By Kellah Lavoie

Dining with a star

Dec 13, 2010 | 3:16 PM

It was new recipes and local producers yesterday at the Prince Albert restaurant Two by Dahlsjo.

It was part of Dine with a Star – an event put on by the Food Miles Committee for the Saskatchewan Organic Directory.

The group plans to make a reality television show featuring 13 Saskatchewan restaurants and 16 Saskatchewan organic producers.

Sunday’s event featured chef Kevin Dahlsjo, wild rice producer Lynn Riese and local comedian Kelly Taylor as the star.

All five courses served included wild rice.

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“I am excited to try all this amazing food too. I had a couple of appetizers and they were great,” said Taylor before the sit down meal began.

He joked about being chosen as the star, saying “All my friends laughed at that, everyone else must have been out of town, they must have been hard up,” he said.

While the comedian managed to get through the first course and stir up a little conversation, he left when second round food hit the table, due to the flu.

It didn’t end the night for the rest of the guests.

Marion McBride, media coordinator for the project, said the star is just one part of the evening, but the focus is the food.

“At every meal we have some of the producers here to talk with the people who are the guests as well and to discuss local and organic food and what it’s all about,” she said.

“I consider it an ‘edutainment’ evening,” McBride said explaining it is a combination of entertainment and education.

She said they want the bring chefs and producers together.

“We want to create awareness of the value of (organics) – the economic value, the food value, the flavour, the whole thing around food that is so important,” she said.

For chef Dahlsjo, the use of organic food is important because he said he’s a big fan of it.

He said for the project he was given food by producers and told to make a menu out of it – it was the first time he made any of the items he served.

“We had lots of different ideas we wanted to do, so narrowing it down was the difficult part,” Dahlsjo said adding he made is menu a “twist of old school foods.”

Sunday’s event will be its own episode on the reality show. McBride said they do not have a place to air it yet – they are waiting until they have a pilot episode together.

They will be making another local stop. On January 15 the crew will be at the New Ground Café in Birch Hills. The local star will be radio show host, John Gormley.

klavoie@panow.com