March of Dimes and Dallas Farmers Market had foodies hopping on Thursday

by Teresa Gubbins

DALLAS — Dallas is a big city, but is it big enough to accommodate two massive foodie/charity events in a single night? Luckily, the simultaneous occurrence on Thursday night of the March of Dimes' 14th annual Signature Chefs of Dallas auction and the 15th Annual Dallas Farmers' Market Hoedown drew two distinct slices of the foodie pie.

The March of Dimes event, held at the Fairmont Hotel, was a mucky-muck deal with tickets going for $300 each, and samplings from 20 chefs, corraled by Abacus' Kent Rathbun, serving bite-size snacks on real plates. Female attendees wore sequined dresses and the tables had deluxe centerpieces with a Sprinkles cupcake box at each place setting.

The Farmers Market event, held at Fair Park's Food & Fiber Pavilion, was called a hoedown, so that should tell you something about the atmosphere: kick-back, rustic, and fun, with 75+ vendors that included 30+ food producers, restaurants, specialty goods (salsas, candy, cookies, ice cream, etc.) -- many of whom are at the Dallas Farmers Market downtown -- and nearly a dozen chefs who served foods prepared with local ingredients. Plenty of plaid shirts and cowboy hats were here, with a vibe that was more flea market than fuddy-duddy.

Attendance at the March of Dimes event was estimated at 600+ while the Dallas Farmers Market Friends estimated the attendance to be between 1,400 and 1,600, which they happily called "a VERY STRONG turnout."

In both cases, the food was terrific. Memorable samples include:

• Sushi from Shinsei at the March of Dimes. Shuji "Elvis" Sugawara was there (along with chef T.J. Lengnick) making the sushi, and you could tell by the perfection of the nori sheets wrapped so tautly and cut so precisely.
• Fearing's soft tacos at the Hoedown. The corn tortillas' texture was irresistible -- cool to the touch and smooth and a little spongy. (I called Fearing's to get the specifics of the chicken-chile filling but they said they can't divulge what was in the taco and that if there's anything in print about Fearing's, then requests for information have to go through the publicist. Friendly!)
• Sevy's shrimp on a sugar-cane skewer with a mango-corn-black-bean salsa (at the March of Dimes). Pretty perky.
• Bolsa's butternut squash soup with topped with little cheesy toasts at the Hoedown. The soup was rich and at a perfect hot temperature, and the toasts were crunchy.

It's easy to take the little bites for granted when you're coasting through one of these events, but there are some things that work better than others, said Nana chef Anthony Bombaci, whose offering was a shooter kind of deal with a slab of raw tuna in a mint-lime lemonade that was difficult to "shoot" but tasted great.

"Dessert is good, soup isn't bad, anything that you can bring that's pre-done is better," he said. "I see some people cooking here, and that's awful hard to do."