Chinese New Year at 5 Fusion

Firecracker Red Snapper for the New Year (photos by Barb Gonzalez)

I love the Chinese New Year holiday. My Chinese friends certainly know how to celebrate it. Every year, on the occasion of the new moon of January or February, they begin to party … and they don’t stop for 15 days.

In Bend, although the Chinese community is small, the celebrations are substantial. You may not hear the strings of firecrackers nor see the colorful lion dances prevalent in such larger centers as San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., but the observance is just as heartfelt.

Last night, I greeted the first day of the Year of the Dragon at 5 Fusion & Sushi Bar, where chefs Di Long and Joe Kim prepared an eight-course feast worthy of a Ming emperor.

“The number eight is widely regarded in Chinese culture as a universally lucky number,” explained 5 Fusion owner Lilian Chu. “Dining on eight courses is a truly auspicious way to usher in the new year!”

In China, the beginning of the lunar new year is regarded as a time of renewal, when the misfortune of the previous 12 months may be swept away to make room for a new start. Prosperity and long life are celebrated year-round, but especially at this time.

Di Long, right, and Lilian Chu

As served by Long, Kim and the 5 Fusion staff, our meal began with assorted dim sum, followed by a delicious bisque of sun-dried tomatoes with scallops. It continued with “longevity” noodles with grilled shrimp, followed by rich chunks of lobster sautéed with butter and cheese.

The highlight of the meal was whole roasted red snapper, served head-on with a succulent glaze. Guests at the dinner were not at all reluctant about tearing into the fish, leaving little more than skeletons when the platters were finally removed.

Five-spice-seasoned crispy chicken and a Buddha’s medley of Asian vegetables completed the savory portion of the dinner.

For dessert, Long presented a sweet ginger-custard bun with a coconut-taro compote and lychee salad. It was a fitting introduction to her new bakery, which will open in early February on Bond Street in downtown Bend (details to follow). Long said it will feature French- and Asian-influenced pastries, savory as well as sweet.

Thirty guests — many of them dressed in red, the color of good luck — attended the 5 Fusion dinner, staged as a benefit for the KIDS Center.

In 2011, the 5 Fusion Collaborative Charity Dinner Series raised more than $30,000 for 14 local charities. This New Year feast was a great way to begin 2012 with a goal of doing even more for the Central Oregon community.

Answering the Typhoon Rumors

Rumors of the impending demise of Typhoon, the popular Thai restaurant on Bond Street in downtown Bend, apparently are just that — rumors.

Typhoon, Bond Street, Bend

I spoke this afternoon to Jim Thomas, a member of Typhoon’s board of directors, and he vehemently denied that the company plans to close its Bend restaurant.

Never mind that Typhoon has been charged with civil rights violations by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Never mind that its founder, Stephen Kline, died following a heart attack in August. Never mind that two of the seven members of the Typhoon group have closed in the Portland area in recent months.

Never mind that COG (that’s my acronym for Central Oregon Gossip) has been circulating the word about Typhoon’s slow death for well over a year.

“Only two of our restaurants have ever closed,” Thomas said. “Those were in West Linn and on Broadway in downtown Portland (at the Hotel Lucia).

Bo Restobar, Bend

“Our northwest Portland restaurant is still open, as well as our restaurants in Gresham, Beaverton, and Redmond, Wash. Plus we have a presence on the campus of Microsoft (in Redmond).”

Thomas speculated that recent rumors began when the restaurant’s Bo Restobar, located in the same Franklin Crossing building, reduced its winter hours to Thursday-to-Saturday evenings only.

“There is a distinct possibility that we will consolidate the Bo bar into the restaurant at some point,” Thomas said. “But otherwise, we’re going to keeping doing what we’re doing now, which is serving lunch and dinner every day.”

Thomas said the restaurant group feels no pressure from the legal suit filed against it. But he wouldn’t comment further. “It’s an ongoing investigation,” he said. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Life Is a Food Cart for These Two Guys

Soupcon's goat cheese-stuffed knodel with pumpkin ratatouille (Barb Gonzalez photos)

Although they are most often seen together, don’t make the mistake of thinking that Steven Draheim, 39, and Joel Cordes, 32, are inseparable.

