Local Chef Brings First Vegan and Allergen-Friendly Pop-Up Organic Dinner to Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH - July 1, 2013 - PRLog -- Chef Mya Zeronis is proud to announce the first in a series of monthly Around the World Pop-Up Dinners at the Pittsburgh Public Market on August 9, 2013. Diners will be treated to culinary creations with worldly inspiration and culled with locally-grown organic non-GMO ingredients.

The event will feature fun, workshops, and a four-course dinner. Zeronis has a background in global-inspired contemporary American cuisine, and will be putting her own modern twist on meals from Memphis, Vietnam, Spain and India, taking diners on a whirlwind delicious voyage.  The classes will allow diners to experience the joy of organic food first-hand, with topics including:

• Creative Juices: Guests will use a commercial-grade juicer to make raw veggie and fruit juice blends to share with others.
• Pickling Shouldn’t Be a Pickle: With Chef Mya’s instructions, guests will pickle crunchy, raw vegetables, ginger, jalapeno and garlic in apple cider vinegar brine. Each guest will take home a pint jar of pretty pickles.
• That’s How She Rolls: Make your fresh vegetable summer rolls guided by Zeronis' demonstration to enjoy with her artisan dipping sauce.

The four-course dinner includes raw foods and macrobiotic items. No alcohol, dairy, egg, gluten, refined sugar or corn syrup will be used, making it vegan, paleo, diabetic and allergen friendly.  

• Appetizer: Chilled Roasted Multi-Color Tomato Gazpacho
• Choice of Entrée: Dry Rubbed Slow-Smoked Tofu or Duck Leg with apple cider-date BBQ sauce
• Side dishes: Grilled corn on the cob with coconut butter and sea salt, Asian-style kale-cabbage slaw
• Dessert: Naturally Sweet Vegan Falooda

Zeronis is excited to share her gluten-free, vegan and allergen-friendly food with the city. “I came to Pittsburgh to do what has not been done here. Quite a few local chefs have done pop-up dinners. With increasing number of people becoming health conscious, Pittsburgh has yet to see vegan, gluten-free and raw foods in pop-up scene,” she stated.

The Around the World Pop-Up Dinner is a BYOB event and seats are limited. Tickets can be purchased through Pittsburgh Public Market at http://pittsburghpublicmarket.org/shop/ and http://ZestWishes.CO

Around The World Pop-Up Dinner
Where: Pittsburgh Public Market
August 9th, 2013, Friday
6:30pm to 8:30pm

Zeronis started cooking at the age of 11. Growing up in Burma (Myanmar), a country with very little industrialization, she shopped at her neighborhood farmers market everyday before farm-to-table and organic were trendy in the United States. In 2010, as the head chef at a green-certified, locally-sourced Washington D.C. restaurant, she had delighted in offering her daily specials infused with organic and farm-to-table ingredients.

Striking out on her own in late 2011, she founded Lean Chef en Route upon returning to Pittsburgh, the city where her culinary career started. Lean Chef en Route provides off-beat catering for large and small events, specializing in healthy yet delicious food for a variety of dietary needs. She can be seen working at her own stand, Zest Wishes, at the Pittsburgh Public Market on most weekends. Zest Wishes, which opened this year, is a raw, cold-pressed juice/ health food/ specialty grocery concept she developed to attract new clients to her unique catering business and to eventually launch a line of unprocessed artisan sauces. She hopes to open her own restaurant soon after her pop-up series take off. She may be busy as a chef/ entrepreneur yet still finds time to win nine recipe contests in a year and even getting one published in soon-to-be-released The World’s Best Asian Noodle Recipes, a book of recipe collection contributed by chefs.  

For more information on this event, please visit http://pittsburghpublicmarket.org/shop/