TC News and Information 10.25.10

Guess who can add "Whole Pig Tent Curator" to his resume? That would be TC Season 6 finalist Kevin Gillespie, who will assume the role at Atlanta's inaugural Food and Wine Festival next May 19-22. Also slated for the fest are TC Masters contestants Tim Love and John Besh. Road trip, anyone?

Kevin also "headlined" Taste of Atlanta this weekend. We'd love to hear from any of our readers who attend.

If you can drag yourself away from Top Chef Just Desserts Wednesday and are in the area, check out the gig TC Masters contestant Susan Feniger is doing for the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

Looks like the Project Dinner Table benefit TC Masters contestant Rick Moonen is participating in Oct. 30 has sold out, but for your armchair traveling/salivating pleasure, here's the menu:

• Passed canapés: potato blintz with hot smoked sturgeon and oscetra caviar; Kushi oysters with green apple mignonette, frozen horseradish and duck pastrami with poached quince and rye crumble
• First course: sugar pumpkin soup, peekytoe crab and toasted hazelnut
• Second course: Fuji apple salad, aged white cheddar, bitter greens and maple vinaigrette
• Third course: Whole roasted Sunburst Farms Rainbow Trout, Brussel sprouts and double smoked bacon
• Fourth course: grilled Duroc pork chops, Seckel pears, turnips and grain mustard
• Fifth course: pistachio French toast, coffee ice cream and golden raisin sauce

In Connecticut Nov. 5-7, you can catch Tom Colicchio, TC Masters contestant Susur Lee, and TC Season 3 contestant Casey Thompson at the Foxwoods Food and Wine Festival. The foodie event takes place at the Foxwoods Casino and Resort on Mashantucket Pequot tribal land - if you go, don't miss the awesome Native American museum that has been built with gambling dollars. I think Tom Colicchio and his young son would enjoy it :)

Now here's an event outside the norm from what I typically see wrangling the old ATC mailbox. The Astor Center in NYC will host “The Alchemy of Taste and Smell” November 12-13. From the press release: “Cooking is alchemy: the art of transforming raw materials into a perfected form. Cooking fuses taste and smell, emotion and memory, culture and nature. The work of chefs today is much discussed, but the process by which new dishes and flavor combinations are created remains mysterious. This event will explore creativity in cooking, the composite nature of flavors and the importance of aroma in food and drink.” Capping off the event is a seven-course collaborative dinner “exploring new flavor combinations and making explicit the connection between what we smell and what we taste. For instance, a cucumber/melon salad served on a plate scented with mint essence, as a sensory sleight of hand where by the end of the dish the diner thinks that they have eaten the herb, even though they have only smelled it.” Just Desserts judge Johnny Iuzzini, TC Masters contenders Wylie Dufresne and Nils Noren, and other big names in the food world, including David Chang and Harold McGee, are among the participants. Click here for more details.