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International chefs dine in Amish barn


August 6, 2013

What happens when the world's most exclusive chefs gather for a meal in an Amish barn in Lancaster County? LancasterOnline tells us the answer in this article:



Yes, they partake of cocktails and a gala dinner at the tony Union Club on Park Avenue in New York, and lunch at the United Nations and the White House during their visit.

But on a recent fresh summer day, the chefs of the heads of state from all over the globe gather for chicken croquettes, succotash, whoopie pies and other local dishes at an Amish barn in East Lampeter Township.

It is a day for a celebration of simple food and simple moments, a sort of sweet corn diplomacy offered from Lancaster County to the outside world.

Shovels and rakes hang from the walls as the chefs slide onto benches at tables decorated with Mason jars of black-eyed Susans in the clean-swept post-and-beam barn.

Little Amish girls in plain dresses giggle and peek from behind the pillars at the chefs in their crisp white coats, the collars decorated with flags from a panoply of nations: Sri Lanka, China, Poland, Germany, Denmark, France.

The group is The Club des Chefs des Chefs, known as the world's most exclusive gastronomic society.

The queen of England's chef is in this barn, as is the chef to His Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco. President Obama's chef, her collar bearing the stars and stripes, sits across from two chefs wearing the tricolor green, white and red flag of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

An Indian woman in a shimmery sari also sits on a plain wooden bench, along with rail-thin European women exuding elegant nonchalance, part of the extended group accompanying the chefs.

Their host, Amish farmer Leroy Miller, begins the lunch the way his people do, with a blessing, and the group falls silent, under the spell of this moment and this day — a breeze ruffling the simple white tablecloths and wafting a homey smell of pot roast and gravy.

What follows is a meal of simple food, grown and produced organically by a local Amish cooperative, and served family-style by folks who include a gray-bearded man balancing a pig-tailed toddler on one hip.

Drinks are served by barefoot children, and the mashed potatoes are whipped by a power drill with a mixer attachment.

The international chefs are, quite simply, undone.

"Just amazement," is the reaction of Magnus Rehback, the chef to King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. "It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Continue reading this article here.

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