From Greenmarket to Table

St. Regis guests can experience an extraordinary culinary journey to New York's fabled union square greenmarket, where the city's top chefs and food enthusiasts alike shop for the freshest bounty of the season.

The day begins with a behind-the-scenes look at the Adour kitchen, courtesy of Adour Executive Chef Joel Dennis. Following a short ride to Union Square in the hotel's signature Bentley, Chef Dennis then leads guests on a tour of the greenmarket, visiting farm stands, interacting with the farmers, touching and tasting the season's produce, and selecting ingredients for Chef Dennis to use in preparation of a five-course bespoke tasting menu that evening at Adour. Guests often discover ingredients they have never before worked with, including such seasonal favorites as rhubarb, wild leeks, and baby beets. "People are often far removed from the farm-to-table experience, and that is why they enjoy this so much," says Chef Dennis. The experience provides an invaluable, tactile connection to fresh, locally farmed ingredients that guests can then see transformed into a finished dish. "Alain Ducasse is a world-renowned chef, and his cuisine really exemplifies this whole experience," Chef Dennis explains. "His cuisine is very rustic at its core, and by taking a great product without changing it too much, and presenting it in the simplest way possible, he provides the diner with a different taste or texture that they might not have experienced before." Chef Dennis enjoys the program just as much as the guests. While guests have the satisfaction of choosing the ingredients at the greenmarket, the process also presents an exciting culinary challenge to the chefs in the kitchen, where they have to take these specific ingredients and turn them into dishes they are not prepared for, literally within a few hours. As the grand culmination to an extraordinary experience, Chef Dennis introduces each course tableside, elaborating not only on how each ingredient was prepared, but also on his creative thought process in the design of each market-fresh dish.