Odd Pairs quarterly dinners

Is anyone familiar / affiliated with Odd Pairs, "a quarterly event featuring Chicago's leading chefs and their creations with odd, yet succulent pairs, served up socially?" Their Twitter page and website are here:

http://twitter.com/oddpairs
http://oddpairs.wordpress.com/

These are intriguing menus and industry / local producer names; in the worlds-colliding department, an ensemble with which I'm affiliated was invited to perform at an upcoming event, and we'd benefit from any data points about what these events are like from the foodie side of the equation.

Hi Santander - I'm Ben, and you could say that I am affiliated with the event. Along with Crop To Cup, our company BEAN&BODY hosts Odd Pairs. I'm not sure what data points you're after, but if I don't know, it's safe to say that nobody does

The basic overview is that we fill a small room with about 60 guests while 10 local companies pair up into 5 teams, and compete for the most unique and best tasting dish. Our winners last time around (Sonoma Farms and Simone's) set a high bar with Black Bean & Banana Empanadas Paired with a Blood Orange Infused Olive Oil.

You can find a bunch of information about our upcoming event (including the menu and competing businesses) on the sites that you referenced, or you can feel free to call me 312.725.0893 or email me at ben@beanandbody.com.

Thanks!

benheins wrote:Hi Santander - I'm Ben, and you could say that I am affiliated with the event. Along with Crop To Cup, our company BEAN&BODY hosts Odd Pairs. I'm not sure what data points you're after, but if I don't know, it's safe to say that nobody does

The basic overview is that we fill a small room with about 60 guests while 10 local companies pair up into 5 teams, and compete for the most unique and best tasting dish. Our winners last time around (Sonoma Farms and Simone's) set a high bar with Black Bean & Banana Empanadas Paired with a Blood Orange Infused Olive Oil.

You can find a bunch of information about our upcoming event (including the menu and competing businesses) on the sites that you referenced, or you can feel free to call me 312.725.0893 or email me at ben@beanandbody.com.

Thanks!

Thanks for the additional detail; I was hoping some LTHers might have attended previous events or might even be participating in this one, since we have many chefs, farmers, brewers, and cellarers among us. The concept is intriguing and the combinations look wonderful - I look forward to seeing this firsthand soon.

Looks interesting. I was poking around the website but was unable to find any information about the price of these events (perhaps I'm just blind).

Santander or ben, any help?

Puppy wrote:Looks interesting. I was poking around the website but was unable to find any information about the price of these events (perhaps I'm just blind).

Santander or ben, any help?

That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out - does one normally only attend these events if you compete?

Ben's counterpart Erik here... nice to meet you both, Puppy and Santander. I wanted to pop in to give you a quick answer.

There is private event and free with an RSVP but very limited. Please ask whomever invited you to RSVP for you if they haven't already or you can reach out to one of us hosts and we will usually be able to add you provided it's not the very last minute.

Past participants come back to enjoy the food but not to participate again. They also sometimes help by bringing possible candidates for future events to experience it first hand and to meet some of the organizers.

I've been amazed at the creativity we've had at past events and the results (as well as the connections you can make as a local member of the food community).

I look forward to meeting you in person if you end up coming

I was hoping some LTHers might have attended previous events or might even be participating in this one

Raising my hand. I have attended one previous Odd Pairs event - we know Jake from Crop to Cup quite well and were invited that way. And, we'll be participating (and hopefully winning) the next event. As Erik said, the event is free to attend, but you have to be invited (and, preferably, be in the food industry).

sounds pretty cool. I'd be interested in attending/participating.

I've just returned from the Spring 2010 Odd Pairs event, which was a delight. Ben, Erik, Jacob, and crew put together one of the more relaxed, smoothly-run pairing events I've seen, remarkable for its lack of tense chefs, and for prudent portioning, spacing, and invites that allowed every guest to savor a nice amount of food and drink in a reasonable amount of personal space without queues. Most of all, it was friendly in a genuine sense, encouraging strangers to meet and talk and create new "odd pairs," which will propel future events and conversations about the benefits of local and/or sustainable foods.

I was invited to the event not as a foodie, but as a singer, since the planning team had caught one of my choirs on NPR's Worldview last month, and thought Siberian a capella would be odd entertainment, which I hope we provided. This aspect of the evening provided some neat resonance, since we mingled with the crowd in different phases of the evening, and got to share our own favorite Chicago food experiences - our choir has had a longstanding post-rehearsal dinner club since 1997, perennial favorites being Moon Palace, Lao Sze Chuan and Hopleaf (in addition to the Medici and Jimmy's).

The idea here is to get two local chefs or ingredient providers together and innovate crazy flavor combinations in a friendly environment; the crowd enjoys them, and then helps a celebrity judge pick a winner. There were five food teams, plus cocktails from North Shore Distillery. Here were the entries for the night, in menu order:

Sambar Spiced Vada with coconut Chutney and Green Tea, served with Green Tea Beer
from Glazed Donuts Chicago and Ineeka Tea

I loved the green tea beer, which tasted mostly like a good toasty malt with some brewed tea leaf notes, the green mintiness not coming through aggressively, more like a mellow Chinatown table tea note. The coconut chutney was delicate and surprisingly creamy. The sambar donut was quite dense and dry, and this overall combination pushed it a bit for me, while I still appreciated the playfulness.

