I had the opportunity Sunday evening to hang out in the kitchen at The Oceanaire Seafood Room in downtown Indianapolis while chefs from eight local restaurants whipped up servings for more than 75 diners attending the Chef’s Alliance charity fundraiser. Each chef created a dish for the eight-course tasting menu, and they all looked great.

I sampled bites here and there, and it was cool to see that the chefs enjoyed sampling too. They would squirt a drop of sauce on a finger for someone to sample or pull a plastic spoon out of a pocket to offer a bigger taste. Servers too got to sample; I shared a leftover chocolate pot de creme with a couple of servers still in the kitchen at the end of the dinner.

The dishes were for the most part beautiful as well as tasty–lots of interesting ingredients too. The basil ice cream that was served atop a shortbread cookie, which in turn was atop a strawberry rhubard salad, was fabulous.

But the ingredient I found most interesting was fennel pollen. When the chef sprinkled a bit over each serving of his dish, I wondered–even wrote in my notes–whether such a tiny ingredient would make any difference in the taste of a dish.

When he offered a sample later, I realized that even the tiny bit I tasted from the tip of my finger was surprisingly flavorful. So the sprinkling of fennel pollen would be like a dusting of anise or licorice flavor–certainly noticeable but even cooler in that a diner probably wouldn’t be able to identify where the flavor came from.

It was great fun to hang out and watch the chefs, especially when they were plating 76 dishes simultaneously. I even managed to spot a dish that didn’t have its swirl of balsamic as a server was about to head out with it.