62. April 25th, 2011 Picture.

[Note] Sorry for the recent stretch without posts, but you see, my dearest friend Erin got married over the weekend, and I was just far too busy with bridesmaid duties to get any writing done.  I had a fabulous time and Erin was beautiful, as I totally expected.  You'll see it in full in about a year when I actually get to October posts.  But until then, let's backtrack to April, shall we?

In and around Boston, one of the newest crazes is pop up restaurants, this is in addition to the sweeping craze of food trucks - I love me a good food truck!  On April 25th Ratty and I attended an event that was a mix of a pop up restaurant and an episode of Chopped/Iron Chef all rolled into one.  It's called 'Chef Louie Night', and guess what, it was started by a chef named Louie, so clever.  The concept is that he hosts other chefs at a neutral restaurant, this time at Jerry Remy's near Fenway, and the chefs get a bunch of surprise ingredients at the beginning of the day, they then have about 6 hours to prepare appetizers, dinner and dessert for 50 ticket holding guests that evening.  Talk about mildly stressful, huh?

Included with our tickets [which Ratty WON on Twitter, which was awesome because I really didn't plan on going if I had to pay full price] was a free glass of 90+ wine.  I opted for the white and it was really yummy.  I guess 90+ wines is the same idea as 2 Buck Chuck or Bin Endz, in that they get the end of the barrels from vineyards all around the world, package it up and are able to sell it at a steep discount under their own label.  This means that you get pretty fab wine at a much cheaper price, plus they only take wines that are rated 90 or higher, hence the name 90+.  You learn something new everyday!

The whole event was family style, meaning we got it sit with a bunch of people, which would have been nice if we actually liked the people at our table, but we didn't.  Le sigh, no new friends for us!  Once we took our seats they showed footage of the days prep, we saw the chefs receive all the ingredients and watch the various steps and dramz that happened along the way.  This particular Chef Louie Night included a chef from Boston and a chef from New York competing against each other, though we didn't know what courses each of the teams had been assigned.  Had to keep our votes impartial!

My dinner photos ended up coming out really dark, but I'll include them anyway because that's what I do.  I would have turned on the flash, but the people at our table were down right annoying and I didn't feel like dealing with their stupid questions.  At one point, when Chef Louie was actually explaining the dishes I had to 'shhhh' the dude sitting next to me.  I then told him he was being super rude whichhh inevitably made it awkward, but I didn't care.  So yea, no flash.

I honestly couldn't even tell you what the courses were, but I know that one of them had fiddlehead ferns and they were SO amazing.  I'd been kind of obsessed with them for a bit, but had yet to try them.  Do you ever get obsessive over things you've never seen or tried?  I do, all the time.  I was obsessed with Nantucket before ever even visiting and right now I'm about ready to sell my first born child for an iphone, so yea, I get obsessive sometimes.  But it's cool, at least I know it and own it.
 

The second entree course [yes there were two to make sure that the playing field was even between the two contestants] was a mix of shrimp and rice and it was to die for.  I'd never had a shrimp with the head still on it and though I know from watching Top Chef that the best flavor is IN the head, I couldn't bring myself to eat it.  It just looked like a giant bug and I wasn't about to do it.  No way, Jose.  I could never be a judge on any food show despite my love of food.  How's that riddle for you.

The dessert was a rhubarb 'Oreo' and this had everyone in the crowd ohhing and ahhing and straight up moaning.  It was really good.  I think this course was the clincher for the winner because it was the star of the night.  The win ended up going to the Boston Chef, which really exited the crowd and made me think that it might have somehow been rigged, which I would totally support and appreciate - we can't have New Yorkers beating us!

After the dinner, voting and awards were over the crowd stuck around for a private party/beruit tourney where the prize was a trip to Vegas - no seriously, an everything paid for trip to Vegas.  If I were any good at beer pong I would have opted to play, but I'm horrible  sprinkled with a few games of just okay, so the two of us were merely spectators.  Maybe next time it will be a competition that I'm actually good at, like knowing about celebrity relationships.  Maybe.