Tony’s chef hosts fried chicken dinner and cooking class for Urban Harvest
Tony’s chef de cuisine Austin Waiter had big plans for Urban Harvest’s spring Sunday Supper.
Though when he and the fine-dining restaurant’s owners agreed to host the nonprofit’s semiannual fundraising dinner, they never imagined that Waiter would end up deep-frying 1,050 pieces of double-brined chicken in Houston’s fanciest kitchen.
That’s exactly what happened over the first weekend in May, when nearly 80 vehicles pulled into Tony’s circular driveway in Greenway Plaza to collect the Sunday Suppers. In place of valet, a small team of restaurant employees and Urban Harvest staffers loaded aluminum tins into the back of donors’ cars. The makings of a comfort-food feast were packed inside: Verdegreens Farms salad, Gundermann Acres
Farms’ red mashed potatoes, Atkinson Farms’ “cream-less” creamed spinach, Breadman Baking Co. Parker house rolls, Rio Grande Organics pecan-salted caramel bars and Waiter’s fried chicken with all the fixin’s.
Traditionally, Sunday Supper is a five-course meal prepared by several chefs and served familystyle. Previous hosts have included Ian Tucker of Poitín and Kiran Verma of Kiran’s.
Waiter was introduced to the organization last fall, when 25 chefs collaborated on a special 25th anniversary dinner party at St. John’s School, where Urban Harvest hosts its weekly farmers market.
“The purpose of Sunday Supper is to invite relationships between different farms and chefs,” executive director Janna Roberson said. “We want people to see that there’s a lot of bountiful local produce available and that the quality is very high.”
Waiter sourced his chicken from an Urban Harvest vendor.
“We got them from Three Sisters Farms, who produces a great product that travels well,” he said. It took a three-person team to fry all that meat. “We buttermilk-brined it two days in advance, then broke the chickens down and let them sit in the seasoning.”
Originally, his sit-down menu mixed family-style dining with individually plated courses to fuse Urban Harvest’s farm-totable philosophy with a bit of Tony’s flair. That all went out the window once COVID-19 rendered large gatherings impossible.
“Once we realized we couldn’t get 200 people in the same room, I thought, ‘What’s something simple that people wouldn’t expect from us?’ ” Waiter said.
Fried chicken definitely fit the bill.
“We’re a communitydriven organization, so we wanted to create a sense of home for people,” Roberson said. “And this is a very comforting dish.”
Immediately after Tony’s drive-thru event, it was back to the creative drawing board. To maximize outreach, organizers had committed to a second fundraising opportunity the following weekend: a virtual cooking class with Waiter using fresh produce from Urban Harvest’s farmers market.
“We just sat there in the dining room brainstorming when Austin suggested, ‘Why don’t we do a bolognese to bring in an Italian aspect?’ ” Roberson said.
On May 9, another 85 supporters picked up the ingredients and instructions to make mushroom bolognese, Sustainable Harvesters garden salad and Torta della Nonna using Harvest Grain Mills’ Carolina gold rice. “The cooking kits were very different from the drive-thru experience at Tony’s. You got this intimate look at Austin in his own kitchen, in his own house,” Roberson said.
Approximately 60 people tuned in to the cooking lesson via Zoom. The class covered a variety of topics — from salt usage to how to properly hold a knife — and ultimately raised more than
$30,000.
Funds benefit Urban Harvest’s mission to introduce produce and healthy cooking practices in Houston’s fresh-food deserts. In addition to the weekly farmers market at St. John’s School, a youth education program, Edible Academy workshop and citywide community gardens connect local growers to the area’s most vulnerable residents.
“We’re in 23 schools in HISD and Spring
Branch,” Roberson said.
“We operate the largest farmers market in the region with 75 vendors who all come from within a 180-mile radius. And, we have the largest one-day fruit-tree sale in the country, where we sell about 4,000 trees in about four hours.”
Their one-night-only fried chicken pop-up fared pretty well, too.