Chefs Around The Table

Posted by Carrie October 09, 2025

Chefs Around The Table

I love the combination of good food and a good cause - and the Chefs Around the Table event is a great example. I had Natalie Wilson, the Program Director of Our Greater Good on the Good Bytes by Chicago Foodie Sisters podcast recently to talk about the event and the non-profit organization that it supports.

Our Greater Good is a Porter County organization that aims to help children reach their potential by providing free prevention-based initiatives for families, children and educators. Our Greater Good has five separate programs:

Growing Great Kids Development Guide - activities to stimulate reading and language brain development in children birth through 5-years-old

Lunch Buddies - one-on-one weekly mentoring with an elementary student during the child's lunch time

Boys to Men/Girls to Women - weekly group mentoring programs matching adult mentors with tweens & teens to help guide them on the journey toward adulthood

Love & Logic Parenting - course to equip parents to handle common parenting struggles and strengthen family connections

9 Essential Skills - Love & Logic course for educators to provide proven classroom management techniques

In 2024-25, over 3,000 were impacted by the programs with 711 free guides given; 76 elementary schools mentored by Lunch Buddies in 21 schools; 28 middle school and high school boys mentored in 5 schools; 34 middle school and high school girls mentored in 4 schools; 317 families attended classes, impacting approximately 634 individuals and 63 educators attended class, impacting 1575 individuals. Tonight's event raised over $81,000 to support programming in 2026.

The Chefs Around the Table event included small portions of appetizers, soups/chilis, salads/sides, main dishes and desserts - 74 in all. Attendees had an opportunity to make their way around the room to sample items and vote for their favorites.

As I do at food events that I attend, I kept my program close and checked off each item I tried. I only made it a little over 1/3 of the way through the room, sampling 31 different items. It's always interesting to see the variety of items and how each is prepared - some with homemade garnishes and sauces and other extras.

Some of my faves of the night were pork belly burnt ends, crispy California roll, pancit bihon & sabot gulaman, pastrami slider, chicken tacos, white bean chili, salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bars, bourbon bacon fudge and so papilla cheesecake.