I was honored along with a few other Central Florida Chefs to cook a dinner at the James Beard House in the 1990's.
At that time, there wasn't a big focus on Florida's bounty of seafood, poultry, beef or produce unless you were talking about citrus. With compatriot chefs Clair Epting, Ron Pollack and Jamie McFadden, all Central Florida chefs, we decided we would approach the Beard House with an offer to do a wholly Florida produced dinner with our Central Florida Cooking Crew. We had used a moniker for the team whenever we did charity events in Central Florida, since many were from different restaurants. The ' Swamp Cabbage Country Club' sent in a letter to the James Beard House with our intent to focus and promote Central Florida foods and crossed our fingers.
To our surprise, we were given the opportunity to cook at the House. We unknowingly had some great friends in the food press in Florida that championed our cause and that influenced the folks at the James Beard House to let us do a dinner. We decided to raise the bar in the food we used for the event. Included for the dinner were Florida Hog Snapper, Ocala Quail and Beef, Gainesville Shiitake raised mushrooms, Turtle Creek Goat Cheeses and an amazing array of Zellwood grown SIlver Queen corn and other vegetables plus berries for a homestyle cobbler.
As we arrived, we had a meeting with the general manager of the Beard House, Mildred Amica. She was a through and through New Yorker. A commanding presence at the Beard House, she was diminutive in stature but with a huge presence, razor sharp wit and real gravitas. Previous to the meeting in NY we were told to prepare enough food for 90 persons, though in general the attendance was usually about 80 persons at most dinners. At our meeting, she told us that we had already surprised her and her associates. Mildred handed us the dining list and which showed we had over sold the dinner by 15 people. She said that that didn't happen often, especially since we were not as well known as any of the bigger name chefs that had cooked at the James Beard House before.
That of course, raised a dilemma. We did not have enough Florida quail to stretch and feed the extra seats. We told Mildred our problem and with a wink she looked at us and said: 'This is NY. We have everything here!' I'll get you the quail.' We went back to prepping ( it was still several hours before service) and about an hour and a half a package arrived. We opened up to find 2 dozen plump birds ready for us to cook. As we started to fabricate them we all looked at each other, noticing that the birds were just a bit larger than our Florida quail, and somehow had grey pin feathers still attached to some of the wings.
We mentioned this to the Mildred and she told us that there were no fresh Florida quail available, so she curated the next best thing...New York City Fresh Ledge Quail! We all looked around and then started laughing as the 'Ledge Quail' we were prepping were actually squab, which is a young pigeon. Plenty of those in New York, to be sure! We improvised, adapted and overcame, serving the New York Ledge Quail to James Beard regulars who loved the story.
The dinner went off without a hitch, and we got the story of a lifetime as we cooked at what can be consider a bucket list item for any chef in the world.
