Hot Date: Texas Monthly to feature Fearing, Del Grande, Pyles – chef pioneers of Southwestern Cuisine – at May 11 talk

Tickets are on now on sale for Texas Monthly Magazine’s “TM Talks Food: Southwestern Cuisine,” a panel discussion tracing the development of  the culinary movement that became Southwestern Cuisine in the 1980s. TM’s Pat Sharpe will moderate the evening, which will feature four of the pioneers (chefs Dean Fearing, Robert Del Grande, and Stephan Pyles) and cookbook author Anne Lindsay McCann.

“Thirty years ago the Texas food scene seized the spotlight with a feisty, spicy movement known as Southwestern cuisine—think black bean and corn salsa, goat cheese quesadillas with cilantro pesto, lobster tacos, grilled antelope with cactus-pear glaze. Espoused by a cadre of young, ambitious chefs, Southwestern cuisine was far more than a bunch of recipes—it was a revolution,” says Sharpe in a press release. “It embraced notions such as eating seasonally and locally decades before the word ‘locavore’ was coined and ‘farm to table’ became a catchphrase. It kicked hoary classic dishes off their pedestal. It promoted an unparalleled creative freedom in restaurant kitchens and turned chefs into rock stars.”

The show is Monday, May 11, at 6 p.m., at the Pirch Showroom at NorthPark Center in Dallas (8687 North Central Expressway, Suite 2172). Tickets are $25.  texasmonthly.com/tmtalksfood/tickets.