She won Food Network’s ‘Chopped.’ Now back to Fort Worth for Valentine’s at Cafe Modern.
It’s probably too late to book Valentine’s dinner.
There’s one way out: Fleming’s Steakhouse in Dallas has a $500 or $1,000 dinner for two, including a David Yurman jewelry gift.
For the rest of us, let’s talk about lunch.
▪ Cafe Modern, home of newly crowned “Chopped” Food Network champion Denise Shavandy, still has reservations available for the regular Friday and Saturday lunch.
▪ More lunch ideas: Del Frisco’s, Ellerbe, Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, Rise nº3 Souffle, Waters.
▪ Or if you simply forgot to make a dinner reservation, make up for it with a trip to Neiman Marcus NM Cafe for shopping and lunch.
At Cafe Modern, lunch can be Shavandy’s incredible coq au vin, redfish, a five-cheese pasta with chicken or the day’s lunch special, often a perfect seafood or ethnic dish.
The dessert menu still features a chocolate cremeux or a pumpkin chai tiramisu, along with cake, cookies or sorbet.
For Shavandy’s winning menu on “Chopped,” you’ll have to wait until a later dinner event.
Shavandy, in her fourth year as the chef at the cafe in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, defeated chef Lance McWhorter of Culture ETX in Tyler to win an episode named “Smokin’ Skills” and a $10,000 prize.
Cafe Modern, 3200 Darnell St., celebrated with a watch party.
“The dessert was definitely the winning dish,” Shavandy said Wednesday.
Given normal dessert ingredients plus one wild card — creme brulee flavored ice cream, pineapple and coconut, plus salmon “candy,” a smoked jerky — she made crepes with crème brulee mousse and a smoked pineapple-miso sauce, plus almond-coconut shortbreads.
One judge, New York chef Alex Guarnaschelli, gushed, “This is so successful! I love the pineapple.”
McWhorter looked across the serving table and said, “Yours looks beautiful. Mine looks like a cat box.”
In the first round, Shavandy was given sablefish, Chioggia beets, smoked baba ghanoush and a bouquet of marshmallows.
She made smoked sablefish with a beet couscous and marshmallow aioli.
For the entree, she was asked to make something from elk rib-eyes, marrow bones, fava beans and ancho-chile liqueur.
She advanced with a smoky elk with marrow-ancho chile butter and a fava bean saute.
“I knew if I made it to the dessert round, I needed to be ready,” she said.
She practiced crepes, shortbread and pound cake, just to be sure.
“As soon as I saw pineapple in my basket, I knew it was going in the smoker,” she said.
A Modern cocktail featuring smoked pineapple juice was the inspiration, she said.
Cafe Modern is open for lunch or brunch daily except Monday and for dinner Fridays; 817-840-2174, themodern.org/cafe.
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
