Slow Food Nation - Double Header
Event: Slow Food Nation
Date: August 30, 2008
I started my “slow” day at the Civic Center. I actually came here by accident. I was meaning to go to my favorite bahn mi place on Larkin and Eddy, but as I was walking toward City Hall, I remembered that Slow Food was having some activities here as well. How I forgot? No clue, but I’m kind of glad I came here.
The use of plastic water bottles is a no-no here. So folks lined up for tap water in biodegradable cups.
This was a booth set up for people who had questions or those who wanted to be members of the slow food community.
I was actually very surprised with the turnout. I didn’t know that this many people were interested in this movement. I guess people, like myself, who are pretty much new to this revolution were here to become educated.
The Victory Garden showcased many plants that grow well in California - almost all of which would be fantastic on your plate. Speaking of plate - let’s get to the food.
Many locally known vendors and restaurants, such as Out the Door, Vik's Chaat Corner, and Fatted Calf were on-hand to feed the hungry slow-fooders. Because I wanted a sandwich earlier, I opted for one here. It’s a bit more than the $2.50 I would have spent at Saigon Sandwiches, but this $8 Grilled Sausage with Onions and Peppers on a Ciabatta Roll was so succulent. I walked around and people-watched as I munched on this - making sure none of that hot sausage juice got all over me…but I just loved how that same juice saturated the bread. Oh dear, it was delicious. A little awkward to eat because of the round shape - maybe I should have split it down the middle so that it would lay flat - but like I said before: so good. I’m not a sausage eating person usually, but I will make a fat exception for Fatted Calf.
To wash things down, I had a Watermelon Agua Fresca ($3.50) from El Huarache Loco. This has got to be one of the best watermelon agua fresca I have ever had. There were little chunks of watermelon in it and in this sun, I really needed something cold to drink. I do have to complain that I really did not like how water WAS NOT readily available. I’m going to be honest here and say that I do drink bottled water. Having only one or two places provide water (with fat lines) and having other places sell beverages for this price (with fat lines) was a bit annoying. I guess they made their point - carry a reusable water canteen, jug, bottle, TABO, of some sorts along with you AT ALL TIMES, so you don’t have to face the situation I was in.
So in the 20 minutes or so that I was here, I managed to spend $11.50 on a sandwich and a watermelon juice. Not cheap, but you do have to pay for quality.
After my meal, off I went to Fort Mason…
I took the scenic route up the bike trail, passed the Balclutha and Alcatraz, to Fort Mason. My calves were burning, but I knew it was all worth it because this is what I saw looking down:
The festival pavilion. My destiny. As you all know, I am a publisher for foodbuzz.com. I love FB. For real, they really hook it up. I was given the chance to attend this event complements of FB - $65 if I had to pay myself, so I was beyond grateful. I knew this was a pricy ticket and that many people wanted to attend but couldn’t because it was sold out. I was so going to make the most of it. THANK YOU FOODBUZZ!
After you surrender your ticket, you are given "20 Slow Dough" - what I am holding above. On the other side are 20 spaces - kind of like a frequent-buyer punch card at your favorite coffee place or one of those Bonus Cards at Sanrio (My name is Jo, and I am a Sanrio addict). Each space is worth $1 or “one slow dough.” There are about 13 or so pavilions on the premises, and it is up to you where you want to spend your dough. Each pavilion is worth from 1 - 3 slow dough, so you have to budget. I know I had to.
This is what it looked like before the hundreds of people behind me in line came in. Seriously, the venue was HUMUNGOUS. There was lots of ground to cover, so let’s get cracking.
Here, if you were interested, you get to learn how the chocolate goes from bean to bar.
For $3, you get three pieces of finished chocolate. I don’t remember now, but for $2 I think, you could have gotten cocoa nibs, a chocolate sauce-type goo, and a finished piece of chocolate. I didn’t want to mess with the nibs and sauce and went for this instead. I’m not a fan of dark chocolate/pure chocolate, so even though these might have been the best chocolates in the world, I wasn’t feeling it. I’m more of a milk/white girl. I know I know, white isn’t exactly real chocolate, but that’s just me. Plus I thought 3 slow dough was a bit much. Moving on.
