EDIBLE: GourmetFest raises bar for foodie events, women chefs.

How’s this for unappetizing irony: Misled misogynistic types will tell you a woman’s place is in the kitchen, but finding a female executive chef around these parts can be about as easy as finding organic parsley root at the farmers market.

I can count Monterey County fairer-sex exec chefs on one Ove’ Glove: Anna Marie Bayonito at Corkscrew Cafe in Carmel Valley, Sarah LaCasse at Earthbound Farm on Carmel Valley Road, Marie Favoloro at Favoloro’s Big Night Bistro in Pacific Grove, Cindy Pawlcyn of Cindy’s Waterfront at the Aquarium and Briana Sammut at Provence Bakery in Prunedale.

Over in France, the home of fine cooking, Le Chef’s lastest list of the 100 best chefs in the world, which includes Justin Cogley of Aubergine (more on him in a second), exactly five women are included.

That just feels wrong.

But that’s also what makes one of the most enticing events at one of the most elevated foodie festivals of the year – anywhere in the world – feel so right.

The event is The Grand Women Chefs & Winemakers demo-lunch ($175) on March 6, with chefs like Annie Féolde (of Michelin three-star Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, Italy),Jennifer Backman (Weekapaug Inn) and Lanshu Chen (Le Moût Restaurant, Taiwan) and winemakers and directors like Gaia Gaja (Gaja Winery) our own Molly and CarissaChappellet (Chappellet Winery) and Bibiana González Rave (Wayfarer). (For those scoring at home, I can’t think of any female Monterey County winemakers beyond Annette Hoff of Cima Collina and Sabrine Rodems of Wrath and Scratch.)

The festival is the second annual Relais & Châteaux GourmetFest, March 5-8, a truly world-class creation hatched by Carmel restaurateur-hotelier David Fink and many of the same people who run the nicest, most attentive and unique inns and restaurants the world over (aka Relais and Châteaux). As Fink told me on the the collective’s 60th anniversary, which the inaugural GourmetFest celebrated a year ago, it’s about “special destinations, special restaurants, special chefs.”

Some of the best chefs from those restaurants – from as far away as Taiwan and Peru – anchor a range of demos, intimate lunches, dramatic wine dinners, grand tasting-style welcome parties and hyper-fresh seafood grills.

One way to understand how fine-tuned this festival’s flavor gets is to think of it as Aspen Food & Wine or Pebble Beach Food & Wine, cooked down to a more exclusive, intimate and intense reduction sauce. Another way to get an idea of what’s about to go down would be to dine at a Relais restaurant like Canlis or Aubergine, if you can afford it.

At Fink’s Aubergine in Carmel, they keep a dossier of your preferences at the host station and live abalone and spot prawns in the kitchen, to be harvested to order by Cogley, who installed the tank and might be the area’s first chef to win a James Beard Foundation Best Chef West award this spring.

Some of the highlights on the docket include a 10-chef, 30-winery opening party ($225) that I’d attend just for the Garys (Danko, Franscioni and Pisoni) and a 10-course Rarities Dinner ($5,500) with chefs like Michel Bras (Bras, Sébastian et Michel, France) and Olivier Roellinger (Les Maisons de Bricourt, France) and ingredients like milk-fed lamb, super-spendy truffles and vegetables grown to very specific (and tiny) sizes and plucked from the garden the day of. Then there’s the Cuisines of the World Dinner with Danko (of Gary Danko), Diego Muñoz (Astrid & Gastón Casa Moreyra) and Colin Bedford (Fearrington House), a Grand Chef Dinner, and the Dom Pérignon and Black River Caviar lunch with primary representatives from both houses. Last year’s caviar tasting had more fine sturgeon eggs than attendees could finish in the time allowed, which is something I just never thought I’d see. (Fear not, I gamely stuck around and helped shovel away the leftovers.) Many of these events qualify as once-in-a-lifetime, and the weekend includes 15 of them.

The Grand Women lunch reaffirms the organizers’ gift for curating events that take earthly expectations and smack them into the stratosphere. All these pioneering feminine minds squeeze into a 90-minute demo preceding the blockbuster lunch, revving up appetites with education and anticipation, before the half-dozen chefs and five wine minds from three different countries do four courses.

Gaia Gaja, world famous among obscure wine lovers, will attend the festival and the lunch with her family’s wildly popular Nebbiolo-grape wines (and a 2005 Chardonnay). She says her native Italy offers a surprising role model for progressive gender justice.

“The perception the world has of Italy is of a very macho country,” she says. “But Italy is very special: Ninety percent of companies in every industry are micro companies, with less than 15 employees. Everyone is important. And women are extremely important.”

Those micro-companies offer a functional analogy for the GourmetFest approach and its smaller, more familial events that make every participant feel extremely involved, and like VVVIPs.

Gaja knows what that looks like. “They smile, their eyes are sparkling and you can see it,” she says. “They are living a moment of pure enjoyment.”

QUICKBITES

• Levi Mezick, Coastal Luxury Management’s corporate chef for two years and founding chef at Restaurant 1833, is moving on to launch a Napa restaurant. More on the blog,

• Carmel Valley’s brand new farmers market debuts 2-6pm Friday, March 20, behind the Community Center in the parking lot. West Coast Farmers Market Association’s JerryLami – who also manages Carmel-by-the-Sea’s Thursday edition now happening 10am-2pm on Sixth Street – anticipates 20-25 vendors. A few hot food offerings will include barbecue and, if Lami gets his way, Tricycle Pizza.

• Ticino Coffee Shop & Deli opens in the 201 Main building in Salinas anchored by Giorgio’s on Monday, Feb. 23.

• The new vegan owner of Carmel Valley Lodge invites the public to try the unique soaked beans-fruit-and-vegetable meal he believes will help him live past 150 years old. He calls it Rainbow Ssambap. The open house, which includes a little wine and a tour of the remodeled “self-health” resort, happens noon-4pm Sunday, Feb. 22.

• Friends of Monterey Public Library hold their annual chocolate and wine tasting benefit 7-9pm Friday, Feb. 20, with wines from Pierce, Carmel Ridge, Ventana and more (p. 27 for more).

• Another pop-up dinner in the cool MEarth space next to Carmel Middle starring Affina chef James Anderson Monday, Feb. 23. See p. 30.

• Great Taste of P.G. goes down Sunday, Feb. 22. More on p. 29.

• Tickets are on sale ($85) at www.santaluciahighlands.com for the annual Santa Lucia Highlands Gala 1-4pm Saturday, May 16, at Mer Soleil Winery.

• All-you-can-eat crab, pasta, salad and desserts come to the Salinas Sports Complex for the Young Farmers and Ranchers crab feed 6pm Saturday, Feb. 28 ($55, 751-3100).

• A tasty wine discovery from last week: Rich Tanguay of Organic Heller Estates just released his 2011 Meritage, a silky and balanced blend of 46 percent Cab Franc, 30 Merlot, 11 Petit Verdot, 8 Malbec and 5 Cab Sauvignon.

• Follow @MontereyMCA on Twitter.

• Joe Dirt: “Life is a garden. Dig it.”