After becoming fans of the strangely interesting Iron Chef show on Food TV, it sounded intriguing to us to see a similar style of live cooking competition tonight among five Nashville chefs called Iron Fork 2009 sponsored by the town's best entertainment publication, The Nashville Scene.
It was held at the beautiful Country Music Hall of Fame downtown and the price of admission (part of which went to charity) included as much free food samples as we could handle (we got full within the first hour we were there, and there was tons of food still left when we left) and three adult beverage tickets including access to their Blue Moon Beer Garden.
The secret ingredient for this competition announced before the one-hour competition began (another aspect of the Iron Chefs show) was purple asparagus harvested earlier in the day from a local farm. Larger than normal asparagus, this colorful vegetable had to be used in two separate dishes that had to be prepared and presented within 60 minutes to four different judges.
The winner, Jeremy Barlow of Tayst Restaurant, and his staff worked right in front of us and one of their dishes was a beautiful yummy-looking halibut entree. This is a relatively new annual event for Nashville and was not without its problems...the beer garden kegs were a bust giving much more foam than actual beer, they ran out of bottled beer fairly early as well (probably because of the draught problem), and the cooking competition area had some obscured sight lines at times, but overall it was a lot of fun and something we would definitely considered doing again next year when, as they promised on the way out tonight, "would be bigger and better." We can't wait to eat and see!
In the den of our home we have mounted on the walls 26 different framed collages representing 34 years of ticket stubs, photos and other memorabilia from our life together. As we were working on our 18th year, we thought maybe it was time to get a little more organized in remembering what we have done. This blog was the answer.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Fork It, Let's Go See a Cooking Competition
After becoming fans of the strangely interesting Iron Chef show on Food TV, it sounded intriguing to us to see a similar style of live cooking competition tonight among five Nashville chefs called Iron Fork 2009 sponsored by the town's best entertainment publication, The Nashville Scene.
It was held at the beautiful Country Music Hall of Fame downtown and the price of admission (part of which went to charity) included as much free food samples as we could handle (we got full within the first hour we were there, and there was tons of food still left when we left) and three adult beverage tickets including access to their Blue Moon Beer Garden.
The secret ingredient for this competition announced before the one-hour competition began (another aspect of the Iron Chefs show) was purple asparagus harvested earlier in the day from a local farm. Larger than normal asparagus, this colorful vegetable had to be used in two separate dishes that had to be prepared and presented within 60 minutes to four different judges.
The winner, Jeremy Barlow of Tayst Restaurant, and his staff worked right in front of us and one of their dishes was a beautiful yummy-looking halibut entree. This is a relatively new annual event for Nashville and was not without its problems...the beer garden kegs were a bust giving much more foam than actual beer, they ran out of bottled beer fairly early as well (probably because of the draught problem), and the cooking competition area had some obscured sight lines at times, but overall it was a lot of fun and something we would definitely considered doing again next year when, as they promised on the way out tonight, "would be bigger and better." We can't wait to eat and see!
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3 comments:
OK, admit it Rob, you just went for the beer garden.
Ever wonder why draught is pronounced "Draft?" Why don't they just spell it "draft." Upity English. Or is that a Scott term? If it is a Scott or Irish term its probably right. Never mind.
Good question, Craig. According to Wikipedia (man, I love that site) draught is of English origin with Germanic roots as well. Maybe a good topic for my other blog sometime.
Can't say I went solely for a "Blue Moon" beer garden. The taste (and quality) of Blue Moon seems to have gone way downhill in the last few years since Ann.-Busch took it over and you know my ill-will towards that greedy corporate giant. Again, another good topic for my other blog. The food, as it should be, was definitely the star of Iron Fork.
By the way...best joke of the evening was...
"I can't wait for Plastic Spork 2009 sponsored by Taco Bell!"
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