While standing in line, we got a sample of a Greek yogurt. Wow, it was creamy, and tangy, and luscious. No flavor to it, so don’t think Dannon. It’s just the cream speaking for itself and not overly sweet at all. Great stuff. There were also great cheese in the cases for me to gawk at. Mt. Tam! Yay!
Now, usually I’m great at identifying my food, but I’m horrible with this. In the cheese pavilion, you get a sample of three cheeses. I don’t remember what the first one was because they didn’t have a sticker, but the other two was a Crottin from Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery in Sebastopol made from goat’s milk (pictured on the bottom) and a Northern Lights Blue made with cow’s milk from Northern Lights Food in Lakeville, Minnesota. You can blame it on my new friend Marc from Chefectomy that I didn’t get a picture of my cheese plate because he introduced me to his wonderful family before I had the chance to. =) I would have to say that the one I don’t remember at all was my favorite considering that I cringe at goat cheese and I think the blue cheese was about the singe my nose hairs. I mean, give me some credit, knowing that I detest those types of cheeses, I still tried them…only to validate that I do not like them.
After the cheese, we went to meet the Foodbuzzers. They had this for us to keep notes on. Genius!! Thank you again, FB!
Shoutouts go to the folks I met and (reunited with) at the cheese pavilion:
Shannon from shan i am
Ryan from ryanthegirl
Devon from devdogg
Jenn from Table for Two
Joel from Cooking with Words
As Chefectomy and I were chit-chatting about foodbuzz and it’s great aspects, Mrs. Chefectomy and Baby Chefectomy went to get ice cream and came back with some of the most delicious trios I have ever seen.
Trios? What has Michael Mina come and made everyone go his way? Not necessarily. Here, a lot of the pavilions offered flights. You get a taste or two or three of whatever they had to offer. You’re going to see a lot of this coming up. In the ice cream pavilion, there are three themes: Classic, Alternative, and Modern. Each theme has three flavors you can nosh on.
I chose MODERN, so it had the BiRite Creamery Salted Caramel (light brown on the bottom right), Jeni’s Smoked Chocolate (kinda obvious here, buddy), and La Divina Creole Cream Cheese (bottom left). I have had BiRite’s Salted Caramel before, so I knew how fabulous that was. I was not really into the smoked chocolate. Too strong that smoke. I fell in love with the Creole Cream Cheese. I don’t know exactly how it was “Creole,” but was it was rich and creamy. Loved it.
There was this beautiful display of fresh fish. Made me want to steal one and bring it home to Momma.
Here we have another flight. In the cup on the left was a simple blend of albacore tuna, greens, and vinaigrette. The center is a fried sardine on top of a crispy bruschetta with onions. Next to the sardine was a toast topped with salmon - this was not part of the flight, but I got it for $1. In the cup to the right is a salad of squid mixed with capers. I really would have liked some French bread with this flight. Even so, there was so much food. The albacore was a bit plain. Sad to say, even reminded me of canned Chicken of the Sea. The sardine would have been perfect if it didn’t have al those bones. I know that the bones are edible, but I prefer them not to be there. The toast with salad on top was plain also. I liked the squid because it tasted very fresh and I liked the acidity of the capers with it.
Pickles. The mustard apples on that bread smeared with fromage blanc was pretty good, but the okra and asparagus was a bit much. I like pickles, but only the ones you find next to a cheeseburger. =)
Gluten World. Bread. *more angels singing* What would ever happen if I was not allowed to eat bread for the rest of my life? I’d shoot everyone. J/K. I sure love bread though.
There were two lines for the bread: one for pizza and one for the Indian tandoori breads. I called My Sweety K and asked him which line to stay in: the most popular bread with the bigger line or the underdog with the shorter line. He said go for the Indian bread, so I did.
