hi my name is carol garrick and i'm here to talk about and fan called symphony of food this event is a fundraiser put on by women of southwestern pennsylvania and we are so excited to have all of the chefs on symphony of food and we went for a really special thing this year being that it is our fifth year we gather the best chefs all around the area and i think you'll be really interested to hear their stories and hear about their restaurants to hear about the wonderful food that they're bringing to this event we also have entertainment that night and a fabulous chinese auction is just a lot of fun we sell out every year but tickets are still available and so are corporate tables so let's meet our chefs and get started first we're going to start with john gruber from the market district and he's a return i have here yes and i was i was very excited to hear the group that i was going to be to be cooking with the sure i think it's going to be really a fantastic event and i'm you know really proud to be associated with the guys that are up there on the on the panel to this morning it's great isn't it and it's great to have you back everyone was so impressed with what you did the symphony of last year well thank you mark and district has a wonderful product and want to tell everybody about what you did last year ok so last year we did and we're going to do the same thing this year so i can't really take any credit for those except for having the folks at the store help me pick the right items you know all the vendors that we buy things from the cheesemonger that produce all the cheese for us you know they really deserve all the credit there so i just ask for the right flavors and the right combinations of things and it really kind of speaks for itself but in addition to that this year we're going to be doing three passed order one is going to be a real pain cake and we're going to serve that with braised duck an apple we're going to do a little balmy sandwich made with bison so it's spiced like an asian spice to meet with a cucumber salad and a serato mayo so they're going to be really small and cute little appetizers and the third item we're going to do is tandoori king salmon so it's indian spiced and we're going to roast it in a four hundred fifty degree oven to get a nice roast on the outside of it nice color nice here and keep it nice and moist on the inside well if it's anything like last year it will be fabulous john  to tell us a little bit about your background how did you get started and i got started a few because i wasn't really good at anything else i went to a few years of pitt and just really never found anything that was exciting for me you know sitting and reading a book just wasn't my thing growing up i spent a bunch of time on my uncle's farm doing harvest and working with my hands and kind of getting close to food in that sense but you know just really that working with my hands i think is what drew me to food  first restaurant job which is probably around eighteen years old it really just kind of clicked for me that that that was something that i was able to to do well and feel comfortable with and tell us about some of the restaurants that you work at what did you do prior to the restaurants in chicago the duquesne club locally in prior to coming with mortgages direct i was the executive chef at the carnegie museums for a little over five years that had to be an interesting experience there's a very very mixed group of you know working from unallocated restaurant to doing banquets of up to eight hundred people so there was lots of in between and the marketers trysts itself is such a fabulous store i don't know if anybody's been to the one if you haven't been out to the one and robinson it's just a great experience going out there and all of the product and it's kind of a really unique grocery store experience and are you still doing cooking classes out there you know i actually have run out of time doing that but we still do the cooking classes for myself personally i don't do them but we do do the cooking classes at the the i'm sorry the robinson store so if you call here hightower who is the manager there she will absolutely get you set up and we actually have started doing lots of kids cooking classes so you can take your young kids and go and have a birthday party there and you know really start at a young age to teach people how to cook rather than having it be hey let's have a husband or wife go that it really is help having the younger kids come they have that's interesting well thanks again john for joining us this year for so many affairs so look forward to those appetizers we have about an hour an hour of appetizer hour before we all sit down for this elegant sit down served dinner but doubt the appetizer hours a lot of fun everybody mingles and house very time and so everybody does enjoy that thank you we're very proud to be part of the group again this year well thank you and next we have dominick brand do you see joining us this year dominick is one of the top twenty five chefs a pittsburgh and he has well i'll let him tell you about his restaurant and lawrenceville restaurant's piccolo for dish now i love your little restaurant table for now it's a great little spot very cozy very comfortable service is great and the food is fabulous and i have the good fortune to meet your mother and i know italy she got my father over there he was a baker so i was born in italy and we came here to the states when i was four years old my parents had of a bakery in a strip district for about fifteen years by the same name so i kind of grew up  that environment working with them cooking with my mom baking with my dad just got a real love of food going through the time it was more specifically and now you know now she's not with the bakeries closed she's up there working with me and special so thank you i think it's important for everybody to understand that the chefs are downing all of their product all of their work producing all of this food for this event and it's just phenomenal what they are willing to do to come out to help the community of course all of the funds that we raise from symphony a food is goes to organizations that support women and children in our area everything stays local these we are very proud to be able to say that we've raised almost two hundred thousand dollars to give to different organizations around our area so let's move on to our next  our next step is check garland and he's got a lot of restaurant names after his name so you might know him from toast and a toast again we're talking about one of the top twenty five our current venture that we are in the process of working out some things with the city of pittsburgh to get open and