Springtime Feasts

Written By: Marlene Osteen | Issue: April 2024

Chris Huerta and Craig Richards

Though you still may be wearing a coat, spring is around the corner, and whether you’re dreaming of baseball or blossoms, one rite of passage of the season is the springtime feasts at Old Edwards.

On the horizon: a duo of guest chef shindigs–happy evenings full of conversation, camaraderie, and cuisine; nights certain to reward you for having gotten through the drudgery of winter.

Chef of the evening on Sunday, April 14 is Craig Richards of Atlanta’s Lyla Lila. Billed as “Vinyl Vibes, An Italian Springtime Feast” it’s both a collaboration with Old Edwards’ Executive Chef Chris Huerta and a nod to the musically-curated dinners Richards stages at his popular neighborhood gathering spot in the heart of Midtown.

“Great music always elevates a dining experience,” he explained.

To the sounds of a DJ spinning discs and the music of jazz and soul and new wave artists, Richards will showcase the Southern Mediterranean-focused dishes that he describes as “honest,” and that Forbes Magazine deemed “hedonistic.”

The menu: a delectable mix of new dishes; “Snapper crudo – a dish created just for this event as is the lamb entrée,” and the classics, because “it wouldn’t be a Lyla Lila event without our duck lasagna.”

A disciple of the grand matriarch of Italian cuisine, Lydia Bastianich, Richards has spent his career mastering the craft of pasta making and refining a personal style of cookery that he defines as, “Italian in spirit and technique, but with an expanded pantry.”

He lifts to new heights a grandmotherly dish like lasagna by layering it with duck; and elevates a traditional dish of ravioli by stuffing it with wagyu beef and truffle.

The excellence and creativity of his cooking have not gone unnoticed. Among his many accolades are inclusion in the 2021 New York Times Restaurant List, and recognition as, “one of the top restaurants in Atlanta” by The Atlantan. In 2022, he was nominated a semifinalist by the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef Southeast and in 2022 and 2023, Lyla Lila was nominated for Outstanding Wine Program.

On Sunday, May 5, Chef Terry Koval, the wizard who presides over the stoves at Atlanta’s The Deer and The Dove will showcase the specialties that earned him a 2023 James Beard Best Chef Award. Koval is well known in Atlanta for his ardent support of the “slow food movement” and frequent use of locally grown and foraged ingredients.

With that philosophy in mind, he thoughtfully composes dishes made up of in-season vegetables and foraged ingredients; beef and pork from nearby cattle and pig farms, and game meat entrées, like crispy rabbit legs fried in fermented buttermilk, duck sausage roulade, and plates of venison.

Terry Koval

The recognition, earned for his cooking and dedication to the Georgia farmers who grow his ingredients, was as one observer noted, “a long time coming.”

In the past two decades, Koval’s culinary career has taken him to California and back to Georgia, where he worked at Canoe in Buckhead, Farm Burger, and for many years at Wrecking Bar Brew in Little Five Points.

Book online at OldEdwardsHospitality.com/ChefDinners