We’re headed back and we’re excited! The Kitchen’s Executive Chef Kelly McCown is honored to have been invited back to Pebble Beach Food and Wine for the third year in a row to represent The Kitchen and Sacramento. This is PBFW’s 10th Anniversary year, and features 250 legendary wineries and 100 of the nation’s top chefs at a 4-day extravaganza of epicurean events at Pebble Beach and surrounding locations, April 20-23, 2017. Chef McCown will be working among the nation’s best chefs and food professionals, including such luminaries as Thomas Keller, Christopher Kostow, Hugh Acheson, Nancy Oakes and more.
Accompanying Chef McCown will be Executive Chef Rob Lind from Ella Dining Room and Bar as Sous Chef. Selland Family Restaurants Sommelier and Director of Operations Joseph Vaccaro will also represent us at some of PBFW’s illustrious wine events, as he has for many years now. In fact, Vaccaro has been invited to every one of PBFW’s 10 years of events, and was the first restaurant professional from Sacramento to go.
Chef McCown notes that Sacramento will also be well represented by Chef’s Oliver Ridgeway, Mike Fagnoni and Matt Masera at this year’s festivities. Michael Passmore of Passmore Ranch will also be on hand once again to represent our city as a foremost authority on aqua farming and more. McCown and Passmore make it an annual tradition to road trip over to Pebble Beach on their motorcycles together.
The first year he went to PBFW, McCown recalls, he cooked lamb procured from Passmore Ranch, and last year he did goat curries using goat from Passmore Ranch, as well as Mushroom Shooters with Parmesan Froth. This year, he and Lind will be at two events. At the Lexus Grand Tasting they will prepare Porcini Custard Royale with Grilled Morels for over 2000 guests, and at the Original Joe’s Stone Crab Pop Up hosted by Tyler Florence, they will do Rock Shrimp Ceviche with Fermented Pineapple. We would be remiss if we didn’t give a big nod to the amazing wine events that Selland Family Restaurants’ Sommelier and Director of Operations Joseph Vaccaro will participate in. For his tenth year at Pebble Beach Food and Wine, Joe has quite the head-spinning lineup:
THURSDAY: Spanish Bay
Reception: Spanish Bay
Opening Night Tasting
FRIDAY: Pebble Beach
Lunch: Equestrian Center
Chef’s Table Lunch (with Dominique Crenn and Carlo Mirarchi)
Dinner: Beach and Tennis Club
Bocuse d’Or Team USA Dinner (with Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller)
SATURDAY: Spanish Bay
Seminar (10am): St. Andrew’s East
Guigal Retrospective – Benchmark Rhone
Seminar (4pm): St. Andrew’s East
The Wines of Domaine & Maison Leroy
As The Kitchen continues to garner top nationwide recognition – this year we added a spot on the Open Table Top 100 Restaurants in America and Wine Enthusiast’s 100 Best Wine Restaurants in America to our long list of accolades – we are proud and excited to keep raising the profile of the Sacramento region by participating in these stellar events with America’s best restaurant professionals. As Chef McCown says, “I’m really excited to go for the 10th Anniversary. This is a great group of people to be a part of. This is a big deal.” It’s that simple.
Bon appetit!
