Features Chef Talk Q & A Fundraiser No Kid Hungry "Chef Cycle:" Q&A with Chef Luke Venner of Elm Restaurant CTbites Team April 24, 2023 Chefs Cycle is a fundraising endurance event featuring award-winning chefs and members of the culinary community-fighting childhood hunger outside the kitchen. Since 2015, the culinary talents who take part in Chefs Cycle raise critical funds, which No Kid Hungry uses to help communities across the country feed kids. Chef Luke Venner of Elm Restaurant in New Canaan, CT, is preparing for his 2nd year in the Chefs Cycle event. We sat down with him to discuss the importance of this fundraiser and the hopefully inspire other chefs to join him in 2024!What made you want to get involved with Chef's Cycle? I first heard about it in 2019 at a No Kid Hungry event that I participated in Boston. One of the other chefs there had begun training for it and I just thought to myself wow..what an impressive thing to do. The following year I watched the video from the first Santa Rosa ride and it literally brought tears to my eyes. I ordered a bike and registered that day. Sadly, the rides for the next two years were postponed during Covid. How is your approach going into year 2 different from your first year? I have a lot more confidence this year knowing what to expect. Last year I wasn't sure if I would even be able to finish. I made a lot of new friends and am really looking forward to seeing everyone again and grinding up those hills together. Which other chefs have you met—and ridden with—along the way? Any fun stories from the road? I'll ride alongside my old friend Armando again this year. We worked together in Yountville, CA many years ago and this has been a great way for us to stay connected. The camaraderie that develops out on the open road is one of the best parts about doing this for me. Who has mentored you the most in this process? What have you learned? Everyone involved does such an incredible job to make sure we all get across that finish line at the end of each day—the event organizers, the support vehicles, the California Highway Patrol, and especially the more experienced riders participating. Every rider is eager to offer help and encouragement to each other.As chefs, we have to imagine your pre- & post-ride meal plan is pretty awesome—can you name some typical snacks you pack for sustenance along the way and what you usually make once you get off the bike? When you're doing long-distance rides you burn a lot of calories-an average ride can be anywhere between 1000-2500. I eat a lot of bananas, baked goods, pasta, and rice. I typically follow a high-protein, low-carb diet when I'm not training so it's kind of nice to be able to indulge!How has this charity made a personal impact on the way you look at food? It definitely changes your perspective. I will always love restaurants—they have been the center of my life for the last 25 years—but restaurants are a place of both food excess and food waste. That can be a difficult thing for me to grapple with when you start to consider the amount of childhood hunger in the United States alone. We hear you're the only chef riding this year from CT—do you hope to bring awareness to this cause to get more local chefs involved in the future? Absolutely! I would love to have a team of riders from CT for 2024. If you could map out a dream bike route around CT, stopping at your favorite restaurants, what would that look like? It's something I've already given plenty of thought to. A great (and very doable) route would be to head down the gold coast stopping at all my favorite seaside spots from Mystic all the way to Guilford. Perhaps it will happen this summer!You've raised over $7K so far and are ranked #3 on the fundraising leaderboard—what would you like to say to everyone who has supported you riding this year? Unforgettable gratitude. We all get asked for donations from many different charities and we just can't give to them all even if we wanted to. People have to be selective about a cause that feels right and impactful. The fact that so many people choose to support this cause alongside me means a lot.Link to Luke's "Why I Ride" essay & donation page: https://p2p.onecause.com/chefscycle2023/luke-vennerLuke's Instagram to follow along during the ride: https://www.instagram.com/lukevenner/ABOUT CHEF'S CYCLEChefs Cycle is a fundraising endurance event featuring award-winning chefs and members of the culinary community-fighting childhood hunger outside the kitchen. Since 2015, the culinary talents who take part in Chefs Cycle raise critical funds, which No Kid Hungry uses to help communities across the country feed kids. (You can learn more about No Kid Hungry's work here.)Chefs Cycle is returning to Santa Rosa for the fifth year, and we are excited to be back at The Flamingo Resort. Once again, we are excited to offer exceptional riding and reconnecting, all while raising critical funds for the No Kid Hungry campaign.2023 RIDE DETAILSRide Website LinkDates: May 9|10|11, 2023 (Arrival day, May 8)Location: The Flamingo Resort, Santa Rosa, CARoute Options: 100 Miles or 100 KMs per dayABOUT NO KID HUNGRYNo child should go hungry in America. But millions of kids in the United States live with hunger. No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by helping launch and improve programs that give all kids the healthy food they need to thrive. This is a problem we know how to solve.No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization committed to ending hunger and poverty.
