It’s not enough to simply relax and dine on the dishes chefs create for restaurant menus, some people want to jump in and help cook the meal.
The promise of an “epitourian” experience in the professional kitchens of the Sawgrass Marriott Resort in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., is what attracted Maureen and Billy Ray Price of Moultrie.
“I found it online. We wanted to go to the beach to celebrate our wedding anniversary, but we wanted something different,” Maureen Price said. “My husband is a really good cook, and I thought, ‘He’ll learn to make even more great things for me’ and it will be fun.”
So while other guests at the golf-centric resort, the host hotel of the Players Championship, headed out to play one of the areas eight championship golf courses or grabbed a book and a beach chair at the Cabana Beach Club, the Prices jumped on a golf cart with executive chef David Scalise to visit the on-property beehives.
Scalise tends two beehives tucked away in an area guests wouldn’t normally see behind tall trees and overgrown with blackberry bushes and other natural plants of north Florida. “At first everyone panicked when they heard I wanted to set up beehives on the hotel property. But these honeybees are not aggressive, and finally even the lawyers understood it was going to be OK," said Scalise, who set up the hives about a year ago. “Our first harvest yielded 15 gallons. The honey is a little nutty tasting with nuances of the wild blackberries. We use pieces of the honeycombs on our cheese platters."
He says another bonus from beekeeping is developing stronger relationships with local farmers. “We lend our bees to pollinate their crops, including a strawberry farmer nearby," Scalise said. "So then we get strawberry honey.”
Cook and learn
Next stop for the Prices on their culinary adventure was the farmers market in nearby Neptune Beach to shop for foods they would cook with in that afternoon. On their menu was a lesson in making fresh pasta.
“I’ve always loved to cook," said Billy Ray Price, now a physician. "Even in college at the University of Florida I made spaghetti sauce every Sunday for the other students in my dorm.”
A few notches up from spaghetti, Scalise led the Prices through the steps in making fresh gnocchi, including the delicate broth-based sauce that would be served to them for dinner that night as well as other guests in the Augustine Grille. So the Prices' experience went beyond creating their own courses to truly being a part of the Sawgrass Marriott’s culinary staff for the day.
Watch and learn
If you’d rather stay out of the line of fire in a busy restaurant kitchen but still want to be close enough to see exactly how the chef sears a piece of fish, then you can take a seat at the Chef’s Table at the Cloister at Sea Island.
Seating four guests comfortably in a small yet elegant glassed-in dining room, the table overlooks the expansive kitchen of the Georgian Room where chef de cuisine Daniel Zeal and his brigade of chefs turn vegetables into jewellike shapes, expertly grill meats, poach lobster in vanilla and citrus, delicately prepare fine fish such as cobia, garnish plates with edible flowers, and create multi-ingredient desserts.
Can’t keep up with the action? Just change the channel. Above the picture window in the Chef’s Table dining room is a wide-screen television. “We give the guests their own remote control to switch camera views around the kitchen so they can follow their meal every step of the way," Zeal said, "and I pop in to answer any questions they might have about techniques or ingredients.”
Off the farm
It’s nothing new to see the names of farms and farmers on menus today as more chefs create business bonds to bring the best in locally grown foods to their guests. But take a look around the dining room and you may even see a farmer.
Eating dinner one night at Edward’s Fine Food & Wine in Rosemary Beach, Fla., I asked chef Edward Reese about the deliciously fresh microgreens in the salads. He smiled and replied by pointing to the man sitting at the next table. “Why don’t you ask Claus Kazenmaier," Reese said. "They came from his farm this morning!”
So it seems another component in judging culinary quality today is how close we can get to knowing where our food comes from and exactly how it’s prepared even when someone else is doing the cooking.
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