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Calendar of Events
Events for January 16, 2008
From 01/14/2008 to 01/20/2008
The Culinary Experience™
Special Guests: Patricia Yeo, Jeff Blank and Marge Perry
Learn the secrets of preparing and enjoying deliciously healthy food and take part of the Lake Austin Spa Resort experience home with you! During the week celebrate the joys of cooking and eating healthy gourmet foods. Join us for daily cooking classes, a wine and cheese tasting and visits from special guest chefs. Culinary Experience week in January features New York chef Patricia Yeo and Hudson's on the Bend owner Jeff Blank.Monday, January 14
Special Guest Chef from New York City: Patricia Yeo
Patricia Yeo has been winning acclaim for her distinct cuisine since her opening of AZ in 2000; the menu reflecting her Malaysian and English roots. During her pursuit of a biochemistry degree at Princeton University, she took a break between semesters and enrolled in cooking classes at the New York Restaurant School. So inspired by this experience she elected to trade in her lab coat for chef whites.While attending the New York Restaurant School, Bobby Flay invited her to join him in the opening of Mesa Grill as his sous chef. She continued her education with Chinese scholar and cookbook author Barbara Tropp at her flagship, China Moon, in San Francisco. She then returned to Manhattan, at Bobby Flay’s request, to help open his next conception, the Spanish inspired Bolo.
After two years as sous chef at Bolo she embraced her Asian education by accepting a position at Hawthorne Lane under Anne Gingrass. This resulted in her next endeavor AZ, receiving countless accolades as well as three stars from The New York Times. An AZ inspired cookbook, Cooking from A to Z with Patricia Yeo, shortly followed. Patricia then took two years off to travel internationally and returned as the Executive Chef and co-owner of Sapa, where she blends the culinary ingredients of France and Vietnam. In October of 2005 she published her second cookbook, Everyday Asian. In 2006 Patricia helped reinvent the historic Monkey Bar with the Glaziers Group. At the new Monkey Bar, Yeo presents elevated modern Asian cuisine in a beautifully, redesigned space.
Wednesday, January 16
Special Guest Chef: Jeff Blank
Jeff Blank is the Chef and Proprietor of Hudson’s on the Bend, located in the Texas Hill Country lake district west of Austin. Its menu features some of the finest dishes to be found in Texas, each item an example of Blank’s interpretation of traditional Texas Hill Country cuisine. That cuisine emphasizes heavier, rustic cuts of beef and wild game prepared with a smoked flavor.Among Hudson's frequent media accolades is its constant reign as the most romantic restaurant in Austin. Conde Nast Traveler magazine went one step further, calling it one of the top 50 restaurants in America. At least a dozen other national publications, ranging from The New York Times to Bon Appetit, have bestowed similar praise on this unique restaurant.
Jeff received his culinary education at Oklahoma State University. He came to Austin from The Wineskin Restaurant in Aspen, Colo., in the early 1980s, and immediately adopted the Hill Country’s cuisine as his professional focus. Besides running Hudson’s on the Bend, Blank also promotes his style of Texas cuisine through the annual Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival and his cooking schools that are held six times a month in his home that overlooks Lake Travis. He also is the author of cookbook, entitled Cooking Fearlessly.
Friday, January 18
Special Guest Chef: Marge PerryMarge Perry writes, teaches, broadcasts and speaks about cooking, food and nutrition. In her long-standing capacity as a syndicated food columnist for Newsday, Contributing Editor for Cooking Light, contributing writer for Relish, restaurant critic for Westchester Magazine, dining editor of Manhattan Living, frequent contributor to many other newspapers and magazines, (including the New York Times, Self, More, Health, Better Homes and Gardens, Coastal Living, and more) and frequent guest on television and radio shows, Ms. Perry is an accessible and authoritative guide for anyone who cooks, eats and travels.
Ms. Perry teaches sold out cooking classes to home cooks at the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's) in New York City, food writing to aspiring authors and culinary students, and is a regular guest lecturer at the culinary management graduate school at New York University. Her love of and involvement with food ranges from writing and reporting about chefs, restaurants, growers, and artesinal producers; restaurant reviewing; menu consulting, consumer trend analysis and reporting, and serving on tasting and judging panels.
