Students will get experience in event management, fund and friend-raising, and the culinary arts when Unity College hosts its 12th annual Sportsmen’s Conference and Wild Game Dinner at the Unity College Center for the Performing Arts, Friday, April 8.
Prepared by Unity College students and staff, the main dinner is a five-course meal featuring fresh, wild game served with salad, bread, and dessert. Appetizers will be served in the Leonard R. Craig Gallery inside the UCCPA and will include beaver, moose heart, wild turkey, pheasant, smoked trout, and more.
Ticket prices are $32 for regular seating and $50 for VIP tickets that include access to preferred seating, additional appetizers, and two bottles of wine per table. Artwork by local painter Barbara Peabody will be on display in the gallery during the event.
All proceeds benefit Operation Game Thief Maine, The Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Unity College Sporting Station.
“Our students are stewarding resources, managing budgets, synthesizing information, and giving back to the community,” Unity College President Dr. Melik Peter Khoury said. “Through the years of the Wild Game Dinner, students have gotten real-world experience as they have worked with staff to build this project into a Maine tradition.”
The event has been featured in Portland Magazine and other publications, and was listed among Maine’s Top 20 “must do” events by the Bangor Daily News.
“The game dinner is a regional tradition attended by a broad spectrum of individuals, including hunters and the non-hunting public,” said Unity College Director of Admissions Joe Saltalamachia ’95, an organizer of the event. “The majority of individuals who attend are non-hunters who see this as their annual opportunity to experience the unique taste of fresh wild game.”
The cook for this year’s event is Jamie Moffatt, head chef at 3Crow in Rockland. This will be Moffatt’s debut cooking for the event. Saltalamachia, perennial chef for the event, said Moffatt is very familiar with wild game cooking and will offer a great teammate in the kitchen.
Moffatt enjoys cooking seasonal and regional cuisine and specializes in cooking what is available when it’s prime time in New England, Saltalamachia said. Moffatt began cooking at the age of 15 in Bangor and spent five years at Sparrow Arc Farm, where he worked with the owner to market fresh produce to fine restaurants in southern Maine and Boston. This work inspired Moffatt to move back to the kitchen in a determined way.
“He’s very passionate about serving people good food,” Saltalamachia said.
“The quality of our appetizers and entrées is superb, comparable the level one would expect to enjoy at some of Maine’s finest restaurants,” Saltalamachia said. “It’s a culinary delight not to be missed.”
The event begins with appetizers at 4:15 p.m. Dinner is served at 5:00 p.m.
For tickets, contact Joe Saltalamachia at (207) 509-7205, or e-mail jsalty@unity.edu. The Unity College Center for Performing Arts is located at 42 Depot St., in Unity.
