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Community Corner

Local Chefs Whip Up A Benefit Feast

The Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County host its 6th Annual Chefs' Dinner to Fight Hunger

If you’re planning to go on a diet, you might want to wait a week. That’s because next Wednesday, October 5, at 6:30 pm at the Stamford Yacht Club top chefs from 8 of the area’s finest eateries will gather to prepare what promises to be an amazing meal to benefit the Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County.

The tickets for the event are steep: $200.00 a pop. But, if you divide that by the number of people who will be crowding into Chef P. Quint Smith’s kitchen at the Yacht Club it begins to sound like a bargain! “It’s a great group of guys who come from different parts of the country and the world to get together and have a lot of fun preparing a meal,” explains the Food Bank’s executive director, Kathleen Lombardo. And most of them have been doing so since the first Chefs’ Dinner to Fight Hunger fundraiser was held six years ago.

On tap for next Wednesday evening are Jean-Louis Gerin of Restaurant Jean-Louis in Greenwich, Bryan Malcarney of Blue Lemon and Pietro Scotti of Da Pietro’s in Westport, Stephen Maronian of Sweet Lisa’s Exquisite Cakes in Cos Cob, Tom Isidori of the Country Club of Fairfield and finally Dusmane Abdoulaye Tandia from Stamford’s Morton’s and, of course, Chef Smith.

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Joining the chefs will be 29 of Maronian and Isidori’s students from the Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts program at Norwalk Community College. This year’s Guest of Honor will be David Cingari of David’s Soundview Catering in Stamford.

PATCH: As the honoree, does Chef Cingari get to take the night off and have everyone else cook for him?

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LOMBARDO: No! He’ll be in the kitchen. And the Cingari family of Grade A ShopRite is donating all of the food.

PATCH: How did you come up with the idea to host this kind of fundraiser?

LOMBARDO: It was the vision of a former board member to have a very exclusive dinner with the chefs preparing it. This group has come forward for many, many years because they understand the importance of putting food on everyone’s table.

PATCH: In addition to the food, what else happens at the event?

LOMBARDO: Bill Evans (meteorologist for WABC-TV) will be the M.C. and Mary Ann Defelice from Mondays with Maryann (WGCH Radio) will host a live auction. There is also a silent auction.

PATCH: This is the 6th Annual Chef’s Dinner. But, the food bank has obviously been around longer than that.

LOMBARDO: It was a program of the Council of Churches and Synagogues for many years until they decided to divest themselves of social services. Rather than have the Food Bank spun off to another agency, a group of us took it independent in 2003.

PATCH: With everything that’s going on in the economy, have you seen an increased need for hunger relief?

LOMBARDO: We have. We always have the chronically poor. But, they’re hurting even more because people are doing things like mowing their own lawns to save money. And we’ve seen an increase in what we refer to as the “emerging poor.” Those who’ve been laid off for an extended amount of time or have been unemployed and their unemployment benefits have expired. So, they’re without income and are tapping into whatever reserves that they may have left. It’s very, very difficult all around.

The 6th annual Chefs' Dinner to Fight Hunger will be held on Wednesday, October 5, at the Stamford Yacht Club, 97 Ocean Drive West, from 6:30 - 10:00pm. For tickets or more information visit www.foodbanklfc.org.

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