The Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls will bring the cuisine of northern Italy to the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center with the seventh annual “A Bite of the Arts” fundraiser at 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 21.
“A Bite of the Arts” has been an annual tradition which has brought in over $100,000 for student scholarships, equipment and culinary faculty development and research.
The theme of this year’s “Bite of the Arts” fundraiser is “Carnival in Venice” and was inspired by 15 culinary students’ trip to Italy this past summer. According to Chef Randolph Cheramie, lecturer, the students who spent some time in Venice were inspired to create the theme.
According to Cheramie, it will be a beautiful evening for the guests. Cheramie describes the lighting in the civic center to be very theatrical, and he said that there is a good crew and a good core of people who are the “A Bite of the Arts” committee, organizers of the decorations and musical entertainment.
“They have a way of closing it all in (with the lights),” Cheramie said. “It’s all done very theatrically. It’s very neat and unusual.”
According to Cheramie, as guests arrive, there will be wine service available for them, and as they proceed into the reception room, there will be about 12 ice carvings. Also in the reception room, there will be five action stations including a sushi station where culinary students will be cooking food. There will also be a big area for silent auctioning.
“After (the guests) have had a few cocktails and have had a little munching of tidbits and hors d’oeuvres,” Cheramie said, “they will walk into the grand salon, and that’s where we will have tables set up for (over 500 people).”
Cheramie said the menu is still in development and has not yet been solidified, but there will be three courses to the meal: a salad, an entre and a dessert.
According to Cheramie, typically, the people who attend “A Bite of the Arts” all have a common thread — food.
“You have the food crowd and the wine crowd,” Cheramie said. “Then you have the Nicholls supporters which is probably the biggest group. The people that just really want to support Nicholls and recognize that the program is a very important part of the Nicholls community.”
The culinary students have been working on preparing and putting together the events for “Carnival in Venice” for months. The tasks that have to be done are broken down, and the chefs in charge assign executive chefs and committee heads to organize their segments of the night.
“It’s a lot to do,” Cheramie said. “It’s a very big organizational effort to pull this off. The kids worked very, very hard and long on this. Every year (“A Bite of the Arts”) gets bigger and better.
“We as faculty look at it as an important thing. The whole idea of having this is to allow us to be better teachers (by giving) us the tools we need to teach our culinary majors.”
A limited number of tables for eight, ranging from $800 to $1,200, are available. Call the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at (985) 449-7091 for more information.