In fact, the owners of two of Bend’s most popular mobile kitchens are highly competitive. “We push each other,” Steven acknowledges.

Steven Draheim and Joel Cordes

Draheim owns Soupçon; Cordes is El Sancho. Every lunch hour, Monday through Friday, they stand side-by-side outside The Blacksmith restaurant in downtown Bend.

Both are Bend natives. Steven is a 1990 grad of Bend High School. Joel graduated from Mountain View in 1997. Both are formally trained chefs. But they followed very different paths.

Steven was a prep and junior-college athlete who aspired to become a French teacher.  When he fell in love and became a father, he set his sights on a more lucrative profession.  “The competitiveness and physical demands drew me into cooking,” he recalls.

He studied at the Western Culinary Institute, then worked under chefs Cory Schreiber at Wildwood in Portland and Janos Wilder at Janos in Tucson, Ariz. He returned to Central Oregon as executive chef of the Kokanee Café in Camp Sherman between 2003 and 2006.

In 2008, Steven opened Soupçon (French for “tiny amount” or “subtle hint”) as a soup cart. (See www.soupconbend.com.) He initially offered a choice of three gourmet soups, at least one of them purely vegetarian, along with grilled bread-and-cheese dumplings known as knodels. In three years, the menu has evolved to also include daily salads and sandwiches. “I’ve been having fun with food,” the chef says.

El Sancho's chili rellenos

Joel attended culinary school in Vail, Colo., after high school. Between subsequent jobs as a cook in Colorado and Seattle, he went on self-described “food quests” in Mexico and southern Africa, studying cuisine as he traveled. Upon returning to Bend in 2007, he went to work at The Blacksmith, where he was a line cook there until he launched El Sancho (see www.wix.com/thesancho/elsancho) in February 2010.

“I wanted to follow my own style,” he says. His love of Southwestern cuisine helped him win the crowd-favorite “Best Booth” award at the Arizona Taco Festival in Tucson in October 2011. Now, Joel says, he finds patrons seeking him out.

“The trick is dividing time between preparation and sales,” he says. “Steven and I both work about 60 hours a week, and only 15 hours of that is at the cart.”

“We both have our hard-core fans,” says Steven, “but together, we can offer a bigger menu with shorter lines per cart. We have a nice synergy.”

Draheim and Cordes are among two dozen Central Oregon chefs with recipes features in “Sage in the Kitchen,” a new benefit cookbook published to benefit the Feed the Hungry program of Bend’s Community Center. Priced at $22.95, the books may be purchased at the BCC or online at http://www.bendscommunitycenter.org/sage

Chef David Touvell of Chow Talks about Sustainability

Running one of Central Oregon’s finest breakfast-and-lunch restaurants isn’t enough for David Touvell. The owner and executive chef of Chow (www.chowbend.com), on Newport Avenue, has other big plans in mind.

Chef David Touvell

That’s not surprising, when you get to know him. Touvell, 35, has never been the kind of guy to sit still.

What’s in the works? For starters, a new pizza pub, The Local Slice. Dave hopes to get it up and running by the beginning of February in Brookswood Meadow Plaza, on Bend’s south side. He was to have signed the lease earlier this week.

Later in 2012, he expects to expand the Chow concept … to Portland. He is exploring three possible locations on Northeast Alberta Street and Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Stay tuned.

And then there’s a little personal business — a wedding. Dave and his longtime girlfriend, Rebecca Wilkinson, plan to get married in the summer. Their daughter, Jardin, born in August 2010, will be an active participant.

I guess you could say that even Touvell’s personal life revolved around sustainability.

“If we don’t support our local producers, the world itself from a food perspective will collapse,” Dave tells me one morning over a plate of eggs Blackstone, one of his signature dishes. “There’s no way we can sustain ourselves if we buy from everybody all over the world.”

Touvell has been a part of the Bend restaurant scene since 2000. A native of Ventura, Calif., he began working in the bakery kitchen of a family friend when he was only 9 years old. He attended the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, and after a stint with the Pebble Beach Resorts group on California’s Monterey Peninsula, returned to Oregon.

He arrived in Bend after working in Ashland (Catwalk and Peerless); Tucson, Ariz. (the Tack Room and Hacienda del Sol); and Portland (Couvron and William’s). He initially worked at Café Rosemary, then consulted for seven years at such restaurants as Barcelona, Sushimoto, the Lodge at Suttle Lake and Kanpai.

