The final local Share Our Strength Taste of the Nation raised more than $90,000 for the fight against child hunger.
Twenty-six years ago, Xavier Teixido and Chef David Leo Banks held the first Taste of the Nation event to benefit Share Our Strength, a national organization that fights childhood hunger. Over the next two decades, the fund-raiser became one of a mainstay culinary event in the tri-state region.
But this year’s event, on the night of April 10 at Harry’s Savoy Grill and Ballroom, was the finale one for Harry’s Hospitality Group, which recruits chefs from both inside and outside the state to prepare a five-course meal. Cited as reasons were challenges such as fewer food wholesalers willing to make donations and the strain on staff of Harry’s.
“We are very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in these past 25-plus years,” said Teixido, owner of Harry’s Savoy Grill and the adjacent Harry’s Ballroom on Naamans Road in north Wilmington. The amount raised on Thursday night pushed the totaled raised by the 26 Taste of a Nation here to just past $1 million.
This year, local beneficiaries for the Delaware event go to the Food Bank of Delaware, Claymont Community Center and the Ministry of Caring.
In addition to Banks, executive chef for Harry’s Hospitality Group, and Chef Patrick D’Amico of Harry’s Savoy, the lineup included Nathan Rich of Twin Farms in Barnard, Vt.; Aaron Burgau from Restaurant Patois in New Orleans; Chris Coombs of Deuxave in Boston; Robert Bennett of Classic Cake in Cherry Hill, N.J.; and Delaware’s Bryan Sikora, a James Beard Award nominee, of La Fia in Wilmington, and Doug Ruley, executive chef of SoDel Concepts, part of the Matt Haley Companies, which owns six coastal restaurants.
