Results tagged “chicagogourmet”

A few weeks back at Chicago Gourmet, we heard Mindy Segal, the chef/owner of Hot Chocolate, expounding the virtues of cookies to the audience. She particularly plugged her bacon chocolate-chip cookies. It's possible that an audible gasp escaped our mouth at this revelation, and we determined to try them at once!

                   

Today we're going to run some more photos of Chicago Gourmet that we didn't run in our recap of the festival yesterday. It's a combination of chef shots, action shots from demos and seminars, and good ol' food pr0n. Enjoy and, if you have photos of the event on flickr, be sure to tag them with "chicagoist" so that they show up on the "Chicagoist Photos" pool..

                

Now this is how a food and wine festival should operate!

A couple weeks back a friend purchased Chicago Gourmet tickets via the half-price special Groupon offered. She asked for advice to prepare for the festival. We told her to pack a lunch.

Folks interested in attending next week's Chicago Gourmet event but don't want to pay the $150 per day ticket price to gain entry should check out this almost criminal deal from Groupon right now. They've just put up Saturday tickets for $89. That means you can take the $61 you saved and buy passes to two seminar at the festival.

His Elective Majesty and the Illinois Restaurant Association trotted out some of the city's best chefs and sommeliers yesterday to announce the second annual Chicago Gourmet festival, taking place September 26-27. Reader reporter Julia Thiel noted that the IRA is looking to atone for last year's inaugural edition, which was heavy on the wine and spirits. And that's an understatement.

“The Year in Review” is an apt, if overused, phrase this time of year. Coupled with what turned out to be a busy and eventful 2K8, and we’re hard pressed to distill what we found most newsworthy into a limited number of words. We can’t whittle it down to just our favorite dishes, restaurants, chefs or events. Frankly, those types of stand-alone year-end recaps bore us.

• Chicagoist hasn't been the only one covering the event. Here are some other reviews of Chicago Gourmet.
• I don't know what festival Phil Vettel attended, but it sounded really fucking good. Mr. "One fork per plate" found no "shortage of richness"; at one point, Stolpman and I had to go to America's Dog to grab a bite.
• Apparently, Vettel didn't bother to share that same spoil of riches with fellow Stew correspondent Chris Borrelli. I don't mind a lot of wine at a gourmet food festival, either. But the ratio of wine tents to food tents was ridiculous.

With a lineup filled with food seminars, cooking demonstrations, wine classes and a beautifully equipped Viking Culinary Stage at the Pritzker Pavilion, you would think that Chicago Gourmet would’ve been a Mecca for home cooks looking to jazz up their dishes. Think again. While some of the seminars were informative (most notably Greg Hall on beer and cheese and Paul Bartolotta on seafood), others were thinly veiled promos for books, products or restaurants.

 

The seminars at Chicago Gourmet were a lot like college— you either left feeling smarter after a lecture from a great professor or you sat through the whole thing drawing on your notebook, wondering what all your friends were drinking at the wine tents. I assume many ticket holders attended Chicago Gourmet hoping to expand their knowledge of food and wine. The seminars seemed like the best place to start if this was your ultimate goal. Unfortunately, as Chuck and Anthony mentioned, they proved to be hit or miss.

      

It's been said numerous times that chefs are the new rock stars. Chicago, then, could be considered one of the epicenters for the rock star chef. And they come in all forms: the arena gods (Bayless, Trotter, Achatz, McClain, Kahan); adult contemporary and classical (Smith, Gand, Arun, Tramonto, Nahabedian, Christophe David at NoMI); indie and experimental darlings (Segal, Carlson, Cantu, Bowles, Tschilds and Hammel of Lula) and world beat (Bahena, Nieto, Takashi, Gras, Garces, Shen). Using the rock star parallel, one can assume that the winners of cheffing competitions such as "Top Chef" and "Hell's Kitchen" fall into the "American Idol" realm of pop confection.

              

The cooking demonstrations at Chicago Gourmet were easily the more popular events, despite the fact that tasting the prepared food was a no-no. Since tasting food at the entire event was a seemingly rare experience, who cares? Viking set up two pretty sweet kitchen counters and induction stovetops side by side, so that two chefs could simultaneously prepare dishes, taking turns describing their process and dishes. The Pritzker stage was very effectively transformed into a cooking studio. The induction ranges meant that water boiled at lightning speed and sauces sometimes bubbled over the top of pots but that dishes were completed in the 30 minute allotted time slots. Large, tilted mirrors above the kitchens allowed guests to see the action as it took place.

        

Expecting more of the same of what we saw Saturday, it was decided that any coverage of Chicago Gourmet for Sunday would be optional. With an overcast sky and the first tinges of autumn finally in the air, it turned out to be a prudent decision.

            

The weather couldn't have been any better yesterday as Chicago Gourmet officially kicked off at Millennium Park. A press release sent to us shortly after 9 p.m. last night announced that over 3,000 visitors attended the event, with last night's Grand Cru wine tasting selling out completely.

After months of buildup and debate, the inaugural Chicago Gourmet festival of food and wine kicks off this evening with a gala reception at the Harris Theatre in Millennium Park. You just know that Mayor Daley is eager to showcase the rarefied air of the Chicago restaurant industry mere months before the IOC makes its final decision on the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. He tried to sell the sizzle in this week's edition of Time Out Chicago:

The long-anticipated and much-discussed Chicago Gourmet festival at Millennium Park is just over a week away. It's no secret that entrance to the event itself will cost some their entire month's rent, and then some.

More Chicago Gourmet updates. Tickets went on sale yesterday for the Grand Cru Wine Tastings, September 27 and 28. Master sommeliers, including local talents Joseph Spellman, Alpana Singh and Serafin Alvarado, will select fifty of the best wines in the world for tasting.

Discounted passes for September's Chicago Gourmet event at Millennium Park will end Monday. If you want to save $20 off the $150 ticket price, act fast.