On Thursday, October 20th, the 7th annual Children’s Bureau Celebrity Chefs & Wine Tasting fundraiser took place at Casa Vertigo in Downtown Los Angeles. Children’s Bureau is a non-profit that works to prevent and assists in treating the victims of child abuse and had a packed turnout of folks all helping this great cause by attending and bidding on the silent and live auction items. Of course, plenty of food and wine were to be had from a dozen or so participating restaurants and chefs.
One of the bigger booths was the Border Grill, and both owners/chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken were on hand to serve their two delicious dishes: green corn tamales and seared greens with griddled panela cheese!
Chef Ray Garcia of B.S. Taqueria and Broken Spanish served a diminutive in size, but certainly not in flavor, bite of plaintains with a rich oxtail sauce. David Lentz handled out simple and fresh seared albacore on a tostada. And Bistro 45 had the most delicious spoonfuls of pork belly!
There were a couple of dessert options, but the one that blew me away both in presentation and in taste was Providence’s kawa-ishi, a Japanese dessert made by pastry chef Jessie Liu!
The wine at the event flowed freely as well, but since I’m not an oenophile I don’t feel qualified to speaking on that. I’ll stick to the thoroughly delicious food, thank you. There were many other food items I didn’t post above, like a pair of dishes featuring stracciatella, the creamy centers of those decadent burrata balls, from chefs Steve Samson of Sotto and Bruce Kalman of Union. You can find post of their dishes and others by going to #offaloccwt2016 on Instagram.
This was the first time I attended Children’s Bureau’s Celebrity Chefs & Wine Tasting, and while it’s relatively small in scale, compared to, say, LA Loves Alex’s Lemonade, the well curated list of participating chefs and restaurants meant all the food was delicious, making for happy attendees eating and drinking for a great cause!
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