Do This: Rare Tea Cellar Dinner at David Burke's Primehouse

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Mar 8, 2010 6:20PM

Back in January we attended an early front runner for the year's best dinner with NAHA's "Winter Doldrums" cocktail dinner, an exercise in excess pairing Carrie Nahabedian's cooking with cocktails from Wirtz Beverage's Peter Vestinos. For each of the seven courses, Vestinos fashioned punches using rare select vintage teas from Rodrick Markus's Rare Tea Cellar. Both the courses and cocktails intensified in richness until Markus tucked the attendees to bed with a tea blend, Emperor's Late Night Elixir, that had us sweating toxins out of our pores.

Markus has been brainstorming for weeks with Rick Gresh, chef at David Burke's Primehouse, on a five-course dinner Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.. Gresh will be featuring steaks from Primehouse's salt cave aging cellar (ranging from 28-day dry aged ribeye to a 75-day dry aged ribeye) with side dishes incorporating more teas from Markus's inventory. The prices of these teas range from $400 - $8,000 per pound.

We were completely unprepared for the intensity of the NAHA dinner, but if any chef is up for the challenge of topping that, it's Gresh. With a plethora of aged steaks at his disposal, this dinner should come with a Surgeon General's warning. The cost of the dinner is an all-inclusive $79 per person. To RSVP, call 312-660-6000.

David Burke's Primehouse, the James Hotel, 616 N. State St.