Cook. Eat. Drink. Live. Review.
Friday and Saturday did not have the nicest weather, from the misting all day Friday to the pouring almost all throughout Saturday. It was just really pretty wet. That made it the perfect combination of days to spend indoors at the Cook. Eat. Drink. Live. event on the pier.
Now first, let me bitch for a second (and this is really only a problem because it was so wet this weekend): Why the hell are there no subways that go that far west? Walking over to Pier 94 (or was it 92?) in the pouring rain from 60th and 8th Avenue is just not fun. Okay, good, got that out of my system, moving on…
Cook. Eat. Drink. Live. was a massive 2 day event on the pier. There were lines of exhibit booths where you could sample wines, various packaged foods, caterers, some beers and a whole lot of booze. Beyond the booths, there were classes and demonstrations throughout the day, almost every hour on the hour. Usually, there was a cooking demonstration in the main room, a cocktail demonstration or wine tasting in one of the two side rooms, and another cooking demo or tasting in the other side room. The events started around 11 in the morning and went until 5.
In writing this up, I am finding I have the same problem as when I arrived at Pier 94 on the first day: I am overwhelmed by it all. When I got there, I wandered in a circle around the booths 3 times just trying to take it all in. I was totally overwhelmed by it. Everything looked incredible and I just wasn’t sure where I wanted to start. Today, though, we are just going to start with the cooking demos.
I am a big fan of watching cooking programs. I can sit in front of my TV on a wet weekend for hours watching chefs toil away making tasty foods.
Apparently this does not hold true for actually being at a cooking demo watching chefs make incredible food.
When you are actually there and can smell the foods cooking and see how incredible these foods look, all you want to do is try them. It just seems cruel to have to sit in an audience, watch incredible food being made and not get to try it. It is a total tease.
I could only be a part of it to watch Chef Chris Lee make a butternut squash soup with cinnamon cotton candy and to watch a scallop cookoff that ended in a tie. Wine tasting just isn’t my thing and kind of eludes me, so I passed on those classes and seminars.
What I didn’t quite get was the actual schedule. When you arrived, they gave you a schedule and a book with the chefs names and bios and when they would be doing their thing. What was missing from this was any description of what they would actually be doing. Unless you planned ahead, it was difficult to determine who you wanted to listen to and watch just based on their time slots and bios. I admit, I skipped the wine tastings and all the wine booths. I just really don’t know enough about wines or like the taste of them enough to want to know more, though I am sure it was all very impressive stuff.
The food booths were pretty tasty. I discovered Ted’s Montana Grill (a chain owned by Ted Turner) which had some fantastic Bison. They just opened a location on the west side in the 50s.
There were a number of catering companies (the best was probably the Great American BBQ, which was tasty and also made some really great sides, such as wasabi mashed potatoes and a really good corn pudding). Unfortunately a lot of the catering companies tasted like good catered food. That is, the food was good, but there was nothing particularly special about it. Also, I don’t get the idea behind making a sashimi or carpacio for one of these events. Most of the attendees were from the New York area, where you can get really good raw fish just about anywhere. Serving me a piece of raw fish with citrus does nothing to show me the quality of the cooking at your restaurant. It just shows me that you have a decent fish distributer.
Tomorrow I will have a follow-up to this discussing the pre-packaged food folks and maybe one or two of the beverage people, ’cause there was a whole lot of boozing. I’ll also complain about price dropping and such. But you’ll have to tune in tomorrow for part two of Cook. Eat. Drink. Live. Review.
