Guests

Herb Eckhouse founded La Quercia with his wife Kathy and works in all aspects of the business: selecting and buying pork, salting, trimming, and handling hams and leading the small group of dedicated staff who participate in its production. He has spent over thirty years in agriculture, from raising seed potatoes to working cattle to developing and marketing commodity crop and vegetable seeds. He designed and built their prosciuttificio, and spent five years researching, experimenting, learning and making prosciutto at home. La Quercia produces artisan cured meats or salumi — prosciutto, pancetta, coppa, speck, lomo, guanciale, salami, and lardo. Seeking out the best ingredients, produced responsibly, they craft them by hand into something that expresses their appreciation for the beauty and bounty of Iowa.

Raised on the coast of Maine in a family with a tradition of fishing, hunting and guiding, Rod Browne Mitchell–President and Owner of Browne Trading Company, developed his passion for the sea and fishing. Under Rod’s direction, Browne Trading Company’s smoked seafood and caviars have won many accolades in blind taste tests hosted by the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. After 22 years, many of the most prestigious and talented chefs and restaurants throughout the nation continue to rely on Browne Trading Company to deliver fresh seafood products daily.

Vice President of Client & Business Development and Auctioneer, Sotheby's

Eliza Osborne has worked at Sotheby’s since 1995. She is a member of the Chairman’s

Council and the Senior Business Development team and focuses on key client relationships in the Los Angeles area. Additionally, she is an Auctioneer and oversees the New Collectors Council. Her previous roles at Sotheby’s include running the Bid Department, which handles all organizational aspects their New York auctions.

In addition to fostering client relationships and expanding business, Osborne also serves Sotheby's as an auctioneer—and mostly for charity. Last year, she led almost thirty auctions and helped to raise over $32 million for charities, including the Robin Hood Foundation, the Africa Foundation, the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and more. This year marks Ms. Osborne's third year at Cayman Cookout.

Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery was started by two young visionaries devoted to new and non-traditional agriculture, Allison Hooper and Bob Reese. As a college student, Allison spent a summer traveling in France. She worked on a small family farm in Brittany, earning room and board while learning how to make all of the essentials of what was to become her life passion: cheese making. Bob always thought he would one day take over his grandparents’ dairy farm. Unfortunately by the time he finished his degree in Agriculture, they’d sold the farm. Appropriately enough, the improbable run as long term business partners began in 1984 during a dinner celebrating Vermont agricultural products. Bob was in charge of the dinner and desperately needed a locally made goat cheese for the French chef’s signature lamb dish. He reached out to Allison who was then working at a dairy lab and milking goats in Brookfield. Allison made the chèvre on the farm, Bob delivered it to the chef — the dinner was a success and Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery was born.

The third generation of butchers in the Schaller & Weber family kin. Jeremy is keeping his grandfather's tradition of top quality German Specialty Meat products alive after 75 years by bringing new products and innovation to the company's renowned heritage. Schaller & Weber is dedicated to producing premium meats—according to the same exacting standards and time-honoured recipes—that originated in long forgotten butcher shops. To eat any Schaller & Weber product today is to experience something increasingly rare in this world—the tradition of taste.

As Founder and Creator of Hum Spirits Company and Mixologist for IPic Entertainment's game-changing luxury movie theatre concepts, Adam Seger takes a chef's approach at the bar to the point of being dubbed ‘The Charlie Trotter of Cocktails’ by New City, a ‘Spirits Guru’ by Food & Wine and Fast Company Magazines and 'Chicago's Godfather of Craft Cocktails' by TimeOut.

Seger is a Certified Culinary Professional, a Wine & Spirits Judge for The Beverage Testing Institute and a Court of Master Sommeliers Advanced Sommelier. He is an alumnus of world-renowned restaurants TRU, The Seelbach Hotel's Oakroom, Strasbourg’s Michelin Star Chez Julien and The French Laundry.

Adam's mixing style has put him on an international stage.  From appearances on numerous morning shows and the TV Food Network to presenting at the beverage industry's top conferences, he is widely considered an authority on what is on point and what is soon to be hot.

With Chicago as his home base, Seger is expanding his line of cocktail bitters and working on his first book ‘Drink Like You Eat: The Seasonal Cocktail Cookbook'.