Business Food?
Jan. 13th, 2007 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsandersonWine Tastings Loosen Up. Butter Pecan With That Cabernet?
By KRISTINA SHEVORY
Wielding Kitchen Knives and Honing Office Skills
By KATIE HAFNER
By KRISTINA SHEVORY
Andrew Sia wanted to find a sommelier who would lecture to his wine tasting club, but was not sure he could afford it. Then there was the matter of the ice cream.
In addition to enjoying wine, Mr. Sia, 34, fancies making his own frozen sorbets and ice creams. Though it seemed to him a natural fit to pair the two, he suspected a wine consultant might not agree.
“Our first concern was that it was going to be stuffy,” Mr. Sia said. “We wanted this to be more of a party.”
Hesitantly, he and his wife, Evangeline, approached Nancy’s Wines for Food, a wine shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After meeting Jason Spingarn at Nancy’s Wines, they quickly relaxed. Mr. Spingarn’s easygoing demeanor was a relief, Mr. Sia said, and Mr. Spingarn immediately warmed to the challenge of a wine-ice cream matchup. Better yet, it would cost only $375 for 15 people — far less than they had thought.
They tasted some wines and Mr. Spingarn eventually chose nine red, white, dessert and sparkling bottles for an October tasting at their TriBeCa loft. Mr. Spingarn would bring, for example, a German gewürztraminer to pair with Mr. Sia’s pear-ginger sorbet and a New Zealand sauvignon blanc to go with his golden kiwi sorbet. More
Wielding Kitchen Knives and Honing Office Skills
By KATIE HAFNER
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 12 — Steve Jakosa, leader of the Emerald Palace cooking team, took off his apron and sat down to enjoy his dinner when the bad news came. His team’s Mongolian beef had lost.
Across the room at a Sur La Table store here, the victors, the Wok Stars, cheered over their triumphant sweet soy and chili flank steak. It was a cook-off with decidedly corporate overtones as the group of amateur chefs from UBS, the financial services company, divided into teams and donned aprons recently one night after work.
Mr. Jakosa stood to make a toast. “I just want to tell you I’m devastated we didn’t win the protein category,” he said in jest. More
