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The third annual Hawaii Food & Wine Festival will showcase culinary industry gods and goddesses displaying the mettle behind their acclaim, through several September days on Maui and Oahu.
As part of the prelude to the glitzy events, which raise money for nonprofits, Foodland will sponsor three free chef demonstrations and samplings on Oahu.
Chefs will prepare enough to offer one-bite samples for shoppers, first come, first served, Foodland chef Keoni Chang told TheBuzz.
Foodland’s "Hawaii’s Farmers and Chefs" series will first feature Mark "Gooch" Noguchi, a featured chef and culinary partner at Taste Table in Kakaako, alongside Bob and Janice Stanga, co-owners of Hamakua Heritage Farm Inc.
Noguchi will make Hamakua mushroom and Hawaii Island Goat Dairy bruschetta from 11 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Kailua Foodland at 108 Hekili St.
Chef and restaurateur Roy Yamaguchi, Hawaii’s first James Beard Award winner and co-founder of the festival, will make a dish called Gorditas with Nalo Collection. As one might expect from the dish’s name, Nalo Farms President Dean Okimoto will provide the edible greenery and appear alongside Yamaguchi from 11 a.m. to noon Aug. 3 at Kapolei Foodland, 4850 Kapolei Parkway.
The finale will feature Foodland chef Keoni Chang preparing Ma‘o lacinato kale and pulled huli chicken salad with creamy shoyu-sesame dressing. Representing the Leeward coast organic farm will be Managing Director Gary Maunakea-Forth, who often brings extra stuff for people to sample and ask about, Chang said. To be prepared at Foodland Farms in Aina Haina from 11 a.m. to noon Aug. 10, Chang said his dish will be "a play on the classic Chinese chicken salad," using the kale, also called Tuscan kale, instead of say, iceberg lettuce.
People think all kale has to be braised or sautéed or "cooked a lot to be palatable … but it doesn’t have to be cooked if you prepare it correctly," Chang said.
Regular readers of this column will remember that Chang was the first Supermarket Grand Chef in the U.S., after winning the Food Marketing Institute’s inaugural Supermarket Chef Showdown last year in Dallas.
His deconstructed Ahi California Roll won a $1,000 prize in the "Indulgent" category, then beat all other category-winning dishes for a $3,500 trip to the Culinary Institute of America for a two-day boot camp.
The festival will include several of Hawaii’s big-time and rising star chefs, but also dozens of Mobile star-rated AAA Diamond-bedecked, James Beard Foundation-feted and otherwise renowned chefs from the mainland and around the world, who will arrive in the islands for events from Sept. 1 through 9.
Admission to most of the signature events starts at $200 per person, but for the "Third Annual Halekulani Master Chefs Gala Series: Around the World with Seven Chefs," tickets start at $1,000.
Many events are cheaper, however.
Chang will participate in the "Taste Our Love for the Land" event Sept. 7 and will be among 18 luminary chefs from Hawaii, California, Chicago, New York and Tokyo.
So will he get to hang out with superstar chefs Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago, Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles or Dean Fearing of Fearing’s in Dallas?
Chang dined at Fearing’s acclaimed restaurant while in Dallas for the supermarket chef contest.
"I had my pre-competition dinner there. The next day I competed, and I like to think some of his mojo maybe rubbed off on me," Chang said.
As for hobnobbing, elbow-rubbing or otherwise schmoozing, Chang says at these sorts of events chefs "tend to be head-down, deep into the dishes we’re doing," but "you want to make sure that the guests get their opportunity to have face time with the chefs," so face time for colleagues has to wait.
He expects the chefs and purveyors at the Foodland demonstrations also will be approachable and will answer all sorts of questions, from queries about cooking techniques to tricks of the organic-farming trade.
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