In 2008, he opened Chow. “I’d always seen the location, and wanted to do a restaurant on my own,” he says. “I designed it and the concept evolved.”

Ham and eggs, Chow-style

Today, the first thing a patron sees when walking in the front door is a blackboard that lists three dozen local food providers and other business people whose services Touvell enlists.

“I’ve been practicing sustainability since I first started cooking,” he says. “It’s not only that flavor is more alive when the food is in season. More than that, it is an educated response to the economy and to what people eat from a dietary perspective.

“Everything is made from scratch. We don’t grow our own potatoes or milk our own cows … but if we could, we would. It’s not marketing. I really, really believe in it.”

David Touvell is one of nearly two dozen Central Oregon chefs featured with original recipes in “Sage in the Kitchen,” a cookbook soon to be published as a benefit project for Bend’s Community Center. For more information, please see: www.facebook.com/pages/Sage-in-the-Kitchen/277434852281807

In the Kitchen with Juri Sbandati

Tuscan tenderloin: Grandma didn't make Italian food like this (Barb Gonzalez photos)

Juri Sbandati is not your average Oregon chef.

A native of Florence, Italy, he has a doctorate in history. Named by his parents for Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin, he is an avid fan of Grand Prix and Formula One race-car driving, and he named his own 21-month-old son Ugo after a favorite driver.

Chef Juri Sbandati

Juri and his wife, Kinley, own and operate Trattoria Sbandati (www.trattoriasbandati.com), an intimate cafe on College Way, on Bend’s west side. “There is an Italian saying: ‘The fewer the tables, the fuller your restaurant,’” recites Juri, 37. “I am tired of restaurants that seat 150 people. I decided to go the opposite direction. “A trattoria in Italy is a family-run restaurant, a place where you can develop strong connections with your customers and make everyone feel special.”

The 36-seat restaurant, its Florentine art and draperies giving it a sense of European style, opened in October 2009 and already is rated one of the premier places to dine in Central Oregon.

The cuisine is authentically Tuscan. It is not Americanized. There’s no spaghetti and meatballs on the menu. “That is not Italian food,” Juri says. “You also won’t find fettuccine Alfredo or chicken Parmigiana here.”

Italian food is simple, accessible and versatile, he says. “But simple does not mean easy. I try to be an artisan. I don’t cook much with butter or heavy cream. I want to cook for people, but not feed the masses. I am cooking with a personal touch.”

Pastas, sauces, breads and soups are all hand-made. Prix-fixe dinners are worthy of special occasions. At these, the four-course menu is determined several days ahead of time. “I want to create an experience,” says Juri. “I want to make you anticipate for days.”

Juri discovered his flair for cooking as a university student. It was in Florence that he met Kinley Fitzkee, a Boston native who had gone to Italy for graduate studies in art. They married and settled in Oregon, where Juri set up his own business, Sbandati Personal Chef, and cooked in the homes of clients from San Francisco to Seattle.

After several years, they opened their own restaurant, and Bend is the better for it. “A chef without a kitchen is like a country without a government,” says Juri, who is never at a shortage for words. “Besides, food is a great excuse to talk about your country and who you are.”

This profile is one of two dozen that will appear with original recipes in “Sage in the Kitchen,” a cookbook soon to be published as a benefit project for Bend’s Community Center. For more information, please see: www.facebook.com/pages/Sage-in-the-Kitchen/277434852281807

Finding Bliss on East Fifth

Morris Bliss (Michael C. Hall) awakens to another mundane New York day.

When I parted company last night with writer-director Michael Knowles, he was having a drink with other filmmakers and movie lovers at a bar called Velvet in Bend, Oregon.

This was ironically appropriate, given that the genesis of his latest movie, East Fifth Bliss, may also be traced to a bar called Velvet in New York City.

Knowles is one of the luminaries at this weekend’s BendFilm Festival.  And East Fifth Bliss is a strong contender for honors when festival winners are announced tonight.

A quirky comedy-drama starring Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame, the movie follows a mid-30s New Yorker named Morris Bliss in his struggle to find self-esteem.

