April 19--The first course was a shrimp BLT with roasted belly bacon, heirloom tomatoes, frisee, brioche and Russian dressing, by Frank Bonanno of Bonanno Restaurant Concepts in Denver.

The fifth and main course was lamb porchetta with an adzuki bean ragout, blood oranges, pistachio nuts, Hatch chile harrisa, Meyer lemon confit and egg yolk, by Kevin Nashan of the Sidney Street Cafe in St. Louis.

That was followed by a pre-dessert and dessert course of brillat-savarin cheese, kirsch bavaroise and sweet and salty popcorn, and chocolate apricot-soft chocolate cremeux, apricot parfait, pistachio dry milk crumbs and strawberry gel, by Martin Rios of Restaurant Martin in Santa Fe.

About 130 people, who paid $175 each, dined at Restaurant Martin, 526 Galisteo St., on Thursday at New Mexico's first James Beard Celebrity Chef Tour dinner -- a benefit for the James Beard Foundation, which funds scholarships to aspiring chefs and presents annual awards that are the culinary industry's equivalent to the music industry's Grammy Awards.

Beard (1903-1985) was an American chef and food writer credited with bringing French cooking to the United States in the 1950s. The celebrity chef dinners began at his home in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Five of the six chefs who worked on Thursday's dinner are semifinalists for this year's award for "Best Chef in the Southwest" -- Rios, Bonanno, Bowman Brown of the Restaurant Forage in Salt Lake City, Kevin Binkley of Binkley's Restaurant in Phoenix and Bruce Auden of Restaurant Biga on the Banks in San Antonio, Texas.

The sixth, Nasham, is the grandson of the late Willy Ortiz, who for 27 years operated Santa Fe's La Tertulia. Nasham is a semifinalist for "Best Chef in the Midwest."

Jennifer Rios, general manager and co-owner with her husband of Restaurant Martin for 3 1/2 years, said the celebrity dinners, held around the country, usually don't feature so many chefs from one region, but she decided to do it this way for the first such dinner ever held in New Mexico.

"There's a menu put together in a way that everything works together," she said. "You've got a seafood dish. You have a pork dish. You'll have canapes. You've got desserts. They complement each other, but they're done by the individual chef. ... Chefs today are taking classic dishes and doing their own interpretations."

For example, the opening course of shrimp BLT (bacon-lettuce-tomato) could be called an open-faced sandwich, "but no one's going to be picking it up and eating it like a sandwich," Jennifer Rios said. "I promise you it's not going to be something that you would generally recognize as a BLT."

Contact Tom Sharpe at [email protected].

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