Duck gumbo, sliced homemade meats and chef-inspired desserts kept hundreds visiting food tables for more at the fifth annual Taste of Southeast Arkansas on Sept. 17 at the Saracen Hotel and Event Center.
Tasters tried everything from Chef Michael Easley’s whipped goat cheese crostini, to Chef Tyrone Fox’s smoked pork belly with mustard seeds and shaved scallions to Chef Matias DeMatthaesis’s lemon and blueberry truffle and chocolate-butterscotch cake. The longest lines formed all night for Chef Jay McAfee’s homemade Canadian bacon and duck bacon, and Chef Jamie McAfee’s duck gumbo. D’Cora’s Custom Bakery brought cookies and other sweets.
Easley’s crostini was a combination of lemon-thyme goat cheese mousse, macerated Mission fig, lemon-infused honey, pistachio and Australian pink salt.
“It’s all of my favorite flavors put on the same plate,” said Easley, who runs a mobile kitchen in Little Rock. “It was probably an accumulation of a bunch of mistakes meeting successes.”…