by contributor Wendy Gordon
Photos by Neshan H. Naltchayan
Riddle us this: What do you get when you take over 100 acclaimed chefs and mixologists, post them at The Newseum and donate the proceeds to very deserving causes? Pretty much this: This past Saturday was the kickoff of Sips & Suppers, now in its fifth year, to benefit DC Central Kitchen and Martha’s Table.
Sips & Suppers, hosted by José Andrés, Joan Nathan and Alice Waters, is a two-day celebration of food and community, took place on January 26 and 27. The fundraiser, now in its fifth year, was launched during President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, and has grown to include almost 100 acclaimed chefs, mixologists and food artisans. This year’s event was the bigger and better than ever.
The events raise vital funding and focus on poverty, hunger and nutrition in Washington and the nation. Food and wine professionals from across the country and around the world, including chefs and wine specialists from France, Iceland and Italy, came together in a show of incredible community effort.
“It’s an extensive community—that’s what this is. The first year we didn’t have all of this, next year we were at private houses, and NOW, look at this. The Newseum donated all this,” Joan Nathan said. “We have this amazing cadre of volunteers that have gotten all of these people involved. We’ll make a lot of money tonight and young people who have no food will benefit from this.” Sips & Suppers has raised over $500,000 since its inception in 2009.
Saturday’s ‘Sips’ event showcased over 40 participants sampling a bevy of food, wine, cocktails and more including Loudon county vineyards and beer tastings from the Beer Institute and ChurchKey, cocktails from Gina Chersevani (Buffalo & Bergen and Hank’s Oyster Bar), Dan Searing (Room 11), Rob Yealu (The Federalist), Owen Thompson (Range) and Taha Ismail (previewing drinks from Mike Isabella’s upcoming Kapnos & G), and an exclusive sampling of Italian wines from Tuscan wine educator, Filippo Bartolotta. Artisans including charcutiers, pickle makers, farmers, cheesemongers and bakers were also on hand.
The event’s hosts estimate that the organizations benefitting fro the proceeds could see more than $100,000 each from this series of events. Exactly what can that mean? “We can feed tens of thousands of people, helps our culinary training—putting men and women who are in prison, battling addiction, homeless or chronically unemployed back to work; it helps us purchase more local food that we can serve in our school meal programs—offering healthy scratch-cooked foods to children in 10 DC schools; all of those things together, this kind of money with no restrictions helps us put it toward the most needed places that we have at this moment, Mike Curtin, Chief Executive Officer of DC Central Kitchen.
On Sunday evening, dinners were held be held in 26 private homes across the DC metropolitan area featuring local and internationally renowned chefs coming together to prepare multi-course meals of exquisite food and wine for small groups in each home. This year’s ‘Suppers’ included a Chinese New Year feast by Chefs Scott Drewno of The Source by Wolfgang Puck and Erik Bruner Yang of Toki Underground, an Icelandic dinner with Chefs Siggi Hall of Siggi Hall Restaurant in Reykjavik and Jeff Buben of Vidalia and a kosher Greek and Spanish-style meal by Chefs Mike Isabella of Graffiato, Bandolero, and the upcoming Kapnos and G and Victor Albisu of the upcoming Taco Bamba and Del Campo with wines provided by Arnaldo Caprai of Italy, Treasury Wine Estates, Terlato Wines International and the Gustafson Family Vineyards of Sonoma.
All of the chefs involved donated their time and skills to the cause, while dinner hosts and representatives from Martha’s Table and DC Central Kitchen lead discussions about the importance of local food to health, the economy and the environment.