Morris lives in a small apartment with his widowed father (Peter Fonda), whose presence is a constant reminder of the emotionally wrenching death of his mother two decades earlier.  An introverted book lover, Morris wants to travel but has no money nor job prospects.

Enter a string of characters who include NJ (Chris Messina), his best friend, a slacker with exaggerated swagger; Stephanie (Brie Larson), a sexually precocious 18-year-old; Jetski (Brad William Henke), Stephanie’s father, anxious to relive his high-school antics with classmate Morris; Andrea (Lucy Liu), a married woman in mid-life crisis; and Hattie (Sarah Shahi), an urban rebel who is not what she appears to be.

As Morris interacts with these characters, he finds his stagnant life beginning to change.

Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqVecMLeCVY

Director Michael Knowles discusses "Bliss" with this blogger. (Barb Gonzalez photo)

Knowles, 42, had already established himself as a capable actor, writer and director — Sex and the City fans may remember his role as “Marathon Man” in a 2001 episode — when he ran into author Douglas Light in 2007 at the Velvet Cigars Lounge in New York’s East Village.

Light had just finished his debut novel, East Fifth Bliss, to considerable acclaim.  He gave a copy of the book to  Knowles, who was so impressed that he suggested they collaborate on a film script.  For the next six months, Knowles said, they hung out at the Velvet Cigars Lounge, drinking, smoking and writing.

Hall was recruited to play the lead role of Morris through a mutual friend, but the demands of filming his TV series Dexter, followed by treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, didn’t allow him to shoot the movie until last year.

Produced on a $750,000 budget, it is now on the film-festival circuit, where it recently was honored as “best feature” at the San Diego Film Festival.

The general theatrical release of East Fifth Bliss, by Variance Films, is scheduled for March 23, 2012.  It will simultaneously go to Video on Demand, Knowles said.

Born into a working-class family in southern New Jersey, Knowles got hooked on acting his senior year in high school.  He studied acting and screenwriting — along with martial arts — for 4½ years in New York, appearing in numerous off-Broadway productions before landing that “first paying gig” on Sex and the City.

Somewhere along the way, he realized, “It’s hard to make a living acting.”  And while he still makes occasional on-screen appearances, he has recently focused on writing and directing.

His first two movies, Room 314 (2006) and One Night (2007), were ensemble dramas.  Now, he and Light hope to go to production soon with an adaptation of the novelist’s most recent book, Where Night Stops.

Wild Horse, Wild Ride

A hand reaches out, a wild mustang hesitates

The answer: “Wild Horse, Wild Ride.”

The question, which I am frequently asked by friends who know that I sit on the board of directors of BendFilm: What films do you recommend seeing?

With the annual four-day tribute to independent cinema beginning tomorrow at locations throughout Bend and Sisters, the questions are coming more often these days.  I did not serve on the festival selections committee this year, but I have seen a handful of festival movies.

One of them I found particularly memorable.

Alex Dawson

It’s a full-length documentary film, written and directed by Alex Dawson (same name, different person than last year’s actress-producer of “Clara’s Carma”), co-directed by her cinematographer husband, Greg Gricus.

Here’s the trailer: http://wildhorsewildride.com/trailer.html

“Wild Horse, Wild Ride” follows eight horse lovers from different parts of the United States — Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin and New Hampshire — who enter an event called the Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge.

This annual competition gives 100 participants each 100 days to break and train a newly captured wild mustang, enabling the animal to be adopted outside of the wild-horse pens.

You’ll meet Charles and Carlos, a father and son from the Navajo Indian Reservation; Melissa, a biomedical graduate student at Texas A&M University; and Nik and Kris, home-schooled New Hampshire brothers with an intuitive training philosophy.

You’ll cheer for George, an aging Texas cowboy muddling his way through his seventh marriage; Jésus, a young construction worker who lives in Wisconsin but misses his father’s ranch in Mexico; and Wylene, the ultimate Texas cowgirl, a glamorous but tough-as-nails single mother.

The film climaxes at the end of the 100 days in Fort Worth, Texas, where the amateur handlers show their horses before putting them up for auction.  To keep the animals as their own, they must successfully bid against the public.

After more than three months of bonding with the mustangs, this is a heartbreaking moment for the trainers, many of whom are young and don’t have $2,000 or more, to spare in a bidding war.

