If you go
When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Embassy Suites La Vista
Tickets: $135 per person
Call: 402-331-1213.
The Menu:
>> Crispy tortilla salad with chipotle buttermilk and tequila vinaigrette.
>> Grilled carne asada with
cilantro butter
>> Rustic mashed potatoes
>> Charred asparagus with lemon.
>> Dessert duo of Mexican chocolate mousse and tres leche cake with cajeta sauce.
If you're looking for community and people who care, turn to restaurant people, says celebrity chef Rick Bayless.
"Restaurants are major community builders," said the Chicago restaurateur, who will be in Omaha for a dinner and cooking demonstration on Thursday. "We're in the hospitality business and you don't survive in this business if you don't take care of people.
Restaurant people are incredibly generous, giving to charity, especially the hungry. We're lucky to live in a land of plenty and we have wonderful stuff around us all the time. It's wonderful to offer some of that back to the community and to take care of people in need."
Bayless supports those words with action. His Omaha appearance is a fund-raiser for the Food Bank for the Heartland. A limited number of tickets are still available through the food bank.
Bayless is the host of the long-running television series "Mexico One Plate at a Time." He is known for introducing Americans to a broad range of regional cooking in Mexico. He and his wife Deann are proprietors of three Mexican restaurants in Chicago: Frontera Grill, the elegant Topolobampo restaurant and the simpler XOCO cafe. The couple also operate short-order restaurants at O'Hare International Airport and at Macy's.
"The fact that he's coming to Omaha is phenomenal," said Terrence Batiste, a junior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.. Batiste, 26, has been watching the chef's television series for a couple of years and he saw him compete on the cable TV "Top Chef Masters" show. Batiste's Spanish class also watches the chef's series.
"I appreciate his cultural viewpoint, like why they make tortillas," Batiste said. "He also pronounces words correctly so that's helpful for Spanish class."
Calvin Smothers, an Omaha community center director for inCommon, is another Bayless fan. Smothers, 29, has recently been cooking recipes from Bayless' cookbook "Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From the Heart of Mexico." He's been wishing his budget could stretch to cover a $135 ticket to the Thursday night fund-raiser.
"He seems like a genuine, really nice guy," Smothers said. "I went to Chicago and his Frontera restaurant is amazing. As authentic as it gets. With the way food has gone toward overprocessed, he's trying to pull it back to where it belongs: green restaurants, locally-raised animals and minimal impact when it comes to the environment. He's more the whole-foods type of guy. Made from scratch. Oh, man, wonderful stuff."
Smothers remembered the "amazing" pork tacos he had at Frontera Grill — made with bacon and pineapple and served with black beans.
His wife had shark tacos, he recalled.
"Man, those are good, too," he said with the enthusiasm of someone who just took a bite.
Bayless has long been involved with hunger-relief efforts through his restaurant and through community work such as Share Our Strength.
His cooking demonstration on Thursday will focus on several mainstays that almost anyone can master. He also plans to offer tips for how to adjust recipes when you can't get garden-ripe tomatoes and other culinary staples.
"Some of the things we have chosen will be great for people's cooking repertoires," he said. "We'll talk about how to make the most memorable guacamole because a lot of people don't know how to choose avocados."
Another recipe he plans to demonstrate is ceviche Veracruz, a dish in which the fish "cooks" in lime juice.
"People go wild about it but it's very little known outside of Mexico," Bayless said. "It's a great dish to have in your back pocket."
The chef also said he's looking forward to trying at least one local restaurant in Omaha.
Bayless said one of his new ventures in Chicago is a collaboration with Lookingglass Theatre. He will star as the chef in an innovative theatrical production called "Cascabel" from March 23 to April 22, at Chicago's landmark Water Tower Water Works.
His food will play a major role.
"I'm a huge theater fan and supporter and I've wanted to do a production like this for a long time," he said. "It's about food and transformation. It's a story told in song and flavor and dance and circus acts."
The audience and the actors dine together on his menu. It's not dinner and theater but food as a central part of the theatrical production.
"It (the play) takes place in a boarding house and the entire audience is seated at boarding house tables," he said. "You are drawn into being part of the story. Our goal is offer people a wider appreciation of how important food can be in our lives, in terms of the sensory experience. In our modern world, people eat calories, carbs, protein because so much of food has been processed. When you eat real food it can affect you deeply. And this is an opportunity to be touched deeply through flavor."
Brian Barks, director of development for the food bank, said Bayless' impact on the community has already touched the organizers for Thursday's fund-raiser. Corporate underwriting for the event, in terms of patron tables purchased, is the highest the food bank has seen in the 11 years the organization has had annual celebrity chef events. Among the items to auctioned at Thursday's dinner will be a trip for four to Chicago with dinner at Bayless' Frontera Grill and tickets to a Cubs baseball game.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com
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