-up two long serving tables and utilized both sides of each table for plating, thus giving us four serving lines. Each course was designed and orchestrated by a different member of the chef team. For each course, the ingredients were placed in the center of each table, and the crew assembled plates by putting one item on the plate and passing it to the next person who put their item on the plate, and so on.

We were all set with prep and ready to go about an hour early (except for final cooking) so we had time to catch our breath from the long prep time. We stood around, wait… wait… go!!! What followed was a two hour long adrenaline rush. “Where is the mushrooms?! I need mushrooms NOW!” “This one is garbage, re-plate it!” “Sauce! We need more sauce here!” “Not that way! Do it this way.” “Wipe that plate edge!” “Clear and wipe down for the next course!” Six courses times 400 people means 2,400 plates served in about two hours! The Dance (culinary lingo for how cooks move in the kitchen during high-production, high-stress times) was in full swing and everyone was moving in the complicated, controlled chaos which is the Dance. Moving, running, communicating tersely and with intense focus. Nothing else exists except what we are doing right now, and what we need to do next. “What, there’s a huge fire at the empty building next door? Is it going to affect my plate-up? No? Then I don’t care. It’s all about the food now.” That’s how we think during the Dance.

Taste of Tulalip Grand Tasting

On Saturday the Grand Tasting featured over 60 Washington wineries and 20 Napa Valley wineries available for tasting. And the chefs of Tulalip put out a culinary extravaganza of flavors for about 1200 people. Below are some of the dishes which were offered at the event. Click on the images below for a larger image.