Dawson’s story and Gricus’s brilliant photography — his past credits have included work on the National Geographic, Discovery, History and Travel channels — won’t leave many dry eyes in the house.

“Wild Horse, Wild Ride” won the Audience Choice award in the documentary category at the Dallas International Film Festival earlier this year, and it took home two awards at the Phoenix Film Festival.

The movie has been chosen to open the Sisters portion of the festival. It will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Sisters Movie House, along with an equally wonderful short called “Library of Dust.” It will be reprised in Sisters at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

The only Bend showing of “Wild Horse, Wild Ride” will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Tower Theatre, where it is paired with “Small Town Doc,” a 12-minute short filmed in La Pine.

Individual film tickets may be purchased online for $11 at www.bendfilm.org.  They are also available for $12 at BendFilm headquarters at The Hub (the old Liberty Theatre, 849 N.W. Wall St., Bend) up to 60 minutes before the start of a show.

Dairy Queen Encounter Leaves Racism in the Dust

Inouye (left), Mineta (right) and Judge Lance Ito (center) at Heart Mountain ceremony (JGA photo)

It was a marvelously incongruous scene: At a quarter to 11 on a Saturday night, the nation’s two most powerful Japanese American politicians sat side-by-side in a Dairy Queen in the dusty frontier town of Cody, Wyoming.

Daniel Inouye, the senior member of the U.S. Senate, and Norman Mineta, who served as Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration and Secretary of Transportation in the second Bush administration, were enjoying icy Slurpees before bedtime.

The Democratic leaders were a long way from home. Inouye, 86, is from Hawaii. Mineta, 79, is from California.

They had visited Cody, along with hundreds of other Japanese Americans, to dedicate a world-class interpretive learning center at the former Heart Mountain Relocation Center, a World War II internment camp that is now a National Historic Landmark outside of Cody.

It was a homecoming of sorts for Mineta, who had spent part of his childhood at the camp, and a bitter reminder of wartime prejudice for Inouye, who gave his right arm fighting for his country in Italy but still was denied service at white-owned businesses when he returned home.

I had met Inouye on several occasions in the early 1970s, when he would drop by the newsroom of the Honolulu Advertiser for conversations with the editors. Just out of college, I was a young reporter at that now-defunct newspaper.

I reminded the senator of those days during our Dairy Queen visit. His face broke into a wide smile.

But both he and Mineta had been deadly serious when they discussed the ramifications of racial hysteria at the dedication ceremony earlier in the day.

As Secretary of Transportation, Mineta was the lone Democrat in the Cabinet when al-Qaida terrorists staged their shocking “9-11” attack on New York City in 2001.

In the wake of that violence, “this (internment) came very close to happening again,” Mineta recalled. “A large group of Arab Americans were very concerned about the rhetoric of the time.

“But when I sat at a cabinet meeting two days after the attack, on 9-13, President Bush said, ‘We don’t want to happen here what happened to Norm in 1942.’ For our president to make a statement like that was really remarkable.”

Inouye recalled that as a 17-year-old in Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941, he watched in dismay as the smoke from the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor billowed into the Pacific skies. Soon thereafter, he received a “4C” draft classification.

“4C is a designation of an ‘enemy alien,’” he explained. “This was both horrifying and insulting. I never considered myself anything but an American. So like many others, I petitioned the U.S. government to let us demonstrate our loyalty to the U.S. by serving my country.”

He served in Italy in 1943 and 1944, and was awarded a Medal of Honor and Purple Cross after suffering near-terminal injuries, including the loss of his right arm. Yet when he returned to his country, even in his native Hawaii, he encountered people who told him, “We don’t serve people like you.”

It was 1988 — 29 years after Hawaii became a state and Inouye was first elected to the Senate — that Congress passed a bill offering redress to survivors of the internment camps. Approximately 120,000 had been secluded in a dozen of these camps for three years during World War II, having been flushed from their homes in California, Oregon and Washington.

At Heart Mountain alone, up to 10,700 Asians were housed behind barbed wire in 468 barracks, closely guarded by armed Caucasian soldiers.

“Few nations are strong enough to admit they did wrong,” Inouye said.

“We are now looking into the future, but to forget the past, we may be repeating the past.”

