Local chef Aubrey Creed, 21, of Festus is making lemonade out of lemons.
Although Creed failed to advance past the first round of the World Food Championships in November in Dallas, she rebounded with plans to start a local intimate dining experience in 2023 called the Sunday Night Dinner Club, combining fine international cuisine and wine pairings.
To gauge interest in the concept, Creed said she offered two test dinners, both which sold out within hours.
Creed, head chef at her family’s Pedal’n Pi wood-fired pizza and bicycle shop in Crystal City, won a golden ticket to compete at the WFC, dubbed the largest food sport competition in the world, but fell out in the first round when her rice pilaf did not take shape correctly. As the 60-minute competition ended, Creed was out of time and ideas.
“Everything was going perfectly until it was time to shape the rice,” Creed said. “Until then, nothing has ever gone wrong in the kitchen that I’ve not been able to fix.”
She said she and her sous chef team, mother Rene Creed and brother Axel Creed, 19, were dumbfounded about what went wrong with her signature dish that won the rice/noodle category at the WFC Show Me Series in St. Louis.
That heirloom Lebanese rice pilaf recipe was inspired by her late grandmother, Linda Nell Surdyke, and included her grandmother’s fresh grape leaves from a vine brought from Syria in the 1930s.
Weeks later, Creed discovered the problem when it happened again as she was preparing the dish using the rice bought in Dallas for the event.
“I realized I had overlooked the most important ingredient,” she said. “I bought long-grain rice rather than Japanese rice.”
Creed attributed the oversight to a hectic schedule leading up the WFC competition.
“We had tight space as we had packed our equipment, pots and pans, and culinary knives along with our luggage. Instead of buying ingredients there (in Dallas), we should have squeezed them into our bags,” she said.
Creed, an American Culinary Federation-certified chef, said she looks forward to competing at the WFC next year.
“It was a great experience,” she said. “I feel very lucky to have been able to go. The support from the community, my family and friends has been wonderful. I am going to take what I learned and try again.”
In the meantime, Creed said she plans in mid- to late January to launch the monthly Sunday Night Dinner Club at Pedal’n Pi, with help from her parents, Chris and Rene Creed.
Each month’s event will have room for 20 people, Aubrey Creed said.
The number of courses will vary based on the menu, though the test dinners in October and December had six and 10 courses respectively, she said.
Creed said the price for the dinners will depend on the number of courses and whether they include wine pairings, but they probably would be in the $100 to $150 price range.
“These small, elegant, intimate meals are so much fun,” Creed said. “Each month the menu will change. We also are exploring larger venues in St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve to hold similar intimate meals on days when restaurants are typically closed.”
For information about the Sunday dinner club, you may visit Pedal’n Pi’s Facebook page or contact the restaurant directly.