International culinary conference heading to town in 2020
Pittsburgh is a hot destination for food and drink conferences. American Craft Spirits Association has just left town while the American Cheese Society will be heading into town in summer.
So it should not come as a surprise that in March 2020, the city will host the International Association of Culinary Professionals, which is a group of food writers, photographers, bloggers and cooking teachers. Between 400 and 500 members are expected to convene when the conference is held at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown, March 27-29. They are expected to tour the Strip District, check out Pittsburgh restaurants, and sip and taste all that the city has to offer.
While the event is primarily for culinary professionals who are members, there will be ways the public can partake — nibble around the edges.
This year’s conference was held last month in New York City. It moves to Santa Fe, N.M., in 2019 and in previous years the three-day conference has been held in Louisville, Ky., Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Past IACP board chair Glenn Mack said that the group has been eyeing Pittsburgh as a worthy destination for several years. “In the last two years, the rest of the world was figuring it out, as well. We chose it before Anthony Bourdain did his special,” he said.
Typically, IACP organizes tours and a Taste of the Region evening opener on the first day of the conference so that local chefs and bartenders, breweries and distilleries can show off their best. Seminars are held on the following two days. The conference concludes with a cookbook, journalism and media awards ceremony, which the public can attend by purchasing tickets.
“We saw so many signs pointing to the city as a cool place,” said Martha Holmberg, the CEO of IACP. “We’ll also be looking for locals to share inside info and hot spots,” adding that there will be a need for local tour operators to provide customized excursionsthat “dig deeper and bring members unique experiences.”
There are tentative plans for events to be held at The Andy Warhol Museum and possibly other Carnegie Museums, as well as with Chatham University’s food studies program.
“We are very excited to welcome IACP and showcase both Chatham’s engagement with food and agriculture and the city’s wealth of food stories,” said Alice Julier, the university’s food studies director. The conference coincides with the food studies program’s 10th anniversary.
IACP, too, celebrated a milestone year in New York City. Its 40th anniversary was attended by notable food figures that included Madhur Jaffrey, cookbook author and actress; Betty Fussell, cookbook author and memoirist; Nathalie Dupree, cookbook author, IACP founding member and past president of the group; Ellie Krieger, cooking show host and author; and Dorie Greenspan, cookbook author. Bill Yosses, former White House pastry chef, parceled out flaky chicken hand pies at a luncheon.
Along with workshops on conducting food tours and classes, pitching ideas and recipe writing, there were sessions and conversations about hot button issues including food waste, diversity, discrimination, hunger, immigration and cultural appropriation of recipes.
This year’s conference ended on a controversial note when the cookbook awards ceremony garnered unwelcome attention for awarding the General Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year prize to “Six Seasons,” written by Joshua McFadden and coauthored by Ms. Holmberg. Posts on social media platforms viewed the award given to Ms. Holmberg as a conflict of interest. So the organization rescinded the awards and announced that it is “creating a new policy about ineligibility of staff and board.”
The International Association of Culinary Professionals began in 1978 as the Association of Cooking Schools, which was a group of cooking school owners and cooking instructors who were mostly women. The name changed from ACS to IACP in 1987.
“We were excited to share our cooking skills and newfound knowledge,” said charter member Antonia Allegra, a writing coach and poet who had lived in France and studied cooking at La Varenne and Le Cordon Bleu. “We wanted to get people on fire about the cooking we loved. We found each other as a tribe.”
Post-Gazette writer and lifelong Pittsburgher Marlene Parrish also was a charter member. She had been an assistant food editor at McCall’s magazine in New York and operated a cooking school, Marlene Parrish Teaches Cooking, which started in Sewickley and then continued it in Gimbels. In 1979, she attended the first ACS conference in New Orleans. “We were cooking teachers from all over the country, sharing experiences, comparing notes, giving feedback. It was the first time. Oh my god, it was fun,” she said. Another early member was the late Kathryn Domurot, who ran Kay’s Cooking School in Oakland.
One of the tastes that Ms. Holmberg was especially stoked about from her Pittsburgh scouting visit was Prantl’s Bakery’s Burnt Almond Torte. “We’re going to incorporate that cake in the conference,” she said. “It was iconic.” And, as Pittsburghers know, delectable.