Tansy focuses on different stage

CenterStage executive chef Kile Tansy is leaving dinner theater and Ella’s Supper Club for something a little closer to home.

Tansy, 44, is retreating from restaurant work to open a new catering company called “Cooking with Kile,” which combines cooking classes with a dinner party at private homes.

Tansy says he wants to keep the groups relatively small – fewer than 25 people – to allow for a more personal experience. “People ask me all the time, ‘How do you make this,’ or ‘How does this happen,’” Tansy says.

He hopes it will help him to reconnect with the culinary traditions that first inspired his career. “The work and rituals around food are meant to foster community through the act of sharing. All too often the addition of commerce and its pressures to please a large market quickly reduce the opportunities for the chef and the diners to share and develop any community,” he said in a news release.

Tansy says he’d like to open the business mid-summer.

Chef Michael Dodd will take over the kitchen at Ella’s Supper Club. Dodd has been working with Tansy and he will continue to offer some of Tansy’s signature dishes while adding some of his own to the menu. Chef Richard Comard will take charge of the banquet and dinner theater cooking for CenterStage.

Cyrus O’Leary’s pie prizes

Cyrus O’Leary’s has continued its blue-ribbon pie tradition with a load of first-place prizes from the annual Great American Pie Festival.

The Spokane-based pie maker won first place for six pies in the recent American Pie Council competition, including: Coconut Cream, No-Sugar Added Coconut Cream, No-Sugar Added Peach, Banana Cream, Peach Raspberry and Apple.

Cyrus O’Leary’s is owned by Cyrus Vaughn, Barclay Klingel and Dennis Dip and turns 23 this year. It offers 40 different pies flavors that are available at restaurants and stores around the Inland Northwest.

North Idaho Fair handbook online

That giant pumpkin is just beginning to bloom but it’s not too early to start thinking about first prize.

The North Idaho Fair and Rodeo 2005 Exhibitors handbook is now online at www.northidahofair.com.

There are a few added categories for gardeners and a new chocolate contest to consider, as well. Entries in the Mayor’s Chocolate Extravaganza Contest will be judged by area mayors. There is also a new category for best bread. The Idaho Wheat Growers will award a new stand mixer to the top entry, which can include yeast bread, quick bread or any other bread.

The handbook is also available at the fair office and other distribution points. Call (208) 765-4969 for details.