Sunday, March 10
Members $175, guests $200

For reservations or more information, please call (505) 982-4353.

It's true that the word "compound" doesn't conjure up the most romantic images. But before you start to hole up or bunker down, consider this evening at The Compound, whose lovely courtyard and melodious fountains make it a retreat of a very different sort. "A meal there is like living in a Merchant-Ivory film," Audrey van Buskirk wrote in the Santa Fe Reporter, which named The Compound Best Restaurant 2000-2001. Van Buskirk noted chef Mark Kiffin's "impeccable credentials," which include positions with the Arizona Biltmore, as well as Mark Miller's seminal Southwestern Coyote Café. After Coyote Café, Kiffin joined another culinary giant, serving as corporate executive chef alongside Stephan Pyles at Star Concepts.

It seems that Kiffin still has some stars in his eyes: he has invited a stellar cast of American chefs to join him for a very special night in Santa Fe. Coordinating the dinner is the tireless Michael Ginor, whose luscious Hudson Valley Foie Gras has added an inch or two to all of our waistlines. Joining them will be Charles Dale, one of the 1995 Food & Wine 10 Best Chefs, who is leaving the slopes of Aspen for a little New Mexico sun. Dale's cuisine at the modern French Renaissance and country French Rustique evokes his mentors—Alain Sailhac and Daniel Boulud. Also living on Mountain time is Grant MacPherson, executive chef of the Bellagio. Before coming to this elegant casino-hotel, MacPherson had established an international reputation for excellence at the Regent, The Ritz-Carlton, and The Four Seasons in Manhattan, the Datai Hotel in Malaysia, and Raffles Hotel in Singapore. George Morrone has recently scaled the heights of a different landmark property: his new restaurant, Redwood Park, is located in the Transamerica pyramid in San Francisco. Bon Appétit critic Michael Bauer called Morrone's previous endeavor, Fifth Floor, "by far the year's best…in a class by itself." Those in the know expect no less from this veteran of New York's River Café, the Hotel Bel-Air, and Campton Place and Aqua in Fog City.

The last two chefs in this extraordinary collection are from California and are James Beard Award winners both, who have probably been mistaken for each other once or twice—Nancy Oakes and Nancy Silverton. Oakes took home her Best Chef: California last year for her fanciful and creative French-California cuisine at Boulevard. A fixture on the San Francisco restaurant scene for many years, Oakes previously owned the tiny L'Avenue, which catapulted her to culinary prominence, landing her among Food & Wine's 10 Best. Nancy Silverton's Campanile last year won our San Pellegrino Outstanding Restaurant Award, ten years after Silverton herself nabbed Best Pastry Chef. Silverton's breads and pastries at her La Brea Bakery have set the standard for boulangeries and pâtisseries up and down the West Coast, but after the birth of Campanile, a joint effort with her husband and business partner, chef Mark Peel, she has also become known as a restaurateur of the first order.