Shopping with the Chef

California Chef Gabriel Gabreski invites customers to help plan (and shop for) their meal. Gabreski is taking diner interaction to a whole new place: the farmers market.

By Christine LaFave, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 10/26/2007

At chic and sleek blue on blue restaurant at the Avalon Beverly Hills Hotel, Chef Gabriel Gabreski is taking diner interaction to a whole new place: the farmers market. Well-heeled customers looking for a little culinary education and dinner-party inspiration to go along with a private four-course meal can visit the Santa Monica or Hollywood farmers market with Gabreski, who offers insights on produce selection, storage and preparation while he purchases items for that evening’s dinner service.

“We got together as a management crew here at the hotel, and one of our sales managers suggested tours to the farmers market,” Gabreski says. “[The suggestion was] if we go every week anyway, why don’t we make it an experience for our hotel guests?” The excursions—which take place Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday and are limited to groups of two to eight people—began this summer, and the Avalon quickly made the trips available also to blue on blue diners who were not staying at the hotel.

Farmers-market visits are an add-on to the restaurant’s Chef’s Table dinners—the four-course meals (with wine pairings) that begin in a private cocktail cabana and include a visit from Gabreski. The dinners cost $145 per person; a trip to the market is an additional $100.

“We try to engage the customer,” says Gabreski, adding that the Chef’s Table meal for guests who go on the farmers-market trip “is usually comprised of everything that the guest picks out minus the protein and the fish.” Diners share their meal preferences and ingredient interests before they meet Gabreski at the market so the chef can develop general menu ideas. “We try to feel them out and say, ‘OK, is there anything you do like,’” he says. “Like if they’re big on sage, we try to do something with sage.”

Gabreski gives his guests suggestions on how to shop a farmers market: Walk through and sample first, he tells them, and then go back and shop. He also points out the taste differences noticeable among products grown in different geographic regions. “I think initially [guests] are intimidated by a lot of ingredients or techniques,” Gabreski says. “We kind of simplify it … It kind of demystifies a lot of the farmers-market experience.” After dinner, guests receive recipe cards with instructions for featured dishes and drinks so they can attempt to recreate their meal at home.

Although the Chef’s Table dinners have been attracting a growing number of couples, Gabreski says, the management team is promoting them also as a unique corporate event. Additionally, heading into the holidays, the shopping-and-dinner events are being marketed as an opportunity to gain inspiration for entertaining occasions ranging from sit-down formal dinners to cocktail parties.

On a personal level, Gabreski appreciates having the chance—via the farmers-market visits—to get to know his customers better. “It kind of takes you back to when you first started cooking,” he says. In the relaxed environment of the market, he adds, customers are eager to share stories of great meals they’ve had and places they’ve traveled. “There is sort of a social element to the whole day,” Gabreski says. “We have repeat business because of that.”