An Ash Crusted Albacore, a Blue Corn Rabbit Tamal and a Braised California Bison are all dishes that will be served at the annual Tower Bridge Dinner in September.
Today, Visit Sacramento hosted a first look at the menu at Central Kitchen.
The lead chefs this year are Bucky Bray from NixTaco in Folsom, Devin Dedier from Vacanza Romana, Jeana Pecha from Omakase Por Favor, and N’Gina Guyton from the recently closed Jim Denny’s.
The annual Tower Bridge Dinner began in 2013, and this is the first time the lead chefs have come together to create the dishes, instead of making their own plates.
Mike Testa, president and CEO of Visit Sacramento, which hosts the dinner, said he doesn’t know what’s on the menu until a couple of days before the reveal.
“One of the things I love about this event is we don't tell the chefs what to create. They're the experts here,” Testa said. “So it's really up to them to come up with the menu, to talk about how they're sourcing from local farmers, to decide how the different courses complement each other.”
The menu is comprised of three courses influenced by California cuisine.
The Ash Crusted Albacore dish with Heirloom Bean Succotash, Smoked Mussels and Clams, California Seaweed Salad and Furikake Cracker.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadioBucky Bray, a chef from Nixtaco in Folsom, said Sacramento is a cool epicenter of agriculture, and he and the chefs wanted to create something from that.
“So we have Japanese and Asian influences, and then Latin and Northern Mexican influences, and then, like a lot of Native American influences as well,” Bray said. “So [we are] getting to use a lot of game and natural produce and seeds and nuts and all those kinds of natural things that are here, basically just getting to kind of have fun with it.”
Bray said being one of the chefs to help curate and create the menu has been an honor.
“Getting to be part of a cool team like this is awesome as well,” he said. “It's heartwarming for me, and exciting, and kind of something I've been working up to for a little while.”
(L-R) N'Gina Guyton, Jeana Pecha and Bucky Bray discuss the Blue Corn Rabbit Tamal dish with Mole Negra and Blanco, Pinenut Sikil Pak, Ají Amarillo and Grilled Vegetables.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadioJeana Pecha from Omakase Por Favor in Lincoln and Midtown also helped curate the three-course dinner menu. Pecha said it has been months in the making — talking, collaborating, and communicating on the vision of the dinner.
“I do Coastal Mexican with a little bit of Japanese fusion. But I love pulling from ancient recipe books, Aztec, Mayan, and I serve moles and things like this on my menu every week,” Pecha said, adding that it was an easy assignment. “But it was also challenging, because there's things that I've done every day that now I get to watch somebody else do it and be excited to find another way to do it, which is really what this food's all about.”
Devin Dedier, a chef from Vacanza Romana in El Dorado Hills, also contributed to the menu. He felt a great sense of pride representing his restaurant, which is just outside of Sacramento.
“It's just kind of a testament to put in 100% hard work, and it'll get recognized, especially, for where the restaurant that I am at is in the area, being in the foothills,” Dedier said. “It kind of gives me that reassurance that, ‘hey, you're doing good. You're being noticed by Sacramento City,’ which is really important to us.”
Vacanza Romana is an Italian restaurant. Learning all the indigenous cooking was not something Dieder was used to.
“But between N’Gina, Jeana, Bucky, all of their passion during our meetings, it just made me passionate to learn something new,” he said. “Taking my background from Italian and the techniques and the old-world settings that they bring, but then experimenting with new flavors, was probably the hardest thing.”
Braised California Bison with Acorn Polenta, Chestnut Mushroom Bisque, Wild Rice and Pickled Blackberries, and Buckwheat Frybread.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
N’Gina Guyton is a southern-style chef who was the owner of Jim Denny’s in Midtown, which closed in early July. She is now a part of New Helvetia on Broadway.
Guyton said that in her eyes, she looks at the Tower Bridge Dinner as Sacramento’s birthday.
“I think that it's really special, just a representation of all of these different cultures that make up the California cuisine,” Guyton said. “Actually a lot of different cultures have had their hand in how we have gotten here today with this style of food that we cook, and it's important to give a tip of the cap to those cultures.”
Guyton said all four of the chefs had the opportunity to learn and research how they were going to execute the menu.
“At the end of the day, we all went home with more tools in our toolbox that I think going forward, I will be able to incorporate that in the style of cooking that I do naturally,” she said. “It's been very exciting learning about ingredients that are not popular, like acorns and chestnuts, using bison as a main protein, having rabbit, that's not something that you see every day on the American kitchen table or the dining table.”
The Tower Bridge Dinner will be Sept. 7. Tickets for the sold-out event went for $300. According to Testa, Visit Sacramento has funded many scholarships with the event proceeds.
“The Tower Bridge dinner is obviously an event that it's hard to get tickets to, and we're aware of that, " he said. “One of the things that I think people need to know is we've funded more than 75 scholarships to the children of migrant farm workers who go to Sac State, the CAMP program. So proceeds from this dinner go to fund scholarships to make sure that kids of all parts of the food chain.”
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