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Pairing wines with Siegel’s
food is a delicious task

I have the good fortune to work with a wide variety of ethnic ingredients, techniques and foods, from Moroccan to Balinese, Bengali to Chilean, and all points in between. It can be a lot of fun matching wines to this range of flavors.

Gala Dinner When: Sept. 2 Cost: $185, to benefit the Hawaii Lupus Foundation Place: Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas, Restaurant Row Call: 533-4476 Also: Honolulu Wine Festival & Auction, Sept. 10, Dole Cannery; $75. Call 538-1522

My current challenge is to pair wines to the dishes of chefs Ron Siegel and Hiroshi Fukui for the Hawaii Lupus Foundation benefit dinner on Sept. 2.

I met Ron several years ago, when he was executive sous chef of a new restaurant in Napa Valley, the French Laundry. He had a great sense of humor and was quite unassuming -- I was surprised to find he had previously cooked at the highly revered Daniel in New York.

Ron went on to open a San Francisco restaurant, Charles on Nob Hill. The place quickly became hotter than hot. The media loved the restaurant and spread the word.

It was at this point that I had an opportunity to work with Ron, at the Lodge at Koele on Lanai. He cooked for two nights, preparing completely different menus, and I had the challenge of pairing wines to his world-class fare.

His food was amazing. Each dish had so much flavor, yet was never heavy or gaudy. His finesse was unbelievable.

I thought the wine-pairing would be relatively easy. It was not. Although his food seemed effortlessly light, it was actually concentrated and intense, and needed mega-intense wines.

Between then and now, Ron Siegel appeared on Japan's "Iron Chef" competition -- and became the first American to win. To put things into perspective for wine aficionados, this was like Stag's Leap Wine Cellars and Chateau Montelena beating out the top French wines in the 1976 Paris Wine Exhibition. It changed things.

Ron moved on to the prestigious Masa's in San Francisco. Today he is executive chef of The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco.

The awards and accolades are too many to count, and much deserved. I would place him at the very top level of chefs, alongside Joachim Splichal, Thomas Keller, Mario Batali and Nobu Matsuhisa.

Somewhere along the line, Ron became good friends with Hiroshi Fukui of Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas here in Restaurant Row. In May, Ron invited Hiroshi to cook at a Meals on Wheels benefit in San Francisco. In return, Hiroshi has invited Ron to cook for the Lupus Foundation's gourmet dinner.

This should a rare culinary evening, contrasting Hiroshi's delicately nuanced, highly sophisticated Japanese-esque foods with Ron's mega-intense, refined French-based food.

Dr. Eugene Wong, chairman for the Lupus event, has asked Ron to do three dishes. The first two are a crispy chicken, with anise hissop, melted onions and a lemon-chicken jus; and a crisp pork belly, with daikon and sweet-sour sauce. With both, we are looking to serve a light, slightly sweet, world-class German riesling. The wine's slight sweetness will counter the "lemon edge" of both dishes.

The third dish is filet mignon served with fried bone marrow, which will need a big, fuller red, perhaps a cabernet or syrah. We'll decide when we fine tune the pairings later.

It is always exhilarating to work with such world-class culinary talent and, in this case, see how his art has evolved.

I can't wait!

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