Most people don’t want to return to sheltering in place, keeping their distance, and other things associated with the dark days of the pandemic. But Jo Anne Fusco found one thing from her lockdown days to be pretty cool: her virtual dinner she put together for a Thrive Memphis fundraiser in 2020. Now, she’s reviving it.
“April in Paris, A Virtual Dinner” will be held at 6:30 p.m., April 18th, via Zoom, says Fusco, Thrive’s executive director. The three-course meal will be crafted by chefs Erling Jensen of Erling Jensen: The Restaurant, David Krog of Dory, and Jimmy Gentry of The Lobbyist. So, you get three noted Memphis chefs preparing a dinner you can eat in your pajamas while sipping wine in the comfort of your home.
In other words: a virtual white tablecloth dinner experience.
Thrive Memphis, a nonprofit that provides recreational and social activities for people with intellectual disabilities, is known for food events, thanks to Fusco. She held chili contests for years when the organization was known as “The Exceptional Foundation of West Tennessee.”
Fusco later held farm-to-table dinners at the home of Brad and Dina Martin, Millstone Market, and Avon Acres. Jensen, Gentry, and chef Zach Thomason took part in dinners.
“I had the food donated. But we had to pay the staff. That wasn’t a problem, but we had to rent everything, rent dishes. We had to get wine glasses and silverware. … We made a lot of money, but it ate up a lot of our profits.”
Then Covid happened. “I got this idea: ‘Why don’t we do it virtual?’”
The four-course dinner was held in December 2020 and called “Home for the Holidays.” “We had a beautiful dinner. We packaged it in bags that James Davis donated. And we had the courses: the salad, the rolls, the butter, the entrees.”
Guests picked up the pre-cooked and packaged meals at Dory. “They just had to be heated. Some of the meat was on the rare side; if you wanted it more done, you cooked it a little longer.”
People then turned on Zoom and listened to Krog and Gentry discuss how they prepared each course. A sommelier talked about the wines.
Fusco came up with the theme for this virtual dinner. Since they already had the April date, Fusco said, “Oh, my God. Paris in April. Let’s do a French dinner.”
That also was a good excuse to put “Ooh la la!” on the invitations.
Krog is making salad Nicoise. “I haven’t had an opportunity to make this in a long time,” he says. “I felt it was a classic beginning to this meal.”
The salad is made with arugula, green beans, Nicoise olives, shallots, fingerling potatoes, lemon, olive oil, and hard-cooked egg, Krog says. He’s also making chocolate truffles and his Parker House rolls.
Jensen is making his classic beef bourguignon, which, he says, includes “beef, carrots, shallots, onions, celery, bay leaf, thyme, and red wine.”
For the dessert, Gentry is making Roquefort ganache tarts with tonka bean anglaise. The tarts include heavy cream, vanilla beans, white chocolate, trimoline, butter, dark rum, and cheese. “The anglaise is made the same way except we steep tonka beans in it,” says Gentry, who describes the dessert as “rich, decadent, not overly sweet.”
Taking part in the virtual dinner is easy, Fusco says. “We send out the Zoom link and you just follow.”
The last time they did the dinner “some followed, some watched it and turned off the volume” because they were with guests.
Dinners are to be picked up between 2 and 4 p.m. that afternoon at Dory at 716 West Brookhaven Circle. Zoom begins at 6:30 p.m.
Fusco, who hopes to make the virtual dinner an annual Thrive fundraiser, enjoys the camaraderie. She was in the kitchen with the chefs at the last Zoom dinner, which was in the kitchen at her home, where she held a dinner party.
But, she says, “The dinner is fun and it’s nice to have wonderful donors, but the money really goes to the kids. It doesn’t go to anything else. It goes to our participants.”
For more information on taking part in “April in Paris, A Virtual Dinner,” go to thrivemem.org.