Let Them Eat Art!

Thursday, April 5, 2012
6-9pm
at the CAL Gallery

Love food? Love art? Come and see how they pair up in the hands of the experts. We’re throwing a fun, extra evening during the Eat Me! show, which is also a wee fundraiser for CAL. Yay!

We’ve invited some of our best local chefs to choose a work in the show as an inspiration for a platter of tapas-style food. At Let Them Eat Art! you can see the art, meet the chefs, and MOST importantly, see what inspiration tastes like. Yum!

Tickets cost $25 per person or a pair of tickets for $45. Tickets are limited to 100, so reserve your space early! RSVP by Friday, March 30, 2012.

Ticket payments, or donations in lieu of attendance, can be made by check.

Please make checks payable to Columbia Art League and send to:
CAL
207 South 9th Street
Columbia MO 65201

Credit card payments can also be made over the phone: 573-443-8838.

Let Them Eat Art Featured Chefs

Chef Ben Parks
bleu Restaurant and Wine Bar

Ben started working in kitchens while in college at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. After graduating with a BA in Business Administration in 2002, he decided to pursue a culinary career and enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America. After completing his studies, he returned to his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, eventually becoming Sous Chef at Trattoria Stada Nova.

Ben spent several years teaching culinary arts through the Columbia Area Career Center before returning to the restaurant business. He has been with bleu Restaurant and Wine Bar since just after its opening in 2008 where he is now the Executive Chef.

Chef Bryan Maness
Broadway Brewery

Chef Bryan Maness spends his days with a preoccupation for food. Although a native of mid-Missouri, he has a passion for regional cuisine that has been propagated through extensive travels. "I love to sample a unique and flavorful dish, then attempt to recreate the experience with my own flair."

Though self-taught in the culinary arts, Maness credits his upbringing with inspiring his passion. "The dinner table was a mesh of European traditions and Southern sensibility."

He is currently employed as the Executive Chef at Broadway Brewery in Columbia, MO, where his seasonal menus reflect his farm to table ethic. Through his avid gardening and close relationships with area farmers, Bryan supplies Broadway Brewery's dishes with the freshest local produce and highest quality meat products available, creating comfort food with class.

Chef Sara Fougere
The Catering Kitchen

Sara Fougere is owner of Sara Fougere Catering, an upscale catering business located in Columbia. She is co-owner of the new Catering Kitchen, soon to be opening in the Village of Cherry Hill. Her new venture will allow customers to purchase their favorite catered items and meals to take home.

Sara is talented in creative food preparation, artful presentation and impeccable service. She has a degree in Food Science from the University of Missouri and loves to use the skills she learned while growing up on a farm in Richmond, MO, to create fabulous food using the freshest and most available local ingredients.

Chef Laura Estes
The Catering Kitchen

The Catering Kitchen, a partnership of Laura Estes, the Farmer’s Daughter, and Sara Fougere Catering, offers meals for busy families, individuals, or groups.

Laura Estes started cooking professionally as a personal chef under the name The Farmer’s Daughter. She specializes in unique and seasonal menus for large crowds, boxed and buffet corporate lunches, and brunches.

Sharing her homemade heirloom recipes and creating customized menus for individual tastes is her forte. For the past 3 years, she has cooked weekly for First Christian Church’s Café, surprising her crowd with a new menu each week.

Advanced Culinary Arts Student Will Kinney
Columbia Area Career Center

Will is a senior at Rock Bridge High School. Will’s passion for cooking stemmed from his family’s love for food. Will is always interested in learning everything he can about cuisine and the hospitality industry. He will be attending Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration in the fall and will then head to the Culinary Institute of America to further his culinary training.

Advanced Culinary Arts Student Dahnya Rogers
Columbia Area Career Center

Dahnya is a junior at Rock Bridge High School and is currently enrolled in the Culinary Arts 2 Class at the Columbia Area Career Center. She has had a passion for cooking since she began helping her parents around the age of 3. Dahnya has taken cooking classes all over the world and loves learning about all aspects of cuisine. She plans on attending the Culinary Institute of America after graduation and then pursuing a career in catering and party planning.

The Culinary Arts Program helps potential chefs develop and expand their skills which are necessary to become certified with the American Culinary Federation as a Certified Culinarian. The program explores both basic and advanced techniques, as well as the study of regional and international cuisines while applying them to an actual production setting. The class runs a buffet and restaurant periodically throughout the year. Career choices include restaurant manager, pastry culinarian, certified working pastry chef, certified sous chef, certified executive chef, and certified culinarian.

Chef Aaron Wells-Morgan
Les Bourgeois Winery & Bistro

Aaron Wells-Morgan was born in Columbia, MO, and began working in local restaurants at age 15. He then attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. While attending culinary school, Chef Aaron worked in Manhattan at Jean Georges, Picholine, and Babbo.

After graduating with an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts from CIA, he took a job in Kansas City, MO, with the PB&J Restaurant Group. Chef Aaron worked as a corporate Sous Chef in each PB&J concept restaurant located throughout the Midwest.

