January 23 Chapter Meeting - Cooking Demonstration at Carmine's Restaurant

January Cooking Demonstration
(Carmine’s Restaurant – Phil Spiro Chef/Owner)

By: Todd Fleming

PLEASE NOTE!!! The January meeting will NOT be at our regular location! It will be at Carmine's Restaurant. It is also POSTPONED until January 23 due to inclement weather!

Carmine's Restaurant MapFor as long as I’ve been a member of the Alamo Fly Fishers, our January meeting has traditionally been a cooking demonstration. It is a popular meeting that attracts many of our spouses to attend. In the past, we have invited different chefs to demonstrate some cooking techniques and show us some recipes that use fresh fish and seafood. For the past five years Chef Jenavee has entertained and educated us with tasty new ways of preparing our favorite fish. Jenavee was scheduled to join us again this year with another installment of “Cooking with Jenavee”. And as in the past, I’m sure it would have been another entertaining meeting. Jenavee was like one of the guys, and the January meeting was like old home week to catch up on events since the previous cooking demonstration. Last month she called to tell me she had changed jobs, and would not be available on our January meeting night. Her announcement caught me off guard, but after I thought about it, I realized it was a good change for her, and it was a good opportunity for us to get a new perspective from a new chef.

I put the word out to a few of our gourmet members, and quickly had many suggestions for chef possibilities. Andy Niland suggested Phil Spiro, the chef and owner of a new Italian restaurant that had recently opened in Schertz. Phil’s restaurant is called Carmine’s, and a few of us met there for lunch one day to meet Phil and present him with our cooking opportunity. Phil was game, but he preferred that we have the meeting at his restaurant so that he might use his kitchen and equipment. This sounded good to us. Carmine’s is already laid out with views to the kitchen from the dining area, and Phil said we could go in groups into the kitchen to see his chefs prepare an appetizer and an entrée. This was sounding better all the time! I said, “Let’s try it.”

Please help me spread the word. Our January AFF meeting is NOT at the Alamo Heights Presbyterian Church. We will meet at Carmine’s Restaurant in Schertz (3820 FM 3009 at Green Valley Road). Take IH 35 North from San Antonio, exit at FM 3009, and turn right. Drive about a mile and a half, and you will find Carmine’s on the left. It is on the far end of the Green Valley shopping center. Use the center turning lane, and turn off FM 3009 at Green Valley Rd. Their phone number is 210-658-8822. The January meeting will be held at Carmine’s on Tuesday January 16th starting at 7:00pm. Don’t go to our usual meeting location. Phil Spiro and I are still working out the details of the cooking demonstration, but I think we will have some kind of a shrimp appetizer, and a redfish entrée. The redfish will be contingent upon us providing him with several fresh fillets. We will have an abbreviated meeting up front, and suspend the fly raffle until next month so that we may get started with the cooking demonstration as soon as possible. There will be a cash bar available for drinks during the meeting, and the restaurant is available to anyone who wants to order dinner at anytime during the evening. I told you we would be trying some new things this year!

When you meet Phil Spiro, you will realize he is not originally from Texas. His family is from Albany, New York. Phil and his wife are both attorneys, and he has no formal culinary training, but he comes from a family of cooks. Phil’s brother, Carmine, still has the original restaurant in Albany. Carmine’s offers a regular menu of lunch and dinner items, but also has a special selection of items from the “chef’s table” that changes daily. Phil says he has organized an eclectic group of chefs for his kitchen, and is proud of the unique food taste that he has brought and maintained from New York. It should be a fun and interesting meeting – something a little different from what we usually do. I hope you will come out and join us on the 16th.