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Mathieu Pacaud served a puff pastry overflowing with foie gras and black truffles at Chefs Club.

Mathieu Pacaud served a puff pastry overflowing with foie gras and black truffles at Chefs Club. (
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Some chefs might consider a tasting menu consisting of truffles, caviar and lobster as “cheating,” but lucky diners — and perhaps Charlie Sheen — consider it #winning.

Thanks to Chefs Club by Food & Wine at the St. Regis, tastings of this stature have become the norm in Aspen — especially when the restaurant brings in Paris chefs for its “Star Series.”

Chef Mathieu Pacaud is primarily known as the chef who continued his father’s legacy at three-Michelin-starred L’Ambroisie in Le Marais, but to me, he will forever be known as the man who indulged my palate with the greatest amount of truffles I ever consumed in one seating (and the man who served me a puff pastry filled with foie gras and massive slabs of black truffles that was not even a quarter of my tasting).

This was during his March visit to Chefs Club, when he explained that he’d started preparing our tasting in the wee hours, resulting in opulent dishes such as diver sea scallops with golden osetra caviar and Brittany lobster a la Saint Germain. The caliber of Pacaud’s cooking and the extravagant ingredients in this five-course tasting ($150, $225 with wine pairings) left diners happily gobsmacked.

A few days prior, Cyril Lignac, of Paris’ Michelin-starred Le Quinzième, cooked at Chefs Club. Known for his charming looks, celebrity stature as a TV host and highest-grossing sales of a cookbook in France, Lignac professed his love for America and hopes of opening his next restaurant in New York. While the dishes he prepared at Chefs Club were a more contemporary version of French fare than those of Pacaud, his use of local, seasonal ingredients — in dishes like Colorado rack of lamb with a turmeric carrot purée — showed that he might indeed be ready for the US.

Every summer, Aspen offers a three-day bender for the culinary world with the Food & Wine Classic (returning June 14-16) and its seemingly endless celebrity chefs, cooking demonstrations and wine tastings. And now thanks to Food & Wine magazine’s collaboration with the St. Regis, Chefs Club is taking care of the other 362 days of the year as well.

Seasonal menus are created by Food & Wine “Best New Chefs” winners alongside newly appointed executive chef Didier Elena, a veteran of Alain Ducasse and Paul Bocuse restaurants. The lineup of chefs for the next menu, starting in June, is Jason Franey from Canlis in Seattle; Bryant Ng from the Spice Table in Los Angeles; Viet Pham from Forage in Salt Lake City; and Missy Robbins, who just left New York’s A Voce. And, of course, guest chefs from all over the world will continue to make appearances at this ingenious concept restaurant.

Stephane De Baets, president and partner of Chefs Club USA, is already looking at other locations for Chefs Club. San Francisco and New York could be next. In the meantime, Champagne kisses and caviar dreams await you in Aspen.