Kyle Nabilcy
It's certainly nice to see a fan event for a TV show that doesn't devolve into some hammy mockery of the original product.
Near the conclusion of the most recent season of the hit food show Top Chef in June, Bravo announced that a tour promoting the reality program would be making 23 stops in 19 cities throughout the summer. On Wednesday, Top Chef: The Tour hit Madison, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the attendees.
Set up on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard just off the Capitol Square and near the midweek food cart. An expectant crowd milled about outside, and after a surprise spotting in the Starbucks across the street, I saw Chicagoans Stephanie Izard (Season 4 winner) and Dale Levitsky (Season 3 finalist) take their seats and begin signing autographs and posing for pictures.
Once we all filed into the well-appointed and surprisingly comfortable trailer -- one of my party commented that it was a more spacious kitchen than her first apartment -- Dale and Stephanie entered to enthusiastic applause. We were informed that the day's menu, herbed cheese ravioli over a pluot-tomato fruit salad with fennel and basil, would be prepared with primarily local ingredients. The chefs, they told us, spent their first day in town shopping at the Willy Street Co-op, and later visited Harvest for dinner. Both obviously value and subscribe to the "locavore" concept.
The crowd was encouraged to speak up during the cooking process, and there was no shortage of commentary. The chefs promised dish on any aspect of the show, and the avid fans in attendance certainly shared their thoughts. Both chefs spoke about their former and forthcoming Chicago-area restaurants; Stephanie divested herself of As for the food? It was delightfully light and summery, in keeping with the chefs' attention to seasonality. The sheep's milk cheese ravioli, wrapped in a wonton skin for efficiency's sake, was creamy but not heavy. Grape tomatoes and diced pluots played well with the sweet herbal notes of fennel and basil, and the vinaigrette blended the sweetness and acidity perfectly. The dish would be an ideal amuse bouche at any number of restaurants in Madison; I'm thinking Fresco and
