Orlando food bank lays out the fine china to raise funds

One night a month, Second Harvest has a Cinderella moment where Orlando's biggest food bank slips out of its humble warehouse origins and transforms into a swank gourmet restaurant.

Herb-crusted snapper and Belgian chocolate tart. Candles. Music. Cocktail chatter. They all meld for a few brief hours, creating something unexpected for those who venture into the massive distribution center off Mercy Drive.

Dwaine Stevens, a top executive for Publix, is accustomed to business dinners at high-end restaurants. So his vision of a food-bank fundraiser was understandably modest.

"First of all, I walked in and thought, 'Are you kidding me?' It was like I was in Manhattan," Stevens, 52, said of the experience late last month. "The dining area was amazing, and the food was just exquisite. It was like being transported to another place."

The occasion was the inaugural Guest Chef's Night at Second Harvest — a nonprofit that helped provide 24 million meals to low-income residents in six local counties last year. Once a month, the charity is inviting the region's top chefs to create fine-dining fare in its community kitchen.

A bank of windows along one side of the "dining room" — normally, the facility's 180-seat community meeting room — looks on to stacks of canned goods and packaged food in the warehouse.

Yet, Stevens said, "they managed to make it elegant."

Limited to 100 guests, the first Chef's Night sold out — at a fixed $50 per person — two weeks after it was announced. Half the tickets for the second evening, set for Sept. 19, are already sold, too.

The guest next week will be Hector Colon, executive chef and director of culinary operations for SeaWorld's Orlando parks. His menu? A four-course Latin-infused affair starting with lobster tamale — sweet-corn buttered lobster and Caribbean spices on a traditional corn husk with chipotle avocado cream — and finishing with vanilla-bean milk-chocolate flan that somehow involves roasted sweet coconut candy and a sauce of bourbon maple syrup.

Not exactly what you'd round up during your neighborhood food drive.

"All this food is purchased specifically for the event," said Karen Broussard, a Second Harvest vice president. "It's not from the warehouse."

But much of it is donated. In fact, at this month's event, SeaWorld is donating virtually all of the food.

"I'm so happy that Second Harvest is giving me the chance to participate," Colon said. "It's going to be a beautiful night. When the guests finish, I want them to be totally pleased and to know that they helped do a good thing in the community … I want it to be [the 19th] already."

Because the guest chefs are also asked to donate the meal's meat or fish — an expense of at least several hundred dollars — and because culinary students at Second Harvest do the labor, about half of the ticket revenues will go back into supporting the food bank's programs.

But there's another benefit for the charity, too.

"We wanted to get people into the building who typically wouldn't come to a food bank," Broussard said. "We want to teach them a little about what we do."

At one point in the evening, there is a two-minute pitch about the mission and opportunities for donors and volunteers. "We keep it very short and sweet," Broussard said. "That's not the purpose. The purpose is for people to come and have a great meal and have a lot of fun with their friends and drink a little wine in a twinkly, beautiful environment. I mean, when I stepped in that first night, it was like a Cinderella thing. It was magical."

Chef Hari Pulapaka, who volunteered for the inaugural event, agreed. As executive chef and co-owner of Cress Restaurant in downtown DeLand, he is used to more intimate venues. His first surprise was the Second Harvest kitchen, created by the Darden Restaurant Foundation, which spent about $750,000 on equipment. Then there were the Second Harvest culinary students, local residents struggling to start over in a new career, eager to learn from a master.

"You know sometimes these charity things can be a little blah because of the volume," Pulapaka said. "But I felt really proud of what we did. We wanted people to walk away saying, 'Wow, I would pay twice that.' And we heard they did. Frankly, I think Second Harvest should charge more."

But Dawn Viola, Second Harvest's executive chef and kitchen director, is holding the line, at least for now. If celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse — he of "BAM!" fame — accepts her invitation to be the guest chef one evening next year, she may allow a price increase.

It was Viola's vision that has guided the program most. Last year, she visited Seattle's FareStart, a restaurant that serves food prepared by homeless people-turned-culinary students. One night a week, the place hosts a guest chef, an event that has proved a hefty success. Since 1994, Guest Chef Night has raised more than $4.5 million — revenue that has gone directly to support the job-training and placement services of the charity.

"For FareStart, it's [also] proven to be an incredibly meaningful way to bring the community together," said David Carleton, national director for FareStart's Catalyst Kitchens program.

That, Viola said, is her ultimate goal. With chefs from Disney, Cuisiniers catering and K Restaurant in College Park lined up for future months, she is not worried about finding talent. But she wants something less tangible than rave reviews and revenue.

"I want to create that same sense of camaraderie and community I felt in Seattle," she said. "I want people to leave feeling inspired."