Most Coveted Dinner Invite in Portland, Maine?

In our March issue, which just hit the newsstands, we feature the satisfyingly delicious recipes of Steve Corry (an F&W Best New Chef 2007) from Five Fifty-Five in Portland, Maine, and reveal one of his secrets—Taylor Griffin and the amazing Mediterranean ingredients he imports for the Rogers Collection.
 
When I visited the two of them in Portland for the story, they told me about a fascinating dinner group called... Deathmatch. The members: a few dozen cooks and food lovers around town like Erik Desjarlais (formerly of Restaurant Bandol who has plans to open the restaurant Evangeline soonish on Congress Street), Josh Potocki of the much-buzzed about Bar Lola, and various members of the Five Fifty-Five kitchen staff and the Rogers Collection. ("Invitations are very hard to come by," was what one server from Fore Street told me.)

The premise: one main ingredient (the last was venison, slaughtered by the members, with lots of looking "STRAIGHT in the eyes") used to create many, many courses cooked at an undisclosed location at an undisclosed time. Or as Erik pithily put it on his blog: "The invited shall come. The rest should not come. Sorry to be elitist.  We will all have small heart attacks in your honor."