Lifestyles, food collide

Not to rush the season, but plans are set for this fall’s 10th annual Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival to be held September 25-27 at the Elms, Rosecliff and Marble House.

The weekend of wine tasting, food pairing and celebrity-chef sighting has become over the past decade one of the top weekends for foodies. Food and Wine magazine is one of the major sponsors of the mansions festival. Martha Stewart and Jacques and Claudine Pepin are among the celebrity chefs to be featured.

Also appearing will be culinary notables, including chocolatiers Jacques Torres and Amy Guittard, New York chefs Ben Pollinger of Oceana and J.J. Johnson of The Cecil, Boston chefs Matthew Petersen (Papa-Razzi Metro) and Dante diMagistris (il Casale). The selection of wines again will number in the hundreds and there will be numerous educational opportunities, from seminars to live cooking demonstrations.

A festival highlight will be an on-stage “conversation” with Martha Stewart and Jacques Pépin to be held in the Gold Room of Marble House on Sunday morning. The two icons, she the lifestyle expert and he the French chef, will discuss what’s hot and what’s not in lifestyle and food trends.

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The discussion will be moderated by Claudine Pepin, who has a busy weekend between a cooking demonstration with her dad and her own book signing of her first cookbook, “Kids Cook French,” with classic recipes in both English and French, illustrated by her daughter as well as her father, Jacques. She is a Rhode Islander these days, as her husband is a faculty member at Johnson & Wales University.

More than 20 restaurants will be serving signature dishes. Local favorites will be set up alongside eateries from New York and Boston. The local restaurants include Newport’s Muse by Jonathan Cartwright, Spiced Pear at the Chanler, Castle Hill Inn and Tallulah’s. Matunuck Oyster Bar will be on hand, as well as local caterers Russell Morin and Blackstone Caterers.

Just about every Rhode Islander has a story about the state’s long reach. The Newport Mansions Wine and Food Festival organizers seem to have an innate sense of Ocean State connections among the roster of chefs and food and wine personalities. Martha Stewart and Jacques Pepin have their own Newport stories, Stewart’s about seeking out a particular stitching pattern used by an upholsterer in one of the mansions; while Pepin is fond of comparing Newport to his beloved Versailles.

Guest chef Matthew Petersen is a Johnson & Wales graduate with a degree in baking and pastry. He was a pastry chef at Castle Hill Inn, then relocated to Philadelphia, then New York to cook for Daniel Boulud. His next stop was Washington, D.C., before joining the Newport Restaurant Group for its Papa Razzi Metro restaurant.

A master class in champagne will be held with an expert from the famed French Taittinger winery, pairing bubbly with food created by chef Matthew MacCartney of Jamestown Fish restaurant, himself a Food and Wine People’s Best Chef award winner.

Amy Guittard is a member of the fifth generation of the family chocolate business started in 1868. Amy’s involvement at Guittard includes not only marketing activities but also sourcing and sustainability, serving on several committees for the World Cocoa Foundation and often traveling to origin to meet with farmers, buyers and traders. She will appear on stage in a demonstration of cooking with chocolate with award-winning pastry chef Jacques Torres. The two have a Rhode Island connection in an industry colleague.

Andrew Shotts was a pastry chef at some iconic New York restaurants, including Lutece and the Russian Tea room, before becoming the corporate pastry chef of the Guittard Chocolate Company. He left Guittard to come to Rhode Island and start his own line of gourmet chocolates, Garrison Confections in Central Falls.

All in all, it will make for a memorable culinary weekend in an elegant backyard. •
Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” talk radio show is heard on 920 WHJJ-AM, 1540 WADK-AM and on mobile applications. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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