“Follow the Chef” @ Grange

August 13, 2009 at 9:07 am 1 comment

For those of you lucky enough to take 2+ hour lunch breaks in the middle of the work week, you’ll want to check out Grange (the restaurant at The Citizen hotel) on Wednesdays for their “Follow the Chef” lunch.

Grange is located right across the street from Wednesday’s farmers’ market at Cesar Chavez Plaza and Chef Michael Tuohy takes full advantage of this resource.

The way the lunch works is, you meet at Grange at 11am and Chef Michael walks your group across the street to the market. “Follow the Chef” is not just a clever name, you literally follow the chef.

Chef Michael then takes you on a full circle tour of the entire market. He is big man on campus out there and you get to part of his posse. He knows all teh vendors and shares his expertise about the products they sell. Other patrons of the market look on with jealousy as you get the VIP treatment.

Along the way, the chef picks up a few things for lunch. You are also given an official Grange grocery sack to purchase some produce of your own. On my recent trip, I really loaded up.

With total disregard for the long, hot walk back to the office, I just kept tossing all kinds of fruits and veggies into my bag. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with them. You want a fruit salad or something? Come talk to me.

After you’ve met the farmers and learned a little about food, you head back to Grange where you are seated in the restaurant. Chef Michael takes his grocery bags back to the kitchen and gets to work.

The next thing you know, course after course of delicious food is coming to your table. A fun thing to so is to try to identify all the items from the farmers’ market that are now on your plate.

Here’s a run down of the meal.

Chilled tomato soup shooter. About 10 minutes earlier, the tomatos were in a stand at the farmers market.

When I think salad, I think of a bowl of lettuce covered with a whole bottle of 1000 island dressing. Chef Michael's fruit salad is a better way to go.

I ate this fried okra by the handful like it was popcorn. You would too.

I totally ate this pasta. Jealous?

Chef Michael addressing the group.

Peaches in creamy stuff with a crispy almond cookie-thing. Mmmmmm.

At $35, it’s a heck of deal.

Oh and if you’re on the twitter you can virtually follow the chef @DineGrange.

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1 Comment Add your own

1. Odzysk Danych | August 19, 2009 at 2:35 am

I’m sorry but who can afford 2+ hour lunch breaks in the middle of working week? Is this post supposed to be read only by huge companies CEO’s? About the meals – every single one looks so tasty that I would eat them all right now. But I don’t have two hours spare

Nick on the Town