a wonderful Fujimamas Wine Dinner

The restaurant I work for/in - has seasonal "Meet the Winemaker" dinners where we have a visiting VIP wine person from a new-world winery - Australia, New Zealand, California, Washington, etc. But this time (two days ago) we had an extra special dinner, 5 wine makers from 5 different wineries in Oregon were with us for an amazing dinner.

The way it works is that our exectutive chef, and his team- taste the wines about a month before the dinner, and then create a pairing menu designed to match perfectly and compliment the wines that have been chosen for the dinner.

We had winery visitors from A to Z winery, Francis Tannahill, Bergstrom, Elk Cove and Henry Estates. *all have links in a previous post from 4/15.

The photos above are from my table settings, and two of my favorite courses! I went with white and black for the table this time, made these fun simple little arrangements and one of my staff members, Shalee- made napkins folded like white tuxedo shirts. Very cute. Soft candle light and an all around warm atmosphere. At Fujimamas we are usually chic but casual. We dress it up for the wine dinner, but still try to make sure people can relax.

The soup course was amazing. *bottom left Scallop Chowder with Spring Mushrooms and Fiddlehead Ferns served with A to Z Pinot Gris 2003. It was a light, lovely, completely spring like dish... The light green color so pretty off-set with the seared scallop... and the taste was just heavenly.

The other photo is from the 4th course... a Lavender Scented Duck on Sweet Potato and Pumpkin. This course was a bit of a trauma...as I royally screwed up! I printed the menus reversing this course with a pork course. It was such a mess up but the guests, the chef and the winemakers were very understanding and the dishes and wines were goregous. We fixed the situation and folks got extra glasses of wine out of it so it seemed to work out in the end... but needless to say I will be making sure more people check my menus before I print for the event. sigh. It will be a while before I get over this one.

Still the duck was so amazing! and it went well with both the Bergstrom Pinot Noir, and the Francis Tannahill Syrah.

The Chef, Mark, was so gracious and funny when he came out at the end to speak with the guests. We had a sold out crowd for us. usually we have about 40 people for a wine dinner, this time we had so many requests, we made it up to 50! very exciting.

And for once, some of my food pictures came out ok. Usually my wine dinner photos are a little dark but got some good lighting going this time.

the dessert course was great too, with a fantastic dessert wine. I will save that for my post for tomorrow.