then in the local area we're going to open up from fish grill which is going to be in the great southern shopping center  around march we're looking to open up it's going to be a six thousand square foot seafood oriented restaurant and also a live outside music venue cabana bar which is roughly going to be about twelve thousand square feet in that area will be able to hold like wedding receptions and small banquets outside and stuff like that on nice evenings in the summer along with stuff like that ok we're so glad that you're coming out here to this south pills so finally where we're getting a really nice selection of restaurants and people who don't like to travel into town well how one out here in the south feel so great why don't you tell us about your background in food how did you get started in this business i got in the business where your early age with friends of the family needing some help help a little bar you know dive restaurant in the north the north hills of pittsburgh and just start out doing dishes and just fell in love with the aspect of just you know the speed the pace the energy that a restaurant  just you know worked all through high school and then decided to go to call in or school in rhode island and you know traveled a little bit and ended up back in pittsburgh you know open my own place and start a family where i grew up you know that aspect of it was aspect you know a lot of what this area is becoming now is what the cram berries you know where it was ten years ago this area around here is becoming that and you know just help out in the community that is up and coming and stuff like that and give back is you know what i like to do when we can well we're glad to have you this year something in food thank you why don't you talk to us about what you're going to dish the we came up with is going to be a cross between a fish dish and a salad dish you know we're going to do a little while we're thinking like a beet marinated  salmon must like me with low like for say salad with some citrus maybe like tangerines lemon grass spiel like a nice pollock under before we go on to the entree course for just something this light refreshing  slightly cooked but not really cooked you know marinate it a little bit of beat and just make it light in our fresh something different from being in the winter but it will be nice and light well as you can see we really are going to have some unique dishes and really different tastes and really different experience here at symphony food so where else could you go and have all these top chefs prepare food for you all at once and one place served to you in the beautiful surroundings of belisarius so i hope that your is interested in exciting and excited about this is where you all are so let's move on ships that are going to prepare our main course what we do person in the future for the sake of time basically is that we have two main courses that everyone has to be happy and  we serve those two main courses on one plate so we sort of have a dual main course and here to tell us about part of that is pittsburgh's number one rated chef year and lawrenceville it's ugly it's garfield garfield i'm sorry and tell us about your restaurant salt of the earth it was my first solo venture i've been cooking now in pittsburgh for about ten years professionally i mean before that i worked in pizza shops and who joints and burger places yes so i was tired of working for other people and being limited in what we could do creatively so you know took a second mortgage on the house borrowed everything i could borrow and we opened a restaurant in garfield and it's been such a success it's been it's gone very well and a lot of it has to do with just what's happening in the city i mean i'm in really good company here and i mean that's the main reason why i am i wanted to do the event was because i knew that i would be with some like minded individuals i mean what i don't know if people in the south feels realize the kind of the city of pittsburgh on the cusp of like a really strong food movement i mean and all the independent restaurants are the reason why that's happening and i mean it's we're starting to really gain momentum and and most of that has to do with just the feeling of community i mean a lot of us are pretty we know each other really well we respect each other and it goes a long way for us especially for events like this i mean everyone that you see sitting up here at least the people that i know personally do a lot of charity events and i mean all of that feeds into you know the idea of community and building something with what we have and i mean none of us are millionaires we just know how to cook and we enjoy given what we can give and it's just wonderful that you're willing to do that i've been to your restaurant and it is a unique experience if you haven't been there you've got to make a reservation and you can just go down in technically you don't have to make reservations at yeah i mean i'm about your restaurant and so now it's different from a lot of restaurants well the idea was my idea was to do a restaurant that i would want to go eat and that probably chef buddies of mine would want to go eat after work but still have it be something that would appeal to a larger audience and the idea was to just have it be communal dining so the downstairs is just three giant tables and see twelve people the kitchen is completely open i mean we're sitting about you're sitting about three feet from us in the downstairs areas all first come first serve and then up stairs we have about thirty two seats that are reservation only so the impression is that we're always booked the big people call for friday or saturday and we only have thirty two seats available for reservations so most nights we are booked but we have fifty seats downstairs that are first come first serve and it's actually really exciting  might wait a little bit but we have a really good drinks and you know it's not really your bar which isn't sitting at the alcohol bar it's sitting at the bar right where the chefs are are finishing the meals and actually mills and doing their very artistic things to the food and it was so much fun to sit there and just watch what you guys do and it's so synchronized and it's almost like a ballet it's just it's very intense it's very methodical it's very sane actually not not sort of the stereotype of the crazy kitchen and knives flying it's very well i think when you hit the level of that everyone that you see up here is on we're all doing the same thing and i mean it might be the first time the lot of people are exposed to like the kitchen atmosphere but i mean brian does the same thing does the same thing dumb it does the same thing it's got to