Las Vegas chefs share their secrets to benefit women, children

Five days, seven chefs, one great cause. That’s the premise behind Cook For A Cause, a new at-home cooking series by SecretBurger.com, which will run from Sept. 9-13 to benefit The Shade Tree.

Each event will give foodies the opportunity to pre-purchase an at-home cooking kit with all the ingredients needed to create a dish for two people from a popular local restaurant. After picking up the kit, you’ll prepare it yourself at home, with the help of either a live online class, a pre-recorded video, or a set of instructions that comes with the ingredients.

The kits, which go on sale Monday morning at SecretBurger.com, are priced $45 and $65 apiece, with at least half of the proceeds from each going to support The Shade Tree’s work assisting abused and homeless women and children in crisis. Located on Owens Avenue in North Las Vegas, the organization is open to those in need of assistance 24 hours a day, offering shelter, medical assistance, meals, workforce training, housing assistance and even an animal shelter for those forced to flee an unsafe situation with their pets.

Participating chefs and restaurateurs include Sonia El-Nawal of Rooster Boy Café, Chris Conlon of Piero’s Italian Cuisine, Honey Salt’s Todd Harrington, DW Bistro’s Bryce Krausman, Justin Kingsley Hall of the soon-to-open Main Street Provisions, Forte Tapas’ Nina Manchev and Graffiti Bao’s Marc Marrone. The dishes they’ll be teaching you to prepare range from Honey Salt’s signature Biloxi chicken sandwich to the osso bucco that helped make Piero’s Italian a Las Vegas institution for Italian cuisine.

“I think Shade Tree is a great organization,” says Secret Burger founder Jolene Mannina. “So anything we can do to help women, and create awareness about women and domestic violence, (we’re happy to do). It’s for the women and the kids.”

For more information on Shade Tree, go to theshadetree.org, or call 702-385-0072. Those in need of assistance can also call the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 800-799-7233.

Contact Al Mancini at amancini@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter and Instagram.