SF Chefs 2010

A gigantic tent had been erected in Union Square.

Underneath that tent?

TONS OF FOOD, WINE, AND LIQUOR!!

We were given a cute lanyard that came with a wine glass holder!  It took us a long time to finally figure out what it was for.  (Yeah, that’s a little embarrassing.)  Super handy when it came to the eating.  There was so much to try, tables beside tables beside more tables filled with delicious (and some just okay) little bites, cocktails, and wines.

I happened to notice that the maximum capacity of the tent is 1739 or something like that.  I wonder how many people were there at any one time, I have no sense of these things.

The theme was gazpacho and boy, was there a lot of gazpacho!  Most weren’t that great, but there was one that blew me away…  It was ridiculously simple: heirloom tomatoes, of course, plus all the other ingredients except celery thrown into a food processor, and marinated overnight.  That’s it!  It’s too easy.  We tasted all of the different kinds of gazpacho, maybe six or seven.

A few months ago, I read about virgin cocktails slowly becoming more popular in the city.  The virgin cocktails were brilliant mixtures of vegetable and fruit and their juices, oils and essences, even broths.  The green stuff below was a combination of tomato water and basil oil, plus a little piece of pickled peach.  Um, wow?  And what exactly is tomato water?  The cocktail was so refreshing, it’s pretty genius.

I was sad to skip most of the goodies that were served on bread because I was on the verge of exploding!  I loved eating it all, but it was so hard to walk!  I mean, I couldn’t not have wine because I had to clean out my mouth between tastes, and so everything expanded…  Yeah, we had to sit down for about twenty minutes to rest before heading back inside to try the other bites we’d missed the first time.

There were lots of meats…  After all that, I’m sorta meat-ed out.  Not that I ate a lot of it, but after a few tastes of salty salty prosciutto, some under-seasoned pork, and odd-tasting corned beef, that was all I could take.

I have to tell a little story about what happened at the Barilla table.  So I was offered some kind of pasta that included butternut squash, I was instantly confused.  Butternut squash in August?  So I asked her, “Where did you get your butternut squash?  It’s a little early…?”  She replied with a shrug and an awkward laugh.

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have done that.  She was just an underling, enlisted just to serve people who wanted to eat pasta (the only pasta in the tent).  She didn’t come up with the idea to serve out-of-season butternut squash, she was just there to serve.

BARILLA, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING SERVING BUTTERNUT SQUASH IN AUGUST?!?!

Dessert was kinda disappointing.  There were maybe three dessert tables in the entire tent, and only one was worth eating: the butterscotch pudding!  It was amazing!  Definitely sweet, and I haven’t liked butterscotch since elementary school, but it was so delicious accompanied by Chantilly creme.

In true San Francisco form, all the plates and utensils were compostable and recycle and compost bins were placed strategically.  I thought that was kinda funny, because you probably wouldn’t see that in Houston.

End.