CityMeals on Wheels Creme de la Creme Charity Event

Wow! is all I can say.

Click here.  Read the top, then scroll down to the last comments.

*jumping up and down*  Yes, I won!  Me!  I won!  I WON!!! 

The charity in question, by the way, CityMeals on Wheels, is an excellent organization that provides meals to those who are unable to leave their homes (the elderly, the bedridden), and is awesome.  I highly recommend them if you’re looking for a charity to donate money to.  A lot of money was raised last night for them, so I was happy to hear that 🙂

I didn’t get to take pictures of everything, and admittedly, I don’t recall what everything was… but I will note what dishes were yum and which weren’t!  Unfortunately, I was also feeling sick from lunch, and eating all this butter didn’t help that much… haha.  We didn’t eat as much as we’d have liked…

Melon, miso ice cream… I really liked the ice cream, it was mild and creamy… the melon was also very good.

Prawns and salmon plates from Patroon

The salmon dish from Patroon – it was wrapped around something extremely creamy in texture, I want to say avocado but it didn’t tasted like avocado.  I actually really liked this dish quite a bit.

The prawn dish was fairly standard, however, and wasn’t quite as interesting.  I also found it a bit hard to eat; though they’d removed the tails, there was still a bit of shell at the top, leaving a lot of wasted prawn uneaten.

Gazpacho with a tomato sorbet… a lot of people seemed to be avoiding this table, I suppose because of the tomato-salmonella outbreak right now, but it was pretty yummy, though I’ve never been a fan of cold soups much, so.

Plating lamb

This was only alright, it was a bit larger than you’d want to stick entirely in your mouth, and biting a piece off proved unwieldy.  The taste was only alright, and yes, I do like lamb.

Roasted squab, offered by the same table.  I actually really liked this dish; the squab was meaty, tender, and succulent; not overcooked and didn’t lack for flavor.  I wanted more, actually, but still so many more tables to try!

My partner-in-eating, whom I’d brought along simply because she rocks at these kinds of events, handed me this soup so I’m not sure where it came from nor what it was exactly.  It was very buttery, and the skewer – I regret not lifting it to photograph it in its glory – had seafood items strung along it, I believe oyster, mussel, some veggies, it was chewy in that good way that cooked mollusks are – and after I ate that, drinking the soup had the entire flavor of them imparted throughout it.  I was very pleased.

This mini-blini sat atop what I believe was tuna, it was a tiny bite, and not very memorable unfortunately.

Ah, what have we here?  Sea urchin, roe, seaweed… served at the same table as…

Scallop pannacotta with roe!

Each table was meant to be offering one dish, a classic, paying homage to a famed French chef (every table was assigned a different one), and then their new spin on the same dish.  This was one of the few tables that really showcased that.  Unfortunately neither dish really did it for me; the first, while yummy, sea urchin just does not play well with a lot of other flavors, so going around tasting other dishes afterward, my mouth still tasting of uni (sea urchin) kind of bothered me.  The second one- the pannacotta’s flavor was too mild to really translate and transcend into something wonderful.

A terrible picture of lobster tail poached in butter with Balinese peppercorn and carrot.  This was well, lobster, though I did appreciate how the peppercorn made its presence known ever so gently in the background.

Oh my gosh… this dish has to be the sole reason I nearly completely lost my appetite.  So sad.  I believe it was offered by Brasserie, and we wound up getting the very last piece (we split it).  Foie gras steamed in a cabbage leaf.  Unlike many people, I like cabbage.  I like most vegetables, so that had nothing to do with my revulsion at this dish.  It also takes a lot for me to actually be disgusted, thoroughly disgusted by a food. 

Steamed foie gras has to be it.  The texture, the creaminess, the fattiness, none of it translates well with soggy cabbage and steaming as its cooking method.  I was just so thoroughly grossed out by this dish that I didn’t sample their other dish, scallops in curry en papillote, which they’d wrapped in what appeared to be plastic wrap, and closed with a wooden clothes pin.  Points for cute closure device; minus points for using plastic wrap. 

Another disappointing dish, for a different reason.  The sign said “Kobe beef braised short ribs with morels and chive essence”.  Okay, that sounds pretty good.  But when I began eating it, every piece I picked up was a morel.  Not one short rib bit.  And I’m positive that the people plating knew this, but chose not to mention to us that hey, there’s no short ribs left.  Ok…

Lobster and macaroni gratin.  Another disappointing dish.  Not enough cheese!  Not enough oomph or flavor.

I sincerely don’t recall what this was, but it tasted okay.  I was feeling seriously nauseous at this point from all the food… I feel sad now that I didn’t try more stuff.  I couldn’t even look at any of the other foie gras items because of my huge disappointment earlier.

StB’s hazelnut cake.  She seemed to like it.  I refused to eat at this point (instead I was drinking “Grown Up Soda” which I found I really liked!).

Jacques Torres’ chocolate drink… it wasn’t hot.  It was bittersweet, so that was good, though it was interesting to drink chocolate that wasn’t cold or hot, just room temperature.

A story of how dorky I am: I received press releases back in December about David Burke’s cheesecake lollipop tree.  At the time, it sounded interesting but I can’t eat cheesecake, so I dismissed it.  So last night, we were walking around one last time and I saw someone putting lollipops on a plate, and at first, I thought, “Hmm,” then, before I even saw the “trees” above, I blurted out “Ooh! it’s David Burke’s cheesecake lollipops!” and squealed a little.  The man putting them on the plate looked up at me, smiled, and handed me one, so I blushingly took it, then he handed StB one as well.  We walked away, and I mumbled, “That was David Burke, wasn’t it?” and she said “Yes…”  Hahahaha oops.  Utter dork. 

I have to admit though, I’m not a fan of cheesecake, so I was hesitant, but when I bit into it, I wanted another one.  The outside of mine (a chocolate cookie crusted one) broke open and the cheesecake within wasn’t dense and heavy like most in my experience, it was creamy, slightly oozy, and super light.  I actually wanted to go back for another one, but my stomach was still bothering me (boo…) so I couldn’t put another one in there.  Darn.

The very last dish we sampled for the night was a chocolate truffle souffle.  Super hot and super tasty.  I liked it, but I was also glad that the eating had stopped.

A number of tables, by the time we got to them, had run out of food and stopped serving for the night, unfortunately.  We missed out on quite a lot of dishes – there were 70 or so – and the above is pretty much everything we ate.  I should mention that there were a lot of drink sponsors – wineries, Fiji water was generously giving out bottles of water, and a bunch of the famed mixologists from around the city were also on hand to mix drinks.  Everything was well set up, though it did get extremely crowded and was hard to walk around or get food for a little bit. 

Overall, I had a great time, and am glad that the proceeds went to such a great charity- who did an awesome job organizing, btw.  We also received goodie bags that had assorted item from the sponsors, including Fiji water, a Gourmet cookbook (giNORmous, it was so heavy lugging that thing home!), and other great stuff that will definitely be put to good use, all packed into a great canvas bag, great for smaller grocery shopping trips. 

Thanks to Serious Eats, I got to attend an event that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.  I saw so many famous chefs – Nobu Matsuhisa was walking around! – and got to eat a lot of food that was delicious (and some, not so much).  It was awesome!