Charleston’s Chef Mike Lata to guest at Curtis Stone’s Beverly Hills restaurant to benefit future farmers

Chef Curtis Stone will host Charleston’s Chef Mike Lata, of FIG and The Ordinary, at his Maude restaurant in Beverly Hills for a one-night-only fundraising event to benefit the National Young Farmers Coalition on Feb. 27. The chefs will prepare a 12-course dinner, six courses from each chef, using potatoes as the inspirational ingredient. This will be the first in a series of events in 2016 hosted by Stone to benefit National Young Farmers Coalition.

The goal of the National Young Farmers Coalition is to help the next generation of farmers to enter the field by adding 25,000 new farmers to American agriculture by 2022. Currently, only six percent of farmers are under the age of 35. NYFC was founded in 2010 by a group of young farmers who realized that they and their peers were facing huge challenges: difficulty securing loans, lack of access to affordable farmland and student debt.

Chef Stone became involved after learning about the plight of young farmers and decided to collaborate with other notable chefs who shared his sense of urgency to ensure the farmers’ future.

As of Chef Lata, Stone says, “Fig Restaurant has become one of my favorite restaurants in the country, and I’m so grateful to Mike for coming out to cook with me at Maude. As chefs, the challenges and risks that farmers face will also impact our livelihood. But as citizens, these issues will have a significant impact on the future of our food system if we can’t help enact change that will lead to resources for them, now.”

Tickets for the #MoreFarmers dinner, $375/person, are available through Maude’s reservation system and includes wine pairing. Learn more about the National Young Farmers Coalition at www.youngfarmers.org.

This story was originally published February 3, 2016 at 2:52 PM.