Thank you for supporting
Signature Chefs Auction, Memphis

Join us for 2018 Memphis Signature Chefs Auction, as Memphis’ finest culinary talent come to support the March of Dimes. This year's event marks the 80th anniversary for March of Dimes, and we are celebrating at the Guesthouse at Graceland. The Signature Chefs Auction is a high profile black-tie gala that pays tribute to the culinary excellence of our prominent chefs, while raising money to improve the health of all moms and babies. From your arrival at the event you will enjoy the chance to taste the chef's creations while bidding on the Silent and Super Silent Auction packages, before taking your seats for the Live Auction and Fund the Mission. Enjoy the evening with your friends, while you bid on our unique packages, and raise your paddle to Fund the Mission and give generously to save babies.

We are so excited and fortunate to have Lea Carr, Paragon Bank and Sharon Posman, Lipscomb & Pitts as this year's event Co-Chairs. This year's goal is $160,000, and we look forward to surpassing it with their leadership. 

Event Co-Chairs: Lea Carr & Sharon Posman
Lead Chef: Josh Steiner, Strano by Chef Josh
Revenue Chair: Kelly Bunch
Auction Co-Chairs: Carissa Shumaker
Communications Chair: Ron Wong

Thanks to the leadership of our volunteer chairs and committee members, we are honored to present this year's Signature Chefs event. After months of hard work, these volunteers have taken the event to new heights. The March of Dimes and the families we support are grateful for the generosity and effort of the team that made this evening possible.

We are excited to have Chef Josh Steiner as this year's Lead Chef for our Signature Chefs Auction.
He will bring great leadership and the recruitment of the finest chefs, Memphis has to offer.
Thank you, Chef Josh!
 

Strano's Chef Josh Steiner grew up in a predominately Sicilian and Moroccan kitchen under the watchful eye of his two grandmothers. This upbringing has inspired him to create dishes that are based on very old and authentic family recipes with a modern Sicilian twist. Josh was raised in Memphis, TN. and he graduated from Lausanne Collegiate School. As a teen, he started as a bus boy and dishwasher in a neighborhood restaurant and worked his way up to one of the chefs of the restaurant. After getting a taste of the benefits of a chef's lifestyle, Josh decided to make it his life and enrolled in L'ecole Culinaire. During his studies he decided he wanted follow his passions to Italy to learn traditional cooking techniques from the kitchens of the Sicilian masters.

 

While in Sicily, Josh trained his palate in classes featuring tastings of olive oil, chocolates as well as wine. He frequented the local bustling food market in Palermo then worked side by side with Chef Vincenzo to create the traditional Sicilian dishes. Josh spent time in a local Modica restaurant working in the kitchen to help create their regional specialties. In Taormina, not far from Mt. Etna, Josh learned true Sicilian cooking from true Sicilians.

 

Sicilian cuisine is perhaps the most celebrated in all of Italy because of the exceptionally fresh ingredients that are readily available thanks to the gloriously mild Mediterranean climate. It is also a confluence of the people's that inhabited the island over the ages including the Greeks, Romans, Normans, Arabs and Spanish. This fits in well with Josh's own fused Moroccan and Italian roots. On this journey, Chef Josh learned the value of using natural ingredients to create delicious and delicate cuisine. The cuisine of Sicily, from cannoli to couscous is as complex as its history and beauty that also include the island's world famous wines. Chef Josh's cuisine is both genuine and elegant as he strives to use only local seasonal ingredients and products to ensure your experience at Strano is as fresh and authentic as possible.