be very organized know you end up with a really you know can end up with a good dining experience if the kitchens disorganized and likewise with the front of the house i mean and it just speaks volumes for the talent that i'm lucky enough to work with i mean i have a really great people working with me  and tell us about what you're thinking about bringing to simply the food this year brian and i are going to do a veal dish together my part of the veal dish will be a braised  complement brian's half of the dish they should jive really well together and especially after the progression of the cheeses and through the pasta and the nice palate cleansing salad i think it's going to be really impressive meal tell me again we opened a restaurant there weren't that many other restaurants open this year and we're doing well and we're happy that people like our food and i was happy to get the nod but there are so many good chefs in the city obviously a national magazine or international magazine so that's that's very good not just necessarily for kevin but for its burger as a whole to really kind of open up the exposure where people that always say well hey you know you're going to pittsburgh why would you go to pittsburgh but you know outside of all the culture and all the education that we have that now our actual food in restaurants you know is actually kind of catching up with all the other culture that we have so that's that's really good exposure for the whole city and i agree with john i mean and and we all i think have very similar opinions as far as the city goes and we love the city that's why we're investing our lives and our families in the city and city does i mean culturally it can compare with any city on the planet i mean as far as museums and i mean i couldn't get in pittsburgh a second th nine and you know the hospitals and i mean it's just really impressive and then to have a really thriving food scene not only restaurants but just food culture in the city is different than it's ever been with the local farming movement and the urban farm moving urban farming movement and just all the independent markets that are happening in addition to what market district in whole foods and every and all the bigger markets do their little pop ups happening all over the city and it's just it's a really great time to be into food in pittsburgh and people and one of the slaps in the face that i know everyone that works in this business gets is like you have a guest coming in and say hey we're from new york you guys are really doing a great job  we want to just dispel that conversation of like the idea that people from bigger cities know food better than people in pittsburgh we just want that conversation end and i think that's what we're all working really hard to make happen i mean i've eaten better food in pittsburgh than i be in many cities in the world and it is generally an underrated city i think that we would suggest that the self hills is another another country or you know driving across a but bridge or going through spanning in your area as well tell us about the new restaurant that you're planning i just came across an opportunity in east liberty right up the street from brian's restaurants moon part me there's an existing space that had a kitchen and it seemed like the right fit for something that i'm passionate about a lot of again a lot of cooks a passion about barbecue and they're just so it's just so happens that there's not much of a bar barbecue culture in pittsburgh so we're going to open a little barbecue place called union pig and chicken union being kind of a nod to the fact that we're north of the mason dixon and most of the animals that we serve will be pig and chicken with an occasional brisket an occasional fish maybe but it will be mainly country barbecue and the n restaurant and again side by side we have brian who was voted no amber one up and coming south of the area so we we really pulled out all the neighborhood of the east and we've been open for about a year and a half were a kind of a casual modern american restaurant so you know things are things are going well and you're also  own identity and we had opened up in october of two thousand and ten and at that time there hadn't been any kind of sole upscale burger restaurants per se in pittsburgh and that was an obvious hot concept across the country so we saw the opportunity in pittsburgh being you know of kind of rooted in meat and potatoes we saw the opportunity and we opened that an october and just this past july we opened a second b r g are in cranberry tell us what you are bringing for symphony of i know you two are collaborating pretty well it's been a great collaboration really with this group but tell us kevin is going to be pairing his cheeks with perception so i may do some sort of dried fruit relish or or or chuck need to kind of tie in that that's one challenging aspects of not only creating a dish but working with other chefs and they kind of a flow of a menu is having flavors and profiles and ingredients tie in the gather so the dish kind of is cohesive and makes sense so i think with the talent that we have up on the stage today it should be should be zero worthwhile to vent and fun for us all kind of to break out of the everyday routine and have fun and get back to what we like to do and cooking great food thank you thank you for coming want to tell us a little bit about your background while i was born i was raised here in pittsburgh and i certainly don't have a traditional calling or a background i had gone to college in cleveland and fell in love with the business had cooked through school moved out west to california and really was fortunate with some of the chefs that i had the opportunity to work for and just kind of learn through the ranks and  my head down and try to learn as much as i could and had an opportunity like everyone else to to move back to pittsburgh where you were raised and in the cool professionally for you know your friends and family and like what kevin was saying i mean pittsburgh is  what our vision and what we're trying to do each day so it's great to be great to be involved in this well thank you again thank you all this is just been such a great experience sitting with the chefs are watching them come up with their menu all giving consideration to all the different tastes and players that will be blended in a really good way so come out and join us we have a website and it will be on the screen as well a phone number and you can get tickets we also have room for corporate tables and there  would love to have corporations come out and enjoy this really high and dining experience and i'll just say thank you karen very much for for sitting in a meeting on the