Saturday evening, Alpinist, an off-the-beaten-path restaurant on the third floor of the Deer Valley Club, was at capacity for the Chef’s Table Festival dinner, “A dialogue with the land.”
The speakeasy-style restaurant is built around the alpinist himself, chef James Dumas, who’s worked as a chef in Park City for most of his decades-long career. The concept was co-founded with his son, Andre, and centered around the idea that alpine cuisine, the food found above certain elevations around the world, generally uses similar flora and fauna. What makes it different is the spices and techniques used.
Dumas put that theory into practice with his collaborative dinner with visiting chefs Prateek Sadhu and Tashi Gyamtso, who are from either side of the Himalayas.
Sadhu is the chef of NAAR, a small 16-to-18-seater restaurant in the northernmost part of India serving cuisine from the Kashmir region. Gyamtso was born and raised in Tibet. Now, with his restaurant, Jimgu, in Japan, he uses farm-to-table practices he learned from childhood.
“There are two different (groups) in Tibet: farming and nomads. I was from the farming family. So that’s kind of the way I grew up,” Gyamtso said. “I’m living in Japan at the moment. I moved there six years ago, and there we have a farm. We grow the vegetable ourselves, and we harvest it. And whatever we have, we use it directly in the restaurant.”
For his Chef’s Table Festival event in Park City, Gyamtso said he took that same approach. He asked Dumas for whatever vegetables were available and in season and worked them into his dishes.
Beets, tomatoes and lobster mushrooms were the stars of his plates served during the dinner. A tomato course served the fruit in a variety of ways: sliced, skinned and cooked. For his first course, pickled beets were made into a bellini, or mini pancake, served with a beet shrimp tartare; and the lobster mushroom, Gyamtso said, “wants to be fried chicken.”
“(They’re) buttermilk-coated, and then I’ll fry them with the same coating as fried chicken. And I made a little bit of fried chicken spice,” he said.
Sadhu’s dishes leaned more traditional, with Indian flavors like masala and curry. Before dinner, he told guests to “get ready for some spice” and made good on his word.
“It’s a slice of home. That’s what we are cooking for you guys,” Sadhu told the diners.
Dumas said he was most interested in learning the different spice palettes of each visiting chef, and he said Saturday’s dinner was one of the most fun and collaborative.
“We’re sort of ripping as we’re going. There is a touch of alpine in here, but it’s inspired by these two, so whatever’s in their pantry hit the elk (course) and everything else that we’ve been doing,” Dumas said.
As an avid mountaineer, Dumas has summited mountains and explored all over the world as a skier, too, but hasn’t been to the regions where Sadhu or Gyamtso are from — yet.
“Oh, I’ll get there,” he said.
But the Park City festival was the first time either of the visiting chefs had been to Utah.
“It’s beautiful,” said Sadhu. “It’s been a really exciting couple of days for us, just exploring the city a little bit.”
Gyamtso said he spent 12 years working in New York, but this was his first trip out West. As a snowboarder, he hopes to come back in the winter, too.
When the trio of chefs came back out to the dining room by the end of the dinner, the room erupted in cheers, whistles, claps and a standing ovation for almost a minute straight.
“I hope you could feel our fun back there,” Dumas said.
One diner, who called himself “knucklehead football Mike,” then came to the front of the room.
“In the NFL, when we say thank you to somebody in the locker room after the game, we grab the people, and all we do is a one clap,” he said, having everyone practice after a count of three.
Then he led the group in a cheer:
“First of all, to the chefs!” he exclaimed. “One, two, three,” and the room clapped. “To the great service! One, two, three,” clap. “All right, to all the people here! One, two, three,” a final clap. “There we go!”
The revelry only continued, one guest throwing a reindeer skin over his shoulders and reenacting a scene from “Game of Thrones.” Others exchanged numbers, took photos together for memories and made plans to meet at the festival after-party on Main Street.
“For the first time that I’ve been out here in 30 years, a culinary festival finally comes to town in the summer,” said Dumas. “It’s been a lot of fun.”