Starting next month, the James Beard Foundation will launch Taste America: a national tour of ten cities over five weekends beginning September 20 in Chicago and Miami, and finishing October 19 in Phoenix and Boston. The purpose of this delicious tour isn’t just to highlight the best of each city’s restaurant scene, but to also host exclusive benefit dinners that will fundraise for local charities.
The ticketed tour will stop in New York on October 11-12 at Tom Colicchio’s Riverpark. For an evening entitled “The Artful Chef,” chefs including “Taste America All-Star” Daniel Patterson of San Francisco’s Coi, host chef Sisha Ortuzar of Riverpark, and New York based James Beard award winning chefs Alexandra Guarnaschelli of The Darby and Brooks Headley of Del Posto will create a menu to help benefit Wellness in The Schools. Space is limited, as you might imagine, so potential guests are advised to register in advance.
And if you can’t attend “The Artful Chef” dinner and would still like to support a good cause with a good meal? JBF’s Taste America is also hosting a nationwide “Local Dish Challenge.”
Participating restaurants across the country will feature a unique Taste America Local Dish on their menus from September 1 – October 31. One dollar from each dish sold will go to the JBF Taste America education drive, and if customers take a photo of the dish and post it to Instagram (with the hashtag #JBFTasteamerica and the hashtag of their city), they can help their city win either $10,000 or 10 percent of the proceeds raised nationally (whichever is higher) for a local food charity in their city.
James Beard caliber restaurants and the opportunity to support one of our local food charities? It seems right up our alley!
If you have the chance during the next couple of months, be sure to sample JBF local dishes at one (or more) of the participating New York restaurants:
A.L.C. Italian Grocery
Aretsky’s Patroon Townhouse
Devi
Harding’s
L’Apicio
Measure at Langham Place
Morso
Paname French Restaurant
Perry St.
Porsena
QI Thai Grill
Rouge Tomate
Son’s of Essex Restaurant & Lounge
Telepan
And it’s not too late to sign up! If your restaurant would like to participate, go here to register.
