Gala Dinner 2024

You don't want to miss A Conversation With Alton Brown, best known as the creator, writer, and host of the program Good Eats, which combined humor, science, and history and showcased Brown's nerdy personality and his passion for cooking.

Purchase Tickets

Gala Dinner 2024

Saturday, July 6

Gala Dinner featuring keynote speaker Alton Brown

Limited tickets available for $125

 

John Waters headshot

This year’s Gala Dinner comes with an extra helping of entertainment, courtesy of Alton Brown, Peabody Award-winning cook, bestselling author, TV personality, and filmmaker.

A two-time James Beard Award winner, Brown is perhaps best known as the creator, writer, and host of the program Good Eats, which ran on the Food Network for 16 seasons. Combining humor, science and history, Good Eats showcased Brown's nerdy personality and his passion for cooking. Often referred to as a "mini-documentary about food," Good Eats became one of the cable network's most successful and award-winning shows.

Brown also served as the culinary commentator and host of cooking classics Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, as well as the miniseries Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves.

The mastermind behind a string of theatrical, culinary variety shows, including The Edible Inevitable TourEat Your Science, and most recently, Beyond the Eats, Brown has played sold-out tours nationwide and gained a spot on the Billboard charts not once, but twice. He is also a best-selling author of eight books on food and cooking, including I'm Just Here for the Food, which won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Cookbook, and was one of the best-selling cookbooks of 2002.

 

Dinner Menu

Dinner will begin with a steakhouse wedge salad, featuring bacon lardons, egg, grape tomatoes, pickled Bermuda onions, and blue cheese dressing.

Entrée options include: 

  • Cabernet braised short ribs with roasted garlic whipped potatoes, asparagus, roasted red peppers, and a cabernet demi glaze
  • Pan seared chicken Florentine with sundried tomatoes, goat cheese polenta, sauteed spinach, roasted red peppers, and roasted tomato vinaigrette
  • Pesto crusted cauliflower steak with farro, quinoa, baby kale, baby arugula, butter beans, sherry vinaigrette, and sundried tomato pesto vinaigrette

And for dessert, enjoy a summer berry trifle (olive oil sponge cake with Bavarian cream). Bread, water, tea, and coffee will be served as well.

 

The usual refund processing fees are being waived through Feb. 29, 2024, for Gala ticket-holders who must cancel because of the day change.

Prices listed online are for advance-sale only. On-site purchases will include a $15 convenience surcharge per ticket. Please note that a 10-percent processing fee will be charged for cancellation and refund requests through May 31. Refund and cancellation requests received after May 31 will be reviewed case by case, based on circumstance and event viability.