Springtime Carrot Soup with Trio of Salted Marshmallow "Croutons"
from FIG Catering and Beyond The Shaker

This could be on the menu at Schwa or Alinea. The carrot soup was beautifully vegetal and fresh with sparing use of cream or spice, which allowed the salty, crunchy-topped marshmallows (in three varieties: shallot, ginger wasabi lemongrass, and bacon fumee de sel) to explode on the palate. This pairing struck me as quite logical (even with its requisite oddness), with the comforting precedent of hot chocolate-marshmallow and sweet potato casserole-marshmallow pairs. I thought this was the best-designed dish for a crowd of 100, soup kept perfectly hot and marshmallows supple, with samples of the custom salts available for tasting and smelling.

Caramelized Onion Shortbread Topped with Fontina, Bacon, Chili, and Pecan DAS Caramels, Spicy Red Cabbage Slaw, and Black Lava Salt
from Swim Cafe and Das Foods

Bacon and salted caramel have always made perfect sense to me (from my bacon-and-Mrs. Butterworth days), and I imagined the extra flavors, particularly the cabbage, would throw too many wrenches into the works, but this was my second favorite dish of the night. I could taste every element, and the execution of the melty caramel center under the crispy ingredients on the top of the bites was again quite amazing in the mass-serving setting. I could have done with less shortbread to make this more of a one-bite appetizer presentation, but could also picture digging into a bigger portion with a fork. Das also had some dynamite lollipops, from bacon and ginger-lemon to orange-pomegranate and salted caramel, very intensely flavored.

Skewered Quitan with Ginger Bliss BBQ Sauce
from Great Taste Cafe and Ginger Bliss

Ginger Bliss is a favorite indulgence from Hyde Park Produce, and I was excited to meet the owners. I consider their juices (particularly the ginger-pineapple) a cure-all during cold season. I haven't considered ginger as a barbecue sauce ingredient outside of char siu glaze, and this could convince me, although I was not as moved by the "quitan," a quinoa-based seitan (developed for this event), which I still found to be a bit grainy and grassy.

Honkers Granita with Triple Distilled Citra Hop Mist and Kumamoto Oysters
from Goose Island and L20

You don't have to ask me twice to dive into fresh oysters. The problem with them is that any accompaniment is destined for second stage, and the beer shaved ice (unconcentrated and quite saltless) was more of a distraction than an enhancement. It was still a beautifully-composed bite (in bad phone-camera focus):



When the singing and tasting were through, the crowd was asked to show appreciation by applause, and the clamor matched the leaning by hip hop artist and green event-planner / caterer judge Cleetus Friedman: FIG / Beyond the Shaker for the win. Molly had committed herself to victory in a PM, and she was right on. That was some damn fine soup.



North Shore kept everyone lubricated with one soothing delight (gin, oj, honey, whole egg) and one shock to the system (absinthe with passion fruit puree, brandy, and bitters, the anise and fruit a jarringly entertaining combo), and like Ronnie at last LTH picnic, served with grace under fire, turning out very consistent and generous pours. I will look for their spirits again.

I hope to attend or read reports about future Odd Pairs events; this was my kind of fun with great people, and I am inspired by the pairing of chefs and caterers with artisans like Ginger Bliss, Das, and Beyond the Shaker. I can't wait to see which new friendships from this event carry into experimental entries at the next one. Bravo to all involved.

Bacon and salted caramel have always made perfect sense to me (from my bacon-and-Mrs. Butterworth days), and I imagined the extra flavors, particularly the cabbage, would throw too many wrenches into the works, but this was my second favorite dish of the night
You don't have to ask me twice to dive into fresh oysters. The problem with them is that any accompaniment is destined for second stage, and the beer shaved ice (unconcentrated and quite saltless)

I agree on both counts. The tart from Das and Swim was really good and if I hadn't been planning on winning, I would have definitely rooted for them.

I wanted to oyster to be fabulous (and in and of itself it was very delicious), but wished the beer shaved ice had more flavor...plus I thought it made the dish too cold.

Regardless, it was a fabulous event to be a part of and it was fun to see what everyone came up with. Cleetus definitely had the unenviably hardest job of comparing and judging his colleagues (I will not be signing up to judge anytime soon).

Siberian a capella would be odd entertainment, which I hope we provided

Oh, by the way, I thought your group was excellent and am always amazed by the crazy things LTHers do outside of the food world too!

great thread! it was truly hard to decide...everyone did such a great job.

A writeup and better pictures from Chuck Sudo at Chicagoist:

http://chicagoist.com/2010/04/05/opposi ... =8#gallery