Here you get three kinds: one stuffed with spicy potatoes (the one almost all eaten on the plate), one with garlic chives (biggest piece), and a whole wheat one stuffed with cottage cheese. If you want names, you can read the picture. =P They were served with a mint sauce (green) and tomato (red, duh). Wow, those were seriously some spicy sauces. They were delicious though. I would have loved to have a simple creamy masala sauce for dipping. =) That’s what I usually eat at Indian places: chicken tikka masala and naan. Oh dear. Heaven. Anyway, by the time I was done with these, I felt like Hades and I had a tongue wrestling match - and he won. So…guess where I went…
Ice cream! Part deux! This time, I went for the Alternative. They changed the flavors throughout the day because some were running out and some needed to be featured. I was curious as to what a PLUOT was, and a kind lady in line said it was a cross between a nectarine and a peach. Hmmm. Interesting. I was sold. After I got my cup, I asked the ice cream guy which was which. The pluot sorbetto from Naia is on top, the Cici Mt. Tam to the left just under it, and Laloo’s Lemon Chiffon under all that. I was excited to taste the Lemon Chiffon, but then he said something that broke my heart: it was made with goat’s milk. WHYYYYYYYYY???? *sobs* The pluot sorbetto was refreshing and sweet. The Mt. Tam was rich! I love Mt. Tam. Go Cowgirl Creamery!!! I tried the Lemon Chiffon and even though it has a wonderful tangy taste initially, that goat aftertaste crept up on me. =( Disappointed.
Headed for the Honey and Preserves pavilion because Jenn said there were these adorable little cupcakes that I had to try. BTW, POOR bees.
Honey Cupcake with Rose Cream and Pistachio from Citizen Cake. How adorable. They were really tiny, but one hit the spot. I loved the rose cream with the honey cupcake. It made me want to find a meadow in the middle of the countryside of France and frolic in the grass while eating this. Kind of like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I could have broken out in song Disney-style because this pleased me so much!
Now this had to be the most interesting looking pavilion. It was in you face. Meat meat meat everywhere.
The offerings were a beef jerky from Café Rouge, Salumi Picante from Nopa and Rabbit with Hazelnut also from Café Rouge. The beef jerky was actually pretty good. Not rubbery at all. It still resembled meat and not a piece from a blown out tire. The salumi was my favorite. Spicy and thin. Would have loved this on a piece of French bread with a smear of cheese. Yum. This is the first time I have ever had rabbit, and it almost reminds me of pork! Flavorful. =)
As I was walking out, I ran into the Chefectomy family and they were so kind to give me their unused slow dough. So Chefectomy pointed out the Native Foods pavilion outside, so with my new dough, that is where I went! Thanks to Chefectomy and your wonderful family!
The first is a Traditional White Corn Pasole. Fat corn! I did find it a bit bland though. Second was a Wild Rice Cake with Roasted Corn. This too I found to be bland. Chefectomy suggested I got the Bison and Kidney Bean Stew. It was the best out of everything. I wish I had a piece of French bread to sop up all that stew. This is not my first time having bison, but I found that it wasn’t too different from regular beef.
Back inside, I wanted something sweet and since this was probably going to be my last pavilion, I wanted something good.
Went back to the preserves and got the peach preserves with the fromage roll. I am not usually a jam/jell/preserve type of a girl, but this was delicious. The sweet peaches went well with the roll. =) Simple, yet awesome.
I was going to mingle with the foodbuzzers at the wine pavilion, but it was getting late. So many apologies to the folks I kinda flaked on. I hope you all had a great time!
On my way out, I ran into Chef Charles Phan from the Slanted Door. He was with his family (so cute by the way), and with the urging on my BFF on the phone, I introduced myself to him, shook his hand (holy cow), and I said how much of a fan I was of his work. After what he said at the Asian Culinary Forum, I became a much bigger fan. I am such a chef-groupie. For real. People get sprung off of basketball stars, rock stars, rappers, movie stars…I get sprung off of CHEFS. Yes. Chef Charles Phan made my night.
So I came into this event as a Slow Food novice. To an extent, I pretty much still am. I understand a bit more of the importance of supporting our local resources and buying from our nearby farms. I understand a bit more of the importance of keeping the environment healthy because doing so keeps us healthy also. I still have a lot to learn and I still have things in this movement I have to make sense out of (one water dispensing tent and overpriced fruit juice?); however, I only look forward to discovering more and more as the years go by. San Francisco is such a great place to follow this movement with all the restaurants in our area like Chez Panisse and people like Alice Waters and chefs like Thomas Keller who treat their ingredients like pieces of treasure and farmers and growers who support each other and their causes. I think SF is a model for all of the nation’s cities to look up to. Though I may surrender to a Big Mac once in a while, Slow Food and its nation of people is where it is at, and we are damn lucky to live in a place like San Francisco.
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