Sunday, May 8, 2011

SLC Bites

We were lucky enough to support a great local foodie event this past week, SLC Bites.  An off shoot of Slow Food, SLC Bites celebrates local food and our Salt Lake dining scene by creating one night events that feature a specific local chef's food.  The chef creates a few bites to taste, the bites are paired with wines, and voila, it's a recipe for a great night!  

Tuesday's event featured Chef Ryan Lowder of  The Copper Onion.  The Cooper Onion is a fairly new spot downtown right next to the Broadway movie theaters on 300 South. We've already enjoyed a meal or two there over the past few months.  It's the mark of  a great kitchen when vegetables are the standouts on a menu and this is definitely the case with the Cooper Onion.  When we were last there, we had simple, delicious side dishes that frankly stole the show-roasted shishito peppers, steak fries with parmesan and herbs, and snap peas doused with just the right combination of garlic and horseradish.  So we were pleased to see Lowder honor his nice touch with vegetables with his menu selection for SLC Bites.   The featured bites were romesco sauce with spring onions on crackers, ramp and walnut pesto on crostini, and chilled asparagus soup with tomato and crab.  We loved the unique peppery flavor of the ramp pesto. It isn't often you see ramps on a menu!  They are an unusual ingredient, actually a wild leek very similar looking to a scallion, and are usually one of the first seasonal greens available in the spring.  The spicy zing of the pesto over the mellow, creamy ricotta on the crostini was an especially yummy combination.  Being visual folks, we couldn't resist the great bright color of the asparagus soup presented in shot glasses, and the rich green tone of the pesto-excellent emblems of spring!


It's exciting to realize that an event like SLC Bites can only come together because of the expertise and passion that surrounds food and drink in this town. Not only was the event sold out with 200 people attending, it also showcased wines and appetizers from two other great spots in our local dining scene.  Wines were provided by Francis Fectau, owner of  Libation, a Salt Lake wine brokerage. The two chosen wines were a really nice complement to the food choices and Fectau's interest and knowledge about wine was clearly evident. He manned the bar and poured and talked about the wines all evening.   We were also pleased to see  Caputo's doing what they do best-offering the finest Italian specialty meats and cheeses during the cocktail hour.    There can never be enough cured meat in our opinion, and Caputos put together two apps that featured really great cured meats from a small purveyor/artisanal producer in Virginia called Olli Salumeria. All Olli's cured meats are made with pork from heritage-breed pigs, pasture raised on family-owned sustainable farms.  What's not to love about that?  And they tasted fantastic to boot.  We also dug Rexburg, Idaho based Lark's Meadow's ricotta cheese which was stuffed into bright little red peppadew peppers.   The entire table was picked clean by the end of the evening.  Everything was completely addictive and delicious.
SLC Bites is the brain child of Chantelle Bordeaux, who herself is quite the food maven about town, involved with both Edible Wasatch and the local Slow Food Chapter. We are already looking forward to the next edition of SLC Bites slated for August.  I wonder who the lucky chef will be?...... Stay tuned via slowfoodutah.org

*Gorgeous photography above by the one and only Ruby Johnson