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Chef Samantha Valdivia with Significant Foods Bucket List host John Catucci filming at La Condessa in Wellington. – The Food Community picture

By Tom Harrison
Two Prince Edward County dining places are staying featured on the Food stuff Network’s new time of Large Foods Bucket Listing.

The Foodstuff Community shoot at La Condessa in Wellington, and at Flame and Smith in Bloomfield, took area in the summer time of 2021, for the 3rd period of the show airing this April and May possibly.

Large Meals Bucket List host John Catucci (You Gotta Take in Below!) takes viewers on meals adventures across North America sharing drool-worthy dishes and culinary stops alongside the way.

The filming was a “fantastic” knowledge, suggests Chef Samantha Valdivia of La Condessa. “The crew was so expert. They labored together like a family the way they can read through each and every other.”

The episode that includes Wellington’s Mexican eatery is titled ‘Taco Likelihood on Me’, and features Chef Samantha’s traditional tactic to foodstuff preparing, based on her Mayan heritage.

For the taco shell, she employs a system of nixtamalization, a strategy she suggests has been largely misplaced, considering the fact that ready-purchased elements are generally less difficult and more cost-effective. The common system prepares raw dry corn, which is boiled to maintain it and make it extra nutritious, to make the flour, which is moulded by hand into taco shells.

The outcome?
“Some of the most authentic Mexican food stuff you will at any time feast on,” says host Catucci in the episode. Later on in the demonstrate, Chef Samantha also prepares a tuna tostada, that the host describes as “the best” he’s ever had.

Catucci’s appreciation for La Condessa’s food items, extends to its cook dinner.

“Chef Samantha is so remarkable,” says Catucci. “She was so entire of exhilaration and cherished exhibiting off her food stuff. Tacos are always fun and she just would make extraordinary tacos! The like that she has for her foodstuff truly arrives out in what she’s serving her clients.”

Large Foods Bucket List host John Catucci with Chef Hidde Zomer of Flame and Smith in Bloomfield – The Food Community image

Also highlighted in a 2nd episode of the system is Hidde Zomer, who is the head Chef and co-proprietor at Bloomfield’s Flame and Smith.

In the show, Catucci emphasizes Hidde’s unique strategy to cooking with fire at the Bloomfield cafe.

“When you see food currently being cooked in excess of an open flame with the smoke coming off… to see that wonderful reduce of beef with the heat from the wooden was a gorgeous sight,” claimed Catucci. “All their vegetables are cooked that way, as very well. Chef Hidde is these types of an awesome chef and to see how numerous issues he cooks on that fire working with that warmth was just remarkable!”

Chef Hidde was also enthusiastic about having his cooking and cafe highlighted on Significant Foodstuff Bucket List and shocked by how considerably perform and exertion went into the filming that took put above two days.

“The host was quite good” says Chef Hidde, noting Catucci’s enthusiasm and noticeable like for the meals.

Both equally dining places attribute farm-to-table clean County elements in their menu goods.
For Chef Hidde, applying the freshest merchandise builds on his working experience when he started out employing organic vegetables and other farm goods, functioning with Chef Gert Hageman in Europe in the late 1990s.

Utilizing domestically-sourced components, and rotating them on the menu based mostly on availability was not as considerably “a thing” back then, says Zomer, but he found it “inspiring”.

Immediately after paying time at places to eat in Toronto, which include properly-identified locales like Note Bene and the Carbon Bar, Zomer and his partner, wife Sarah, came forever immediately after visits to the County, in component to seek a a lot more spouse and children-welcoming spot to raise their kids.

“We considered, wouldn’t it be interesting to have a cafe in the region, and have a hearth, and function with local farms,” he says. The County’s “fantastic terroir”, together with other facilities like beaches created it “feel like a fantastic home” for the family.

Soon after opening Flame and Smith in 2019, the few shortly had to adapt to pandemic issues, which includes altering menu things, and closing the indoor place. Hidde claims they are now on the lookout forward to inviting persons into their Bloomfield eating place.

The spot has a “wow factor” in-person says Hidde, with high ceilings, open up to the rafters. “You can see and experience the fire anywhere you are” he notes, referring to the wooden burning ovens, that use local hardwoods to cook dinner the foods.

Hidde also expects that the conclusion of the wellness crisis, with much more people today coming out, together with the publicity of becoming featured on Major Foodstuff Bucket Listing, “will help” make a “great season”.

For her section, Chef Samantha notes that La Condessa has been shut mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic additional than it is been open.

She initially came to the County a few a long time in the past, doing the job at Parson’s Brewery, just before finding a prospect to start off her individual business in Wellington in 2020. She enjoys the town and the combine of aged and new at her La Condessa spot.

“It’s these a crucial put, near to the water, it checks all the boxes,” she states, also noting her appreciation of the County’s heritage.

The restaurant builds on the historical structural characteristics within “with a contemporary twist” such as that includes a mural by a community artist and a pink color scheme.

“I never remember the very last time the space was entire,” she says, noting she is looking forward to sharing her cooking in the bustle and ambiance of her Wellington place.

Valdivia was pleased to see the episode “all arrive alongside one another.” As she prepares for a chaotic spring time, she suggests she can “feel the momentum” for what she anticipates will be a “great year”.

Premiere night time for time a few of the Food items Community present Major Meals Bucket Checklist is Saturday, April 2, and will aspect two episodes at 8 and 8:30 p.m., a person of which highlights La Condessa. The show’s episode that includes the Flame and Smith is to air on Saturday Could 7, at 8 p.m.