So last night **Shocker Khan **and I had the amazing opportunity to go to one of **Chef Stephanie Izard’s **Wandering Goat dinners. The location of the dinner was at **Chef Art Smith’s **home in the Hyde Park neighborhood. If you don’t know Art Smith, he was Oprah’s personal chef for several years and now has a very successful restaurant called Table 52 here in Chicago. He was a judge on Top Chef and also competed in Top Chef Masters.
We arrived right on time at 7pm and there were already quite a few people there. There were more people than I’d expected, but I think a good portion of them were invited guests (friends, family, etc). Art Smith’s home is a beautiful 4000-square foot condo where he lives with his partner of ten years, an artist named Jesus Salgueiro. The place is filled with Salgueiro’s art. I mean - FILLED. It seemed like every inch of the place has some sort of painting or sculpture of some sort. One thing I liked was that the home felt lived in, not sterile like the way some “fancier” homes feel. He had pictures up everywhere of him and his partner w/ Oprah, the Obamas, and other neat people. He had a giant built-in bookshelf in the dining room full of cookbooks. I’d guess he had at least 500 different cookbooks filling the shelves. One other fun thing was that their cats and dog were running about the place the entire time loving all of the attention.
Right away we were directed to a wine table where SK and I each got a glass of a syrah from Walla Walla’s Charles Smith winery. It was really good wine. We then walked back through the condo towards the kitchen where Stephanie and a bunch of other cooks were hard at work preparing the food. We ran into Smith as we made our way through the place and he was very gracious in saying hello and welcoming us to his home. I told him that he looked like he’d lost a bit of weight recently and he said that he has lost 58 pounds (but who’s counting). He was extremely nice. A lot of the action at the party was outside on the back patio area. They had a fire pit going so it wasn’t too cold, and a really nice wood-burning stove/ grill area where they were preparing some of the food.
All of the food was served as passed hors d’œuvres in one-bite at a time portions. That said, the food was plentiful and you could pretty much grab a bite of something whenever you wanted one. The nice thing about the hors d’œuvres concept was that you got all of the flavors in one bite, exactly as it was supposed to taste.
We spent some time in the dining room/kitchen area watching all of the action and we got to talk a bit w/ Stephanie as she was cooking. She had some fun things to say about Top Chef and the reunion special that just aired (she was asked to be on it, and then un-asked… guess she doesn’t bring enough drama). She had really nice things to say about Tom Colicchio and she made a funny comment about Padma’s “baby daddy.” Near the end of the evening I got my picture taken w/ her and she talked with us a bit about the party and wanted to make sure we had a good time. She was a sweetheart.
Without further ado, here is the menu. I’m not sure I had a favorite as it was all amazing, but I think the flatbread might have won the night for me.
*Walla Walla sweet onion soup w/ bell pepper (served in tiny mugs)
*Grilled prawns w/ goat sausage, apple butter, black olive
*Mussels escabeche w/ fennel, peppers, and cilantro
*Hamachi w/ braised bacon and shaved radish
*Nantucket Bay scallops w/ celery root and bagna cauda (an Italian warm dip, similar to fondue)
*Miso-marinated NY strip steak w/ salted goat caramel and cucumber
*Gnocchi w/ fresh ricotta, acorn squash, and cranberry
*Smoked goat flatbread w/ pear, nicoise olives, and feta cheese
*Chicken liver ravioli w/ pomegranate and leeks
*Pumpkin spice gelato w/ caramel corn sprinkled on top
*Hot spiced rum cider
