A brisk Friday autumn evening saw the wizardry of Sprout cooking schools and the glamour of Burnside Village partnered for a second consecutive year to raise funds for Team Kids, the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation.
A pop up kitchen in the heart of the Fashion Mall and a glass of bubbles greeted ticket holders, with a steady precession of canapés soon to follow.
(Pictured: Gin & Dill Vinaigrette Oysters).
Sprout founders Callum Hann and Themis Chryssidis diligently coordinated their team while in the background, the deep and haunting voice of Christian Andrew echoed throughout the Mall. It was pretty bloody lovely, we must say.
Guests were seated along a beautifully set long table around 40 metres in length, before Themis and Team Kids’ CEO Sam Tolley introduced the evening. The continued work of Team Kids in South Australia has raised over $30 million for the Women’s & Children’s Hospital during the last decade and the Foundation has set the lofty goal to raise a further $40 million over the next 10 years. Events such as this go a long way to their keeping things ticking along.
Formalities soon gave way to an outstanding menu that put Sprout on show. The reality is that when you’ve been identified as outstanding chefs, especially with the profile that Callum Hann has garnered through Masterchef, the pressure on you to deliver on expectations of patrons is incredible. If anything, the expectations can be unrealistically inflated by your media profile and I don’t envy the tension nights in a make-shift kitchen must add to the team.
But they delivered in spades. While some issues with temperature control of meals can be accounted for by a lack of heat during plating, the flavours across all three courses could not be faulted.
(Pictured: Kingfish Ceviche with Capers, Pickled Cherry, Puffed Wild Rice, Crème Fraiche and Watercress & Dill puree)
(Pictured: Middle Eastern Spiced Beef with Lentils, Goats Curd and Carrot Puree)
(Pictured: Poached Quince with beetroot ganache, chocolate soil, blackberry gel and Pomegranate)
Paired with wines from Hither & Yon, Nepenthe and O’Leary Walker, this was one of those evenings where the attention to detail was so on point you wouldn’t have realised how hard everyone had worked to make the event a success.
This event was a sell out (no surprises there) and we hope to see it back next year, but if it is this is an FYI to get in early and snap up those tickets!