After two years, he became Executive Chef of Café Provence in Prairie Village, KS. During his tenure at Café Provence, the restaurant was named "Best French Restaurant" in the Kansas City Metro Area by the Kansas City Star.

Chef Aaron then moved to Napa Valley to become Chef De Partie at Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, California. Aaron returned to his hometown in Columbia in 2009 to be closer to his family and worked as the chef de cuisine for the University Club formal dining room on the University of Missouri campus. Chef Aaron is currently Executive Chef at Les Bourgeois Winery & Bistro in Rocheport.

Chef Jeremy Bowles
Room 38 Restaurant & Lounge

Jeremy Bowles, born and raised in Rolla, MO, graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor's degree in hotel and restaurant management in 2004.

From there Jeremy went on to cook for a variety of restaurants around town, learning under each chef and taking his progress with him. As kitchen manager of the former Forge & Vine, Jeremy decided he was ready to write his own menu, and, in August of 2008, opened Room 38 Restaurant & Lounge. Since then Jeremy has wowed Columbia with an eclectic menu offering a wide variety of creative plates for any palate.

Pastry Chef Lauren Quillo
Sweet Ethics (website under development)

Lauren Quillo is a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia studying Communications, Business and English. She is originally from O'Fallon, MO, and has been enjoying the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for the past two years. Also, Lauren is involved with the Animal Protection Movement. Her current research is centered on public health issues as they intersect nutritional values and the food supply: "Revisiting the Food Pyramid" is her theme.

Sweet Ethics Catering is a small vegan/vegetarian/raw food service that believes in environmentally sound, mindfully raised and cultivated food products for a healthy lifestyle. Sweet Ethics was founded by Briggs & Greenley and generally caters to small private gatherings, art openings, food & health symposiums, musical venues and the like. The main perspective marries charming and flavorful culinary treats to a wholesome, plant-based cuisine. Artistry in the presentation is a constant.

Chef Mike Odette
Sycamore

A lifelong Midwesterner and longtime Missourian, Chef Mike Odette fell among restaurant people after dropping out of college, where he had been studying Chemical Engineering.

He began work in a garde manger position at Café Europa under the tutelage of the late Bob Rappold. At Europa and Europa bakery, Chef Odette learned his way around a restaurant kitchen and discovered the pleasures of the convivial table. “For a small-town Missouri boy, in those days before the internet, Food TV and celebrity chef culture, all I had were cookbooks – James Beard, Julia Child, Barbara Kafka – those were my teachers.”

Later, during a nine-year tenure at Columbia’s celebrated Trattoria Strada Nova, he worked his way up from line cook to head chef, helping that restaurant become a mid-Missouri favorite throughout the 1990s.

Following a five-year stint as cook and counterman of the legendary and historic Booches pool hall, chef Odette, with partners Amy Barrett and Sanford and Jill Speake, opened Sycamore in 2005.

Sycamore, which honors the farmers, foragers and ranchers of Missouri with simple and seasonal rustic fare, quickly drew attention and great reviews as a champion of market-driven “Missouri bistro” cuisine.

In 2009, Chef Odette was honored as a semi-finalist for the James Beard Awards’ “Best Chef, Midwest.”

Chef Trey Quinlan
Trey (under development)

Trey Quinlan was born and raised in Columbia, MO. In 2003, he was the first student at the Columbia Area Career Center to place first in the Skills USA Culinary Arts State Competition. From there he went on to receive his associate's and bachelor's degrees at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.

He has worked in kitchens all over New England as well as the Republic of Ireland. He helped open Sycamore in 2005, and bleu Restaurant and Wine Bar in 2008. While at bleu, Trey took over as executive chef where he was able to help shape the restaurant into the success that it is today. He was nominated for Inside Columbia Magazine that year and has been nominated every year since.

In May 2010, Trey moved on to open Red & Moe where he focused on local sustainable cuisine. He was awarded 2nd place in the Mid-Missouri Taste of Elegance in 2010 and 3rd place in 2011. At Red & Moe, he worked on sourcing the best ingredients from the local market and applied that to their bistro menu.

When Red and Moe closed in Marc, 2012, Trey decided the timing was right to develop his own twist on the Italian bistro. He will be opening his new restaurant in August on North 9th Street at the former site of Trattoria Strada Nova and Red & Moe.

Pastry Chef Jen Grob
The University Club of MU

Jenny Grob grew up just outside of Columbia in Holts Summit, MO. She traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, to obtain a degree in Baking and Pastry Arts.

While in Kentucky she worked at The Brown Hotel in their four diamond restau-rant, The English Grill. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Sullivan University, she moved back to central Missouri to be closer to friends and family where she also continues to pursue her love of baking and pastry arts.

Before joining The University Club, she also worked at Chez Monet bakery in Jefferson City, MO. She has been with The University Club for a year and a half.

Sous Chef Michael White
The Wine Cellar & Bistro

Michael White is originally from Springfield, MO, and has lived in Columbia for 10 years. He is currently the sous chef of The Wine Cellar & Bistro and has been a part of The Wine Cellar's culinary team for over 7 years.

The Wine Cellar is known for its emphasis on local, organic ingredients with a classic French flair. Each dish is made from scratch, every day.