Monday, March 8, 7:00 pm
Members $100, guests $125

You don’t get to be at the top of the hospitality business without a crack team behind every turned-down bed, manicured garden, and exquisite meal. That’s how the Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels—whose properties made up an astounding one-quarter of Condé Nast Traveler’s list of Top Hotels in the World last fall—did it. Luckily for us, they are sending five of their star chefs to please us with their world-class cuisine.

Brooke Vosika, the coordinating chef for the dinner, has worked for Four Seasons Hotels since 1982. After graduating from the CIA, Vosika started as an apprentice at the Four Seasons Hotel, Washington, D.C. From there he went to the Four Seasons in Chicago, where he was chef of Seasons Restaurant. After stops at Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle and Four Seasons, Atlanta, Vosika landed at the elegant, New York Times three-star Fifty Seven Fifty Seven Restaurant and Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel, New York. “I love to dine at Fifty Seven Fifty Seven,” Laurie Burrow Grad wrote on Epicurus.com, praising Vosika’s “inspired American” menu.

Luis Robledo-Richards is an invaluable component of the experience at Fifty Seven Fifty Seven. Robledo-Richards came to the restaurant from Le Cirque 2000, where his napoleon made it to Alan Richman’s list of five favorite dishes from around the world. “Under Robledo-Richards, perfection in pastry is back,” Richman wrote in GQ. Robledo-Richards is a native of Spain who first worked as a restaurant manager at Restaurante El Sereno in Mexico City. He has cooked at Le Pré Catelan and Hotel Baltimore Sofitel in Paris and has a Diplôme Culinaire Professionel from Ecole Lenôtre. In New York, Robledo-Richards studied with Jacques Torres and Daniel Boulud.

Recently appointed executive chef of the Four Seasons Hotel, Miami, Marco Bax shows off his native Italian cuisine at the hotel restaurant, Acqua. Bax “has worked all over Europe perfecting his deceptively simple cooking style,” Victoria Pesce Elliott wrote in The Miami Herald, calling Acqua’s menu “fine dining without fuss.” A native of Bergamo, Italy, Bax worked at Il Teatro at the Four Seasons Hotel, Milano; the Principe de Savoia Hotel, also in Milan, Grand Hotel des Bains in Venice; and Carpaccio in Paris. Before the Four Seasons Hotel, Miami, Bax was executive chef of Quadratto at the Four Seasons Hotel Canary Wharf, London, which was named one of London’s best new restaurants by the editors of Wine Spectator.

At the Fountain at Four Seasons Hotel, Philadelphia, “Chef Martin Hamann challenges his hometown’s cheese steak image with citified dishes such as Muscovy duck dressed with red onion Tarte Tatin and a star anise game reduction,” Francine Maroukian wrote in Travel + Leisure. She continued, “This is mature, intelligent cooking—refined without being rarefied—and Hamann never loses his footing.” Hamann—a former newspaper dispatcher who has worked in France at Hôtel Les Roches in Le Lavandou and the Hôtel Martinez in Cannes—had the unenviable job of taking over for Philadelphia institution Jean-Marie Lacroix, but his hard work has paid off. The AAA Five-Diamond restaurant received the top ratings for food, service, and ambience in the 2004 Zagat Philadelphia and was named Best Restaurant in Philadelphia magazine’s Best of Philly.

Gerard Madani’s cooking at The Pierre is as refined as his award-winning setting on Fifth Avenue, which defines classic New York opulence. Last year alone, The Pierre was on Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, and Institutional Investor’s respective lists of World’s Best Hotels. Madani is a native of Roanne, France, who started in restaurants at age 14. Since then he has worked for Pierre Troisgros and Michel Roux, and at the Inter-Continental Hotels in Sydney and Miami. When he worked at The Willard Room at the Willard Inter-Continental in Washington, D.C., the restaurant received Zagat’s top rating for a new French restaurant in D.C. that year.