Sculptures in Ice

Executive Chef Abigail Hutchinson, who presides over the food preparation for the Hotel’s Grand Dining Room, Courtyard at Crane, and Café Solterra as well as the Pool Bar and Grill and Beach Pavilion, has a special passion for beautiful presentation.

Year round, but especially in spring and summer, Chef Abigail practically hums as she prepares for the exquisite wedding receptions and banquets for which the Jekyll Island Club Hotel is famous. Canapés, hors d’oeuvres and entrees extraordinaire are her forte, but give her a chain saw and she’s in her glory…creating ice sculptures!

Recently, Chef Abigail’s project was a crystalline angel fish to grace the table of a bride and groom for their late spring wedding. The weather was perfect for such a task, and, yes, she was humming. See the pictures on the right; you can almost hear her.

Chef says it takes, on average, an hour to create a sizable sculpture. Etching a template onto the front and sides of the block of ice, making the general cuts with a chain saw to reveal the basic image, and then refining the details are the basics.

The process begins a day or two before the event with the tempering (thawing) of a 300 pound block of ice for about 4-5 hours; this reduces the block somewhat in size and makes the ice clear. If the piece has to be moved, that’s done with a hand truck, and Chef Abigail does that herself. If it has to be turned on its side, she accepts a little help. When the finished ice sculpture is ready for placement on the display table, it requires the assistance of 3-4 people.

Chef Abigail enjoys the process and the sense of improvement with each project. Although she had just one class in ice sculpting in culinary school, she continues to learn from other chefs and from practice. One of her earlier sculptures, and most elaborate, while at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel was a life size sea turtle for the opening celebration for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.

Earlier in her career, Chef Abigail was asked to carve a piece for Mother’s Day very late in the game. Arriving at work around 5:00 am that day, she brought out the ice and the chain saw and began her work…forgetting that people were still asleep in residences within hearing distance. By 5:15 she had a visitor who managed to be louder than the chain saw in his request that she stop the racket. “My boss, the Executive Chef, managed to calm the neighbor down and apologize for me. But, it did mean that I had to complete the entire ice carving with hand tools. This took much longer, of course, but it was one beautiful sculpture. My old chef and I still laugh about that one,” said Chef Abigail.

Chef Abigail Hutchinson has received many awards and accolades as a rising star in the culinary world. Her most recent recognition was an invitation to prepare the entrée for a gala National Press Club dinner in Washington D.C. in April of this year. As a featured chef, a description appears in Gourmet Getaways in which she is described as one of America’s hot new chefs offering a Cooking School. In 2007 she received a Gold Medal by the American Culinary Federation in St. Augustine, Florida. Shortly after joining the Jekyll Island Club Hotel in 2005, Chef Abigail was selected to prepare courses at the James Beard House in New York City. She was one of four chefs so honored from 213 Historic Hotels of America on that occasion.