Passionfish's Ted Walter Continues Impressive Pop-up Run at MEarth

I used to volunteer over at MEarth, the incredible organic student garden-kitchen at the Hilton Bialek Habitat, because I am pals with its leaders, love digging around in the dirt and learn lots to apply in my own backyard. 

Now I do it for the food.

One of recent history’s tastiest pop-up dinners—and certainly the smoothest—happened there a couple of Sundays back.

I wish I could say it was my dishwashing that made it so spectacular.

Not so much.

The family-style flavor—eight different dishes all told—flowed from heirloom carrots, tomatillos and golden raspberries harvested an hour earlier from the next-door gardens, plus Local Catch Monterey Bay halibut, Fogline Farms pig and the prime fire-wielding skills of Yousef Ghalaini of Pebble Beach Lodge’s The Bench (625-8519).

Everything proved excellent, from the setting (the shimmering LEED Silver display kitchen) to the couscous (accented with a habit-forming French curry called vadouvan) to the watermelon-ginger-lime agua fresca (featured chefs also craft a few virgin drinks since wine drinking isn't allowed on school grounds). 

Much of the stunningly smooth execution came courtesy of a talented team of volunteers featuring no fewer than three Sierra Mar staffers—including Exec Chef John Cox. And we’re not talking point-and-direct volunteering. Cox scrubbed the stove and Ghalaini nudged me from the sink so he could do more dishes.

Show me the last time a world-class chef volunteered to staff another star chef's pop-up dinner. (I was already a fan of Cox because of his wizardry with everything from sardine backbones and acorn bread to his savvy Big Sur foraging we profiled in a video. Now I suppose his community love makes me a super fan.)

Ghalaini, meanwhile, overachieved himself with a heartfelt refection on the experience: 

A very wise chef told me once that “if your produce doesn’t come with dirt on it, it’s probably been touched one too many times before it got to you”… this thought always swims in my mind and gives me a bit of anxiety every time I get a clean vegetable delivered to the restaurants I’ve worked in. There are some very obvious hurdles to sourcing wonderful product whenever you cook in a restaurant kitchen, but luckily our primal urge of growing, harvesting, and cooking with fire are always there to keep us in line.

Cooking a pop-up dinner at MEarth immediately puts a chef back inside the elements of creating… I consulted with [MEarth's] Tanja Roos on the product that would be available as well as product available through her partners and with a little help from some amazing chef friends, we put on a humble show that translated all of our harvest into a simple family style dinner.  If I could do that in a restaurant every day I would be in heaven.

MEarth is such a cool opportunity for a rapidly growing “local food aware” generation who are interested in the distance their food travels before they consume it – book end that with the design of the building and cooking with fire, and you have a relatively sustainable operation that has undoubtedly illuminated the minds of many.

Next dinner is this Thursday, July 11, with one of the area's most talented, progressive and clever chefs, Passionfish’s Ted Walter ($65 with inventive drinks; get one of the few remaining tickets on the Brown Paper Ticket site).

Having seen what he can do with his crab-and-avocado salad and tamarind-crusted halibut, and what he did for a Tag-A-Giant benefit last year, I anticipate a dinner tastebuds won't forget any time soon.

While it's not cheap, it is tax-deductible, and an awesome opportunity to see one of the area's local treasures craft a true farm-to-fork meal right before your eyes. And—oh yes—you get to eat it too. The remaining seats will go quickly.

And hey, if you can't fund it, call and volunteer (624-1032). It's not every day you get to work alongside one—or more—of your heroes.