Fish & Game x Resy Present “Play with Fire” supported by Ketel One Family-Made Vodka

Renowned chefs Victoria Blamey, Nick Curtola, Ignacio Mattos, Seamus Mullen, Negro Piattoni, Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer and cocktail connoisseurs Yana Volfson and Elad Zvi and his crew from Broken Shaker gather at Fish & Game Farm for a day of open fire cooking on one-of-a-kind sculptures by Kris Perry, live music from Club D’elf, and cocktails and natural wine in the Hudson Valley

(July 10, 2018, Hudson, NY) — James Beard award-winning chef Zak Pelaccio of Fish & Game and BackBar and groundbreaking restaurant discovery and technology platform, Resy, today announced the return of  “Play with Fire,”  a food event in Hudson, NY which brings together some of the country’s most outstanding chefs and bartenders for a day of open fire and whole animal cooking and camaraderie at Fish & Game Farm. This year’s lineup includes chefs Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer (King Restaurant), Nick Curtola (Four Horsemen), Ignacio Mattos (Estela, Cafe Altro Paradiso, Flora Bar), Victoria Blamey, Seamus Mullen (Whirlybird + Greens, El Colmado), Negro Piattoni (Metta), and Sam Mason (Oddfellows), along with Elad Zvi and his crew from Broken Shaker and beverage director Yana Volfson of Cosme and ATLA.

Zak Pelaccio, who launched the inaugural Play with Fire event in August 2014, says, “I’m super excited to spend the day cooking with this phenomenal group of chefs, working with Kris’s wildly unique cook sculptures, seeing old friends, making new friends, turning folks on to what’s happening in both Hudson and the greater Hudson Valley, and playing with fire! It’s also important to me that we give back to our broader community of cooks and dedicated restaurant professionals to support the mental health and quality of life of those struggling from the demands of this notoriously under-resourced industry. In order to do so, we’ll be donating proceeds to The Heirloom Foundation.”

Located just two hours north of New York City, Fish & Game Farm is a bucolic oasis located at 623 Fish & Game road, just five minutes from its namesake restaurant in downtown Hudson. The 170-acre grounds, which provide produce, poultry and honey to Fish & Game restaurant, will be the home of the event, with various tents, fire pits, smokers and grills along with communal gathering areas set up across the fields creating an intimate environment for which attendees to relax, eat and drink.

Hudson Valley sculptor Kris Perry is creating and fabricating one-of-a-kind grilling apparatuses in consultation with Pelaccio over which the chefs will cook.

Each chef will have his/her own tent and cookspace in fields of wildflowers where they will prepare a dish using Perry’s striking sculptures and wood fires. Complementing the food, each tent will have full bars featuring Ketel One Family-Made cocktails crafted by Elad Zvi and Yana Volfson, natural wines from Critical mass selections, Goatboy Selections, Zev Rovine Selections, Fifi Imports, and Rosenthal Wines. Guests are invited to move from tent to tent and congregate in the other communal outdoor gathering spaces to enjoy each other’s company while listening to live performance by Club d’Elf, special DJ sets and other live music. Guests can also experience craft and fire presented by Made + Collected showcasing demonstrations of handcrafts utilizing fire as a tool to create functional art as well as a demonstration by Jori Jayne Emde of Lady Jayne’s Alchemy and her ferments. The day’s festivities will culminate with a twenty foot high bonfire.

Proceeds from the event will be donated to The Heirloom Foundation, which helps employees of the hospitality industry deal with quality of life and other work related issues.

Play with Fire is sponsored and supported by Resy and Ketel One Family-Made Vodka. Thank you for generous support from Acqua Panna/S Pellegrino. Additional sponsors include Esquire, Baldor Specialty Foods and Yeti. Natural wines provided by Critical Mass Selections, Fifi Imports, Goatboy Selections, Rosenthal Wines and Zev Rovine Selections. Chef accomodations provided by Rivertown Lodge in Hudson, NY.

Pelaccio, the chef behind the Fatty Crab empire, moved to Hudson in 2011 with his wife Jori Jayne Emde, who specializes in fermentation, and has shaped the burgeoning dining scene in downtown Hudson with his two restaurants,  with partners Patrick Milling Smith and Kevin Pomplun, Fish & Game (opened in 2013) and BackBar (opened in 2015), . His interest and investment in the resources and ingredients from the Hudson Valley environs are depicted in his book, “Project 258: Making Dinner at Fish & Game,” published in 2017. He received the 2016 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast, was a 2015 James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Restaurant Design, and was a 2014 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. He is also the author of the award winning book “Eat With Your Hands.”

About this year’s collaborators:

Victoria Blamey: A native of Santiago, Chile, Blamey got her start working at the two-Michelin-star The Vineyard at Stockcross before going on to work in Australia and Spain, before settling in New York where she worked for Justin Smillie at Il Buco Alimentari e Vinieri and Upland. She was most recently the executive chef at Chumley’s, where her tavern food was met with critical acclaim.

Nick Curtola: Originally from the Bay Area, Nick found his way to New York City after cooking in London, Copenhagen and Italy. Before he landed his current position as head and opening chef of Brooklyn restaurant and wine bar The Four Horsemen, Nick held positions at Camino, a James Beard award-winning restaurant from Chez Panisse alum Russell Moore and Franny’s.