Return to Heart Mountain, Wyoming

Heart Mountain National Historic Landmark

NBC’s Tom Brokaw will be in Cody, Wyoming, tomorrow (August 20). So will Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, Los Angeles Judge Lance Ito and several other influential Japanese Americans.

All are in this small prairie town to dedicate a marvelous new interpretive learning center at the former site of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.

But no words that any of these men might say are likely to have the impact of what I personally heard yesterday from Bacon Sakatani.

Heart Mountain was one of a dozen American “relocation camps” at which Japanese Americans were interned for three years during World War II, having been flushed from their homes in California, Oregon and Washington.

At this desolate Wyoming camp alone, up to 10,700 Asians were housed behind barbed wire in 468 barracks, closely guarded by armed Caucasian soldiers.

Bacon Sakatani

Sakatani, now 82, was one of the residents.

“I was 12 years old when my family and I were forced from our home in West Covina,” he told me. “I turned 13 on the train north from California.

”There were seven of us. We all shared one room, 24 feet square. The government gave us three meals a day, which cost them 35 to 50 cents. We were paid $12 to $19 a month, from which we had to buy our winter clothing and anything else we needed.

“We were here to prove our loyalty to the United States. We did what we were told to do. But we were wrong. We were Americans just like any white person.”

By 1946, given $25 pocket money and a ticket home, the Sakatani family had returned to Southern California and started over. “We struggled and survived” as vegetable farmers, said Bacon — who subsequently served honorably in the Korean War — but their lives were forever changed.

“As the children of immigrants, we were taught to obey,” he recalled. “But in the 1970s and ‘80s, our own children started to question our past choices.

“And they were right. The government had lied to put us in the camps. We were the victims of racial prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of national leadership.”

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill, championed by Inouye, which partially redressed the injustice. All relocation-camp survivors (80,000 were still alive) were awarded $20,000 and a formal presidential pardon.

A longtime advocate for the dignity of camp survivors, Sakatani serves on the advisory board of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center. Years of work have achieved fruition with the opening of this impressive new multimedia facility, one of the best curated museums I have seen in the country.

It formally opens tomorrow. To learn more, see www.heartmountain.org.

Perfect Fit: Joe Kim and 5 Fusion

Joe Kim slices into an Atlantic cod at 5 Fusion & Sushi Bar

Joe Kim, Jr., has been in Bend for only 15 months, but the young chef has no doubt Asian fusion cuisine is the perfect fit for his culinary experience and skills.

“My father is Korean but grew up in Osaka, Japan,” explained Joe. “He moved to the United States, to San Francisco, in the mid-1970s.

“My mother is American. And I grew up since my early teens working in the kitchen of Japanese restaurants, making soba noodles and tempura batters, and later, sushi.”

Joe, 30, is now the executive chef of 5 Fusion & Sushi Bar (www.5fusion.com) in downtown Bend.

He originally left his California home to attend business school at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Upon his graduation in 2005, he attempted a career change—“but the suit and tie of a broker just didn’t suit me,” he admitted.

“So I went back to San Francisco and got a job at another Japanese restaurant, Kyoto on Van Ness Avenue,” Joe said. He traveled in Italy and China, paying close attention to the cuisine, and contemplated a move to Japan before returning to the States. Soon thereafter, he found himself in Bend.

“I came to 5 Fusion as a sous sushi chef and just kind of fell into the role of executive chef,” he said. “Now I work about half the time on the sushi bar and half in the back kitchen. It gives me a chance to get away from the traditional.”

Kim’s creativity will be on display Saturday night (Aug. 13) at the Ghost Tree Invitational’s Dinner on the Range. Five Fusion is one of 19 Central Oregon restaurants participating in the event at Sunriver’s Crosswater Golf Course (www.ghosttreeinvitational.com).

Joe plans to present two Asian-style seafood dishes. His seared scallop will be served with a purée of edamame beans. And his seared ahi tuna on sushi-rice risotto will feature a low-sodium reduction of white soy sauce and white balsamic vinegar.

About 1,300 guests are expected at Ghost Tree this weekend. If you attend, keep an eye out for such familiar faces as actress Melora Hardin, actor Mykelti Williamson and basketball star Detlef Schrempf. They will be among numerous celebrities attending the annual three-day charity event.