GETTYSBURG - One of the nation’s most prominent chefs has joined the artistic staff at The Gettysburg Festival, helping to shine a spotlight on fine cuisine as the Festival embraces chefs from across Pennsylvania and pays homage to the culinary arts.
Walter Scheib, White House Executive Chef from 1994 to 2005, now known as The American Chef™, has been named Artistic Director for Culinary Arts with The Gettysburg Festival, June 18-28, 2009. In the position, Scheib will design and present six unique culinary experiences within the Festival’s lineup of about 100 artistic events.
"The Festival will offer all types of artistic culinary events, everything from a ‘presidential’ setting of a formal dinner to a barbeque competition,” Scheib explains. Additional culinary events include a bluegrass brunch at Hanover Shoe Farm, a “blues and barbeque” event at a train station, a sunset dinner at the Hauser Estate Winery, and a five-course meal prepared by the winner of the 2008 Governor’s Award for the Culinary Arts, Chef Andrew Little of Hanover’s Sheppard Mansion. Plus, a Friday night cocktail party and sidewalk festival will offer the fantastic sounds of brass reverberating through downtown Gettysburg.
Scheib, who prepared everything from simple family meals to elaborate and formal State Dinners while at the White House, understands how to create memorable one-of-a-kind events by adding several dimensions to a culinary experience.
The Festival events not only provide the opportunity to highlight talented chefs, but to explore wonderful products, and the people behind those products as well,” he said. The Festival’s culinary events will not only offer delicious culinary delights, but presentations by famous chefs, information from growers and producers, and arts entertainment as well.
Scheib is working with a Festival committee in designing this June’s culinary events. Members represent various interests within the central Pennsylvania’s culinary community.
Scheib says he was attracted to the project for several reasons. “Clearly the central Pennsylvania area is a hotbed of not only wonderful and talented chefs but superior produce, fruits, vegetables and poultry. In my eleven years at the White House many items were sourced here due to all the exceptional products available here.”
Festival-goers will have several opportunities to meet Scheib and experience his culinary creations during the Festival. Plans are also underway to showcase Scheib’s talents at a pre-Festival fundraiser dinner at the Hanover home of Jane and Mike Rice.
Tickets for the Festival’s culinary events will be on sale in April. For more information on The Gettysburg Festival, check
www.gettysburgfestival.org or call 717-334-0853.
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