Sure, you’ve heard of benefits with silent auctions before, where you can bid on fab food at fine eateries—and maybe as a special deal, a chef will come to your house, complain about your dull knives and pathetic stove, but still make dinner for you and 9 of your friends. But that’s so, um, normal.
Well, La Cocina’s Silent Auction, in conjunction with the San Francisco Street Food Festival 2009 has some twists that have me checking the balance in my savings account and drooling at the same time. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Anyway, here’s a tame one: You can bid to be Chef for a day at Chez Panisse. Imagine the mess you could make in a kitchen like that. And, you evidently get to boss people around. That’s what “chef” means: chief! (I’m amazed that lots of people don’t know that. When I inquired about some small alteration I wanted in a dish recently, the waitress assured me that she’d talk to “her” chef. I’m wondering what the chef thought about being upstaged by a waitress…or maybe she was lucky in love, I dunno.)
In any case, the piece de resistance of the auction is without a doubt “Pig Butchery in your home with Ryan Farr from 4505 Meats.”
Yes, Ryan shows up at your door with a whole pig and all the appurtenances to dissect the beast into portions. Imagine.
Now, I have relatively devious thoughts about this. For example, mention buying a whole animal or cooking something cute like a rabbit and most USians shy away and make faces like they’d been poisoned or something. The US of A just isn’t a place where a majority of people like to be close to their food, prefering it hacked and corralled in a Styrofoam tray marinating in the bacteria it’ll have to live with for weeks in the super. But no matter…
Here’s the number one thought. Outbid everybody, then tell Ryan to show up with the pig at the big house of a person who bugs you. You know, the guy that makes a parking space in front of your apartment by banging into your car to shove it back, that sorta miscreant. When the door opens, push it in and explain that you just don’t have room in your tiny apartment and certainly he wouldn’t object if ten people who don’t have a clue but do have sharp knives started their class in butchering on that big dining room table of his.
Imagine.
Go here and bid: La Cocina’s Silent Auction
Because this is important:
Proceeds from the auction will go to benefit La Cocina a non-profit food business incubator that provides affordable commercial kitchen space and technical assistance to low-income and immigrant entrepreneurs who are starting, launching or growing food businesses. We believe in creating avenues for economic self-sufficiency through food businesses and place a priority on women-owned and immigrant-owned businesses