CADME GALLERY TAKES THE CAKE

Philadelphia Daily News
October 15, 1986

By DAN GERINGER, Staff Writer

When it came time to fete itself on the occasion of its first birthday, the Cadme Gallery, 2114 Locust St., decided to give itself a double-barreled blowout.

First, they invited Texas-born Nina Beall to hang her huge and truly amazing landscapes on the gallery walls. Then they invited a handful of the great chefs of Philadelphia to enter their original works of confectionary art in the gallery’s “Let ‘Em Etch, Sketch, Sculpt and Paint Cake” contest.

Winner Jackie Pluton, whose “Souvenir from France” cafe scene will be displayed along with the rest of the fattening masterpieces through Saturday, is a gracious 24-year-old who arrived from France nine months ago to supervise the nouvelle cuisine at La Truffe, 10 S. Front St.

His impressionistic pastillage and chocolate winner depicts an angular old man sitting at a small table in a cafe with his bottle of wine and his cane. There is a stone wall behind him. There is a framed painting of a river next to him. There is a bush of burgundy-colored roses nearby.

“Very French,” Pluton says affectionately at the exhibit’s opening. ”You always see old guys with coffee or a glass of red wine in the cafes. Playing cards. There is the river outside Lyon, where I come from. I have to tell you, sometimes I miss home.”

As a child, Pluton admits, “I hate cuisine! My father is owner-chef of Le Cygne in a tiny place outside Lyon called Le Puy. One day, when I am 17, I am helping my father in the restaurant. I am stuffing big Spanish mussels with herbs and mayonnaise. All day long, hour after hour, stuffing the mussels. Something happens to me. I tell my father, ‘I want to go to school for cuisine.’

“He is very excited. ‘No!’ he yells at me. ‘You are crazy! Don’t be chef! You work every day! No vacation! You are crazy!”‘

Pluton tends to talk in exclamation points. As things turned out, he says, he wasn’t crazy. “I have passion for being chef. When I do a sauce, I’m excited all the time.

“Sauce for fish is the best for me. You mix, you mix! Everyday a new sauce. Shallots! Mushrooms! When you do the salade, you do the salade. Every day the same. But the sauce for the fish!” He closes his eyes in ecstacy. “One taste on the front of the palate. Another taste on the back. Aaaah . . .”

In order to win, Pluton had to beat out some heavy competition including an incredibly-detailed modern art gallery built out of chocolate, burnt marzipan and genoise by Suladda Janviriya Cronk, pastry chef of Chef Tell’s; a chocolate sculpture of Oldenburg’s Philadelphia Clothespin by Midi Lonergan of Apropos; and chocolate Van Goghs and Gauguins by Raymond Haldeman of Raymond Haldeman’s.

Also, a pastillage palette of Picassos by Raymond Lopez and Chris Vitanza of the Hershey Hotel. “This one’s the ‘Lady with a Hat,”‘ executive chef Lopez says at the opening, pointing proudly at his recreated Picassos.

“I don’t know what this one’s called,” he says, smiling and indicating what appears to be an abstract nude woman. “I call it ‘The Football Player.’ You can see the guy’s hip, his leg, his head. The football’s on the other side of him. He’s running. He’s making his cut. He’s a whirling dervish. You can see the motion.”

There is no motion in the marzipan and pastillage art of Stacey Radin, the Olympic-level pastry chef at the Palace Hotel.
Radin – who created a precise still life of bananas, strawberries, lemons, oranges, apricots, pears and apples – has been competing professionally for 10 years and was recently named to the United States Culinary Olympic Team.

International competition, Radin explains, has its risks. “I was coming back home after two years of studying and living in Germany,” she says. “I flew into JFK in New York and had to clear customs. One of the things I had with me was 500 grams of talcum powder in a little bag. Talcum powder is something chefs commonly use to clean their hands.

“The customs lady takes one look at this little bag of white powder and goes and does a whole chemical analysis. German shepherds, the whole bit. Then this lady wants me to open all of my suitcases. Two years of life in Germany in my suitcases and this woman wants to see everything. I thought I’d never get out of there.”

IF YOU GO

The confectionary fine art can be seen at the Cadme Gallery (545-6606) Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.