The Spokane Culinary Arts Guild is hosting its second-annual Awards Gala on March 8, 2020, at the Davenport Hotel's Grand Pennington Ballroom to honor and celebrate excellence in the local hospitality industry. To make their selections, the Guild reviews hundreds of local restaurants (spending money at local establishments!) to discover the very best that the Inland Northwest has to offer.

​

This year, our very own Chkn-N-Mo was nominated in the Southern Style Food category. The winners in each category will be recognized at the awards gala. According to their website, the Spokane Culinary Arts Guild is a "dynamic group of food bloggers, influencers, chefs and industry professionals that believes that eating local changes the economy for the better." They work together "to shine a light on exceptional work in our region and beyond so that local dollars can stay local."

​

Their mission is to connect our local food community through supporting and celebrating the culinary arts. Chkn-N-Mo, owned and operated by Bob Hemphill and located on West Sprague Avenue in downtown Spokane, is listed in the Best Of The Northwest. It is recognized as a down-home place that serves up southern-style fried chicken, moist and meaty pork spare ribs and farm-raised catfish from Alabama. 

Facebook Groups are currently used by more than half of all Facebook users, according to Forbes, on at least a monthly basis, and it’s easy to see why. Groups are a great way to interact with like-minded people, no matter what you’re into. There are groups for buying and selling, dating, dog lovers, sports fans, hiking, biking, and triking. But while groups are growing in popularity, many people still aren’t taking advantage of Groups’ awesome power. Joining the right group is like winning the Golden Ticket to experience your city in a richer, more diverse and complete manner.

We’ve compiled a list of the 10 must-join groups in Spokane to get the most out of the Lilac City:

1. Spokane Foodies (by the Spokane Culinary Arts Guild)– 4,492 members - With an eclectic mix of restaurant photos, recommendations, recipes and humble brag photos, Spokane Foodies is a treasure trove for food lovers. It’s easy to fall into a rut of eating at the same restaurants, or cooking the same few key meals. But if you’re a part of Spokane Foodies, you’ll never run short of ideas for awesome new foods and drinks to try. Go ahead, take a bite!

Collin Pittmann sits down with Kenn Nesbitt who is a local children’s poet, and then Erin Peterson from the Spokane Culinary Arts Guild. Following that is Kris Maynard with a new invention to help with Diabetes and finally Andrea Olsen and Haliey Weber from the cast of “Always, Patsy Cline”.

The MarCom Spark Awards recognize solo practitioners, agencies of all sizes, large and small businesses, top corporations, non-profits, associations and government agencies that successfully execute marketing communications, education, information, and outreach activities to various publics with exemplary professional skill, creativity, and resourcefulness.

Spark Awards recognize excellence in communications tactics and in strategic marketing communications and outreach campaigns that incorporate sound research, planning, execution, and evaluation. They must meet the highest standards of performance in the profession and are critiqued and judged by professional communications practitioners in various markets throughout the country.

Then I spent some time looking back through our food section archives, looking for holes in coverage of the industry's female demographic. What I found was more promising than I expected — the Inlander has been consistently highlighting female industry professionals with pretty equal amounts of ink, all things considered. The following is a list of stories published in the past year or so that largely spotlighted women chefs, owners, cooks, brewmasters, bakers and more. 

“We don’t call ahead. We don’t ask for free meals,” Erin Peterson said. The goal, she said, is to support and promote restaurants with patronage and free social media coverage.

“Spokane has some true excellence that’s in a pocket here that no one really sees,” she said. “I’ve made it my personal mission to seek out the very best and that’s who we’re honoring here tonight.”

When Erin Peterson realized an important element was missing from the Inland Northwest's culinary scene, she set out to fix it. In the modern age of online restaurant reviews from predominantly amateur critics, and many more likely to rant than rave, Peterson craved a resource for local diners and travelers alike to find authentic, honest recommendations for where to drink and dine in the region's burgeoning industry.

​

"Specifically I noted there was, in our area, a lot of excellence hidden in pockets, and the reviews on different websites didn't always reflect what I was able to find," Peterson says. "We really wanted to honor the restaurants and the chefs and the hospitality professionals who were doing excellent work above and beyond what's expected."

If you're not following @saltyseattle on Instagram, go do that right now. Then, get tickets to Seattle-based pasta maven Linda Miller Nicholson's Spokane book launch Saturday, Dec. 15. The event, hosted by the Spokane Culinary Arts Guild, Santé Restaurant and Auntie's Bookstore, celebrates the release of Nicholson's Pasta, Pretty Please. Tickets are $25 for a signed book, and $60 for a VIP meet-and-greet and lunch (only 25 seats are available) at Santé. Half of the proceeds from VIP ticket sales will benefit chef Jeremy Hansen's culinary first-responder nonprofit, 509 Cooks. There's also a free public book signing at Auntie's after the ticketed event.

The Spokane Culinary Arts Guild is planning its first awards gala. Tickets aren’t on sale yet. But the event is slated for 6 p.m. Jan. 8. at Max at Mirabeau, 1100 N. Sullivan Road in Spokane Valley. The Spokane Culinary Arts Guild is owned and operated by the husband-and-wife team of Rob and Erin Peterson. It was started last year by two local food bloggers, Erin Peterson and Sarah Carleton. They gave out awards for the first time this year. The 2019 awards gala marks the first time the organization is hosting an awards event.

Hay J's is my one-stop-shop for a date night with my husband, as well as a delicious item to take home for the kids. We can easily buy a pizza from Piccolo next door, and even something special at the Butcher Block one door further down. They have specialty items available like premium cuts of meat, salad dressings made in-house, wines of the world, cheeses, soups and more.

Through the guild, the new friends and business partners hope to recognize regional restaurants and culinary partners for superior concepts, practices and successes. Among the initial items on their agenda: establish local restaurant awards. The first-time winners are slated to be announced Jan. 1. “We just genuinely love seeing high-quality food being produced in Spokane,” Peterson said. “We want to connect our local food community through supporting and celebrating excellence in the culinary arts.”

​

Eventually, they plan to organize classes and workshops as well as meet-ups. Meantime, a team of about two dozen volunteers – the guild calls them “tastemakers” – has been dining out and rating their experiences over the course of three visits. “The people we chose are all passionate about our views,” Peterson said. Meantime, they’ve launched a Facebook group called Spokane Foodies to create conversation about the growing local food scene and share event listings. “We wanted to bring people together. There’s such a strong community of bloggers in this area,” Peterson said.