Part art, part science, part cooking — a new, innovative culinary concept is coming to life at an assisted living facility in Cape Coral.
It's called Practical Magic Kitchen. Palmview at Gulfcoast Village pitched the idea and won a $15,000 grant at a national competition.
“We do cooking classes every week with our residents, and some of them do have dietary restrictions, and so we were always looking for alternatives so that they would not be excluded," said Adrianne Gerard, the memory support manager at Palmview at Gulf Coast Village.
Gerard is the one who pitched the idea as a way to be more inclusive and spice things up.
This week, they brought in local chefs to bring their molecular gastronomy idea to life.
“Molecular Gastronomy is using different techniques or additives that help sometimes change consistency of food. It’s kind of like if you go to a bar and order a smoked old-fashioned – all of that is kind of molecular gastronomy or taking something like caviar that looks like caviar, but it’s not caviar. It’s actually herb, but it’s designed to look like that," Gerard said.
The event featured local chef Greg Gebhard from Nice Guys Pizza and Cindy Halvorson, the owner of One Call Caterin.
"Everything had a little bit of a twist of a little magic. There was molecular meatloaf, which actually did not contain any meat! It was vegetarian! We had carbonated watermelon, we had suspended sangria. It's just a way to take it a little to the next level and something fun for our residents," Gerard said.
They plan to do more Practical Magic Kitchen tasting events in the future.