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Chicago Gourmet Thu Oct 04 2012
What You Won't be Reading About from This Year's Chicago Gourmet
The 5th annual Chicago Gourmet hosted by Bon Appetit last weekend offered the usual to the gourmands of Chicago -- delicious and well executed small plates, unlimited wine, beer and spirits and up close looks at some of Chicago's favorite chef personalities; all on a fantastic beautiful Chicago day, exactly what I had envisioned Taste of Chicago to be when I first moved here. While you may have gotten a nice report on the who, what and the wheres, here are some snippets from Saturday that you probably won't be reading elsewhere.
Apparently gourmet food brought out the "let's bring the spark back into our marriage" for one couple near Pavilion 4 (and I don't just mean PDA, I mean P.D.A.). Did I miss the oysters?
There seemed be an unspoken "battle" going on between Chef John Besh and Bon Appetit Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport during Besh's demonstration. Maybe it's all the beef Besh had from the previous day's Hamburger Hop or that he doesn't like getting photographed while stuffing his face, but you could almost cut the tension with a "Bon Appetit knife" -- which Besh didn't hesitate to mockingly point out throughout his demo.
Chef John Folse, Louisiana's premier chef and partner to Restaurant R'evolution with Rick Tramonto (Tru), gave a perfect example (accent included) of how a roux should look. You'll be hard-tasked to find anything like that crossing Chicago food media. He also tugged along the shell of a large turtle and a random foot, I mean, how awesome is that.
We all love Chef Homaro Cantu from moto for giving us gastronomy genius, but serving average salsa on a branded tortilla chip in honor of his new concept ING at a gourmet event filled with pork belly and lobster was quite... odd, and not in a molecular genius kind of way. (I forgive him completely, however, with the brilliantly executed promotional video on the restaurant's home page and the 9mm caponata).
Dirk Flanigan (Henri/The Gage) and Tony Priolo (Piccolo Sogno/ Piccolo Sogno Due used to be roomies (It must have been like NATO in their kitchen).
And I know we're supposed to talk about food here but I couldn't go without mentioning that the DJ didn't disappoint. Between holding plates of food, a glass of wine and a camera, I was trying to also Shazam every other song.
Photo by Joanna Kanakis