I went to the 1st annual Austin Food & Wine Festival this past weekend and had a wonderful time. There were some issues, no doubt, but I'll leave the criticism to the critics. Unfortunately, many of the photos that I took ended up being worthless, but I'll share what I have. Here are the highlights from the weekend.
First cooking demo of the weekend was Masaharu Morimoto preparing sushi. Sadly the only good photo I have of him is this one, where he is signing autographs. One of the best meals of my life was the omakase at Morimoto in Philadelphia, so I was excited to see the Iron Chef. He didn't disappoint. He was charming and funny in his usual broken english kind of way. More importantly, just getting to see him work with fish was a treat. His knife work was amazing.
Again, sorry for the grainy photo. Next up was Marcus Samuelsson. He prepared his fried chicken (yardbird) from his restaurant Red Rooster Harlem. Marcus' television appearances always led me to believe that he was a very serious person, but as it turns out, Marcus has a lot of Emeril in him. Marcus was extremely charismatic, and as a result, the cooking demo was the most lively of the weekend. Marcus got the crowd involved early and often.
The fried chicken looked fantastic as well, but sadly no sample for me. Marcus stressed the importance of putting your own spin on classic dishes such as fried chicken, so that you can make them your own and have them reflect where you come from, both as a person and as a cook. His fried chicken reflected his Ethiopian heritage, seasoning it every step of the way with an African spice blend. Another solid demo.
Last demo of Day 1 for me was Austin's own Chef David Bull of Congress Restaurant and Second Bar & Kitchen. David prepared a Seared scallop with a cocoa nib brittle, coconut cream, a jicama salad and chocolate mint. The title of the demo was Savory Chocolate, but the demo ended up being less about using chocolate in savory cooking, and more about the thought process behind the construction of a dish.
This was probably my favorite demo of the weekend, as it focused on something I am very intrigued by: the construction of a fine-dining dish, from start to finish. I won't say much more about this, as it's going to be the focus of its own blog post. Great demo.
First demo of Day 2 was Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar. This demo featured the biggest shock of the weekend for me: The audience for her demo was half-empty. It appeared that everyone was either sleeping off their hangover, or waiting in line for the grilling demo. Which is sad, because people missed out on a great discussion of Milk Bar's desserts and samples of cereal crunch, cereal milk and cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookies. Yum all around.
And Christina signed my event pass!
Final demo of Day 2 was Jonathan Waxman of Barbuto, otherwise known as the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the culinary world. He had an Obi-Wan figurine holding a rubber chicken standing at the front of the stage, you can just make it out in the top right corner of the mirror in the photo above. Chef Waxman prepared a plethora of seafood dishes, including pan-fried trout, salt-crusted snapper and a simple shrimp pasta. The demo was very interesting and showed just how easy it is to prepare a seafood feast at home.
A great end to a wonderful weekend. I'm already looking forward to next year.
Comments