Pork is not generally my favorite ‘-‘- scanning a menu or shopping for groceries, it just seems so uninspiring. The Taste of Elegance (TOE) dinner, hosted by BU and the Pennsylvania Pork Producers Council with help from sponsors featured 12 chefs hailing from the best restaurants in Boston representing their maison by presenting their tastiest, most innovative pork dish.
A panel including a food editor, a BU staffer and the 2008 TOE victor, judged the plates. Guests were given ballots to vote for the people’s choice, and were pressuring me to taste every dish before the results were cast. The gallery at 808 Commonwealth Ave. hosted the event, providing enough seating while allowing the discerning palates to visit each chef’s banquet.
A jazz quartet gave the evening a fairly formal ambience, but with the plastic cutlery and pleasantly mellow crowd, dinner was far more comfortable than stuffy. Tall glass windows allowed the crowd to gaze out at miserable-looking vegans protesting the event by picketing with posters of carcasses. They demanded everyone reevaluate their morals. Maybe the chilly temperature made the protestors wretched, but it was more likely their indigestion from their flaxseed and silt suppers.
My carnivorous companion and I decided to forgo the foot traffic and start our culinary tour backwards at the Stella table, with chef Evan Deluty. A thick Italian accent sharply cut through our uncertainty as he explained his pork Milanese with roasted tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. Unfortunately, the cheery chef doused the otherwise-delectable crispy fillet with pine-green basil oil. I found it to be an unnecessary addition, one that forfeited Stella’s place on the top of my list.
The next dish, a conchiglie and sausage salad, was a Josh Ziskin creation. Ziskin is the head chef at La Morra in Brookline. While it was hot and delectable, the combination of thyme-laced sausage and buttered pasta was underwhelming in a competition. Another disappointment was from EVOO’s table ‘-‘- a tea-smoked pork loin with spicy kimchee. I was excited about how the subtleties of citrus fruit and tealeaves would surface, but they didn’t because of the overpowering chili.
We made our way to the different tables like parts moving down an assembly line, picking up miniature plates, bringing them close enough to our faces to digest the aromas, slowly tasting to allow every flavor to absorb on our tongues, frowning or contemplatively nodding, then proceeding. Although renowned restaurants such as Tremont 647 and Top of the Hub were present, both plates were lacking. The former attempted to raise eyebrows with a dual dish, pitting a French-inspired roast against a Vietnamese p’acirc;t’eacute; in order to show versatility. The latter supplied an open-faced pierogie with a bland braised cheek filling.
My favorite was Walter Dunphy’s maple glazed chop with pureed sweet potatoes and a bacon-wrapped Italian breadstick. The meat was consistently pink and juicy, complemented by the sticky glaze. The potatoes were fluffy and sweet but not cloying, and a brown-sugar-coated pecan garnish worked as a petite dessert. Unfortunately, Dunphy was not included in the winner’s circle. Instead, Chris Douglass of Icarus took the crown and Jim Solomon of The Fireplace won the people’s choice.
To whet your appetite for next week: I head to an unlikely destination in light of Chinese New Year ‘- kung hei fat choi!!
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