Riviera chef Jeremy Glas gets capital treatment

Jeremy Glas, director of food and beverage and executive chef at the Riviera Black Hawk Casino, got within a spatula’s toss of Michelle Obama recently when he and a handful of other Colorado chefs were invited to visit as part of the Chef’s Move to Schools program spearheaded by the First Lady.

“We were invited to the South Lawn of the White House, and we were sitting three rows back from Michelle Obama listening to her speak,” Glas said about his brush with fame. “At the end, she shook hands with the people sitting in the front row, but I think security was getting nervous, so she left after that.”

No matter. Glas said he was honored to be included with other kitchen colleagues to participate in the program whose goal is to end childhood obesity within a generation.

“They’re looking to do this by 2015 to be able to say they accomplished something to improve childhood nutrition,” said Glas, who was nominated to be part of the program by the American Culinary Federation. He was joined by other locals, including 17th Avenue Grill chef Andrew Lubatty, retired chef and professional photographer Mike Pizzuto, Jason Morse from Valley Country Club, Joey Piazza from Cherry Hills Country Club, Janet Etchart from Adams 12 School District, Mike Di Giovanni of Morning Star Senior Living and Bob Holloway from McCoy’s restaurant.

“When we got there, we had a wonderful dinner the night before,” Glas said about the adventure. “There was a breakfast the next day with Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, who spoke about some of the challenges that are faced in the public school meal system right now.”

The idea is to pair chefs with school districts to educated food-service workers on how to create nutritional meals from a bare-bones budget.

“We’re looking into going into poorer communities, and hopefully encourage or inspire some of the kids to get involved with their meal programs,” said the father of girls ages 8 and 11. “Unfortunately, the schools have large choices of junk food, and what are kids going to grab – beautiful vegetables or a slice of pizza? We need to change people’s minds on how and why we do things.”

More information on the program at letsmove.gov.

Golden game. The Golden Gates casino in Black Hawk introduced a new game Aug. 1 called the Loose Penny Loft (no relation to this columnist).

It’s a dedicated penny machine area in the loft at Golden Gates where most of the machines will have been programmed to have the highest payback percentages. So grab that giant jar of pennies you’ve been collecting and strike it rich!