Wednesday, October 16, 7:00 P.M.
Members $85, guests $110

A website that celebrates the legendary Gypsy jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, describes the scene where he grew up on the outskirts of Paris: "One had the impression of distant dance music, dizzying waltzes played on the sweetness of an accordion. Camp fires were everywhere, each with its cooking pot. Everywhere chickens were stewing and banjos going wild..." It was this bohemian spirit, tempered with urban sophistication and flavored with good food, that the team behind Calle Ocho, Rain, and Union Pacific wanted to conjure up at their nouveau Gypsy bistro, Django. And like the master's guitar playing, according to Crain's New York Business critic Bob Lape, chef Gwenaël Le Pape's cooking is punctuated with "flashes of excitement" that make it "appealing" and "well received."

Le Pape was born in Africa's Reunion Islands and raised in Brittany. He studied cooking in France and moved to New York in 1990 to pursue a career in the kitchen, working in a number of downtown restaurants that might be considered bohemian, including Le Gamin and l'Orange Bleue in SoHo. But he also worked for a time at the decidedly uptown Jean Georges before he was hired by Paul Zweben, corporate executive chef of Main Street Restaurant Partners, to head up Django. Zweben is a CIA grad who cut his teeth at the Breakers and Grand Bay Hotels in Florida. He worked with David Burke at the River Cafe and was chef of Chelsea Central. In 1993, he opened Main Street as chef; two years later, he opened Rain, and now he oversees the menus for the restaurant group's entire portfolio. Together, their culinary creations at Django are "able to keep the beat," according to The New York Times's Eric Asimov.

There's no celebration of jazz and food, not to mention the French bohemian joie de vivre, without something to drink. And for this winemaker dinner we've invited master enologist Enrique Tirado, who oversees the entire winemaking operation of Chile's Concha y Toro, to bring some of his best wines. Under Tirado's purview are the labels of Don Melchor, a top-scoring wine named for the winery's founder, and Almaviva, the joint wine venture of Concha y Toro and Baron Philippe de Rothschild.

It was the guitarist Django's #1-in-the-world reputation that haunted Woody Allen's fictional guitarist Emmett Ray in Sweet and Lowdown. Similarly, it's the stellar reputations of the restaurant Django and Concha y Toro that will make this winemaker dinner impossible to beat.