What a treat: Chefs conjure up bewitching Halloween fare

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 30, 2000  by Bonnie Brewer Cavanaugh

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Executive chef Thierry Rautureau, the celebrated "Chef in the Hat" of Rover's fine-dining restaurant in Seattle, wears, not a toque, but a trademark fedora around his kitchen. But come Oct.31 he'll don a bonnet of a different sort -- perhaps the pointed, spiraled cone of a warlock -- when the chef-owner concocts his annual 13-course costumed Halloween dinner.

Over in New England chefs Keith O'Marra and Tom Devine of Two Steps Downtown Grille in Danbury, Conn., have been getting into the Halloween spirit since their eatery's inception nine years ago. Their annual five-course "Haunted Evening at the Chefs Table" was set for Oct.26. While most of their staff dons costumes for the event, the chefs do not, but they allegedly take on new personalities as "ghoulish chefs K. OhNo and Tom the Hammer."

Cauldrons are bubbling. Spells are being cast. And all around the country, it seems, gastronomic wizards this week are conjuring up special treats to tempt the palates of grown-up tricksters.

There's no eye of newt or wing of bat here, but it's magic just the same.

"We've been doing Halloween for 12 years now," says Rautureau, who began his annual feast not to honor ghosts, ghouls and goblins, but to pay homage to his own food.

"I needed one night out of the year where I did my greatest meal of the year, and the craziest meal of the year, where I would do everything my way--no suggestion from anybody," Rautureau explains. "It would be my dinner."

He asks his guests to come in costume -- an expandable waistband is suggested -- as does Rover's staff The chef also has been known to emerge from the kitchen at dinner's end dressed as an elf, a witch or a ninja warrior; this year, he says, a warlock just might appear.

The festive dinner is paired with 11 wines and priced at $300 a head, excluding tax and gratuity. Diners begin feasting at 6:30 p.m. and finish sometime around the witching hour.

Rautureau's customary starter is scrambled egg with creme fraiche and white sturgeon caviar, paired with Champagne. A second course could be duck consomme with winter vegetables and a duck-truffle quenelle paired with sherry. Game choices include squab with braised pigs' feet, caramelized turnips and a port sauce.

For dessert, Rautureau's chestnut charlotte with Bavarian cream and apricot coulis with raspberry is adorned with a dried pumpkin leaf cutout, a fallen chocolate souffle and a truffle. It's paired with 1954 Madeira. His alternate dessert is pumpkin creme brulee and a hot chocolate terrine with orange caramel and cherry chutney, paired with Champagne.

"It's pretty amazing, the amount of creation and just the amount of beautiful work that goes into it; it's great," Rautureau says of his yearly All Hallow's Eve repast, which serves about 40 ghoulish guests. "It's definitely an exhausting day, but it's a beautiful day.

"We recommend big tables," he adds. "The more the merrier, you know."

The fright night menu of chefs O'Marra and Devine of Two Steps Downtown Grille begins with stuffed baby quail with an andouille-corn dressing and chipotle drizzle, paired with Chardonnay. It is followed by a second course of brown butter scallops with braised leeks, paired with Fume Blanc.

Their third course of fresh picked lobster is served in a blood-red tomato bath with fresh vegetables and herbs. It is followed by an herb-crusted filet mignon with a wild-mushroom ragout and red-wine sauce, paired with Cabernet Sauvignon. The meal is finished off with devil's food cake filled with a rich chocolate mousse and whipped-cream frosting with a glass of port. The price of the haunted evening dinner is $50 per head, dead or alive, they say, and prepaid, of course.

For Halloween noshing with a stunning view of sorts, the answer is San Francisco's Mediterranean-inspired Zuni Cafe, which sits aptly on Market Street -- the site of the town's annual Halloween parade -- providing guests the chance to watch phantoms spirit by during dinner. Chef-owner Judy Rodgers, who specializes in house-made sausages, serves blood sausage on Halloween night "because it's kind of gory." This "rich and succulent" dish is at once sweet and spicy, owing to its anomalous pairing of ingredients: pig's blood, cinnamon, hot pepper and garlic.

For eat-and-run treat-seekers, Dunkin' Donuts will bring back its annual Halloween offerings this year, with good reason. While the national snack-and-coffee chain offers an autumn-themed menu of pumpkin-flavored muffins, cinnamon coffee, and lively black-and-orange sprinkled doughnuts, it really rakes in the dough - piles of it - via its Halloween-themed 50-count Dunkin' Munchkin boxes.

The company sees a 23-percent increase in doughnut category sales each Halloween, amounting to some $615 per week, per shop, spokeswoman Alanna Frey notes.

"We sell about 450,000 Munchkin boxes -- that's about 22.5 million Munchkins during the Halloween season," Frey explains. "That's more than the number of people that live in Australia."