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Last night the kitchens at Atelier Crenn, Coi and Manresa hosted three separate, one-night-only tasting menus from three internationally acclaimed chefs. The so-called Grand Gelinaz! Shuffle, drew from a pool of 37 chefs and randomly sent them around the world to each other's restaurants to cook eight courses from ingredients already available on-site. Although diners were aware they were in for dinner prepared by someone on the Gelinaz lineup, guests at each of the restaurants weren't told who, exactly, had prepared their meal until after the dessert courses were cleared. Naturally, there were instagrams.
At Atelier Crenn Frenchperson abroad Claude Bosi of Hibiscus in London took Dominique Crenn's ingredients list and won over former Gelinaz critic John Birdsall with late-course dishes like smoked foie gras with nasturtium and pickled pluot, or the emphatically "SNARK PROOF" wagyu beef with anchoïade and compressed watermelon:
Wagyu beef with anchoïade and compressed watermelon THIS ONE IS SNARK PROOF pic.twitter.com/2rGUI4UFDS
— John Birdsall (@John_Birdsall) July 10, 2015
At Coi, while Daniel Patterson was at the Willows Inn on Lummi Island, Spanish chef Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz arrived to create anchovies with radish ash, a beautiful whole calamari with hazelnut and wheatgrass and what surely must be a wry joke about Northern California cuisine: crushed tofu with burnt redwood and caviar.
Finally, down in Los Gatos, Manresa shipped David Kinch over to Japan, but was apparently in good hands with chef Jock Zonfrillo Australia's Restaurant Orana. Zonfrillo turned out a colorful menu featuring local abalone, black cod and halibut dotted with beach succulents, wagyu beef cooked over madrone wood with spinach and eucalyptus, and a dessert of "fun dip" — toasted marshmallows with stone fruit.
Grass fed wagyu beef cooked over madrone wood, spelt, beetroot, spinach & eucalyptus #gelinazshuffle @ManresaCA pic.twitter.com/8bkCh3oDpq
— Jock Zonfrillo (@Zonfrillo) July 10, 2015