Ignacio Mattos: Uruguay-born Mattos was mentored by South American grill master Francis Mallmann and by Slow Food luminary Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. In 2013, he opened Estela in New York City with Thomas Carter where he has received critical acclaim for his style of seasonal food. They also run Cafe Altro Paradiso and Flora Bar, the two additional restaurants that comprise their Matter House hospitality group. Mattos was a James Beard nominee for 2015 Best Chef: New York City, a Semifinalist for 2016 Best Chef: New York City, a Nominee for 2017 Best Chef: New York City, a Finalist for 2018 Best Chef: New York.

Sam Mason: Mason is one of the most progressive culinary voices working in America today. Mason was educated at Johnson & Wales University after graduation, he completed a stage with Pierre Hermé at Ladurée in Paris before moving to New York.

Mason honed his craft at some of the most prestigious kitchens in the country, including Palladin, Union Pacific, Atlas, and Park Avenue Café. During his tenure at wd~50, Mason was named a 2005 StarChefs New York Rising Star Pastry Chef and won national recognition for his hypermodern pastry. Mason is known for his amazing culinary vision and gift in combining unusual and innovative ingredients that surprise, delight, and challenge the palate. With Tailor, a contemporary dining and cocktail parlor, Mason’s goal was to blur the line between dinner and dessert—testing the palates and the imaginations of his diners. His menu was divided into “salty” and “sweet” categories and featured unconventional takes on classic cocktails. In summer 2013, Mason returned to sweet flavors with the opening of OddFellows Ice Cream Co., in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Seamus Mullen: Mullen is known for his inventive and approachable Spanish cuisine and has also become a leading authority on the junction of food, health and wellness, he shares his compelling story and shares healthy recipes in his two books “Hero Foods” + “Real Food Heals.” He rose to prominence in 2006 while cooking at Boqueria before opening his first solo restaurant, Tertulia, in New York in 2011, for which he was James Beard Finalist for Best New Restaurant as well as being a James Beard Semifinalist 3 years in a row for Best Chef in New York City. He is the owner of popular New York eateries El Colmado and Whirly Bird, a keen cyclist, traveler and leading wellness expert.

Negro Piattoni: Argentine-born Piattoni, like Mattos, also honed his skills working for Francis Mallmann. He then went on to work at San Francisco’s Bar Tartine and started a pop-up restaurant in Bushwick called Fitzcarraldo. Piattoni now helms the kitchen at Mettā in Fort Greene where he cooks over open fire, experimenting with different techniques and playing with the ashes and coals.

Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer: Shadbolt and de Boer are the chefs behind New York eatery King, which they opened in the fall of 2016. At King, they serve a short daily menu inspired by culinary styles of the South of France and Northern Italy. Their seasonal menu draws inspiration from their training at the iconic River Café in London. Food & Wine named them among the Best New Chefs of 2018.

Yana Volfson: A native New Yorker, Volfson has been crafting cocktails in New York for 15 years. She is currently the Beverage Director of Enrique Olvera’s lauded New York restaurants Cosme and ATLA where she creates cocktail programs that complement the nuanced Mexican menus. Prior to Cosme and ATLA, Volfson managed the beverage program at Freeman’s and Peels Restaurant and also designed the beverage program for Russ and Daughters Café.

Elad Zvi: Israeli-born Zvi is the co-founder of Bar Lab, a lifestyle consulting agency that creates innovative beverage programs within the hospitality industry, which he founded in 2009 with Gabe Orta. The duo reenergized the cocktail scene with their first bar Broken Shaker, launched in Miami in 2012, which has been followed by Broken Shaker Chicago, Los Angeles, and most, recently New York, in addition to their establishments 27 Restaurant and The Anderson. Each venue offers a one-of-a-kind experience. Bar Lab’s establishments been a twice named James Beard Finalist for Outstanding Bar Program. The Broken Shaker Miami currently resides at #18 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list.

The festivities, expected to attract 300 attendees, will run from 3pm – 9pm.

Tickets will be available for purchase starting July 11th at 12pm ET on Resy.

Tickets are $195 per person. Tickets for children ages 6-12 are $95 and children 6 and under are free.

ABOUT RESY

Resy powers the world’s best restaurants, using technology to imagine the future of hospitality. Built for restaurants, by restaurants, Resy offers superior reservation management software and a consumer-facing restaurant reservation app and website to elevate and enhance dining experiences worldwide. Resy works with 10,000 network restaurants in 160 global cities and 15 countries, seating over 1.3 million diners a week  (seating over 62 million diners since its inception in 2014). Resy boasts an industry-low, global no-show rate of 4.5%.

Consumers can book and manage reservations on Resy.com and on the app from a carefully curated selection of the world’s most distinguished restaurants, including n/naka in Los Angeles and Lilia in New York City. Users now have even better access to restaurants thanks to an enhanced Notify waitlist system, which sends alerts when hard-to-get reservations become available. The app is free and available for download on both iOS and Android.

Resy was co-founded by Ben Leventhal, cofounder of Eater and restaurant industry entrepreneur; Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur, investor, author; and Michael Montero, founder of CrowdTwist and Fotolog and noted CTO. Resy’s investors and partners include Airbnb, RSE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Slow Ventures and Union Square Hospitality Group.