Hi everyone! I just got back from an amazing trip in San Francisco, and I have soooo much to share with you! I’m actually quite proud of the amount of activites I packed into 9 days, but I’m going to start with the reason for the trip: the 2011 Foodbuzz Festival!
This was my first Foodbuzz Festival, as well as my first time in sunny California, so I was super psyched. It kicked off with a Welcome Reception sponsored by Sabra Hummus. In the center of the banquet room at the spacial Terra Gallery was a table full of hummus and hummus-based appetizers. There was also plenty of wine to go around! Sadly my photos were out of focus due to the low lighting, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
Right away I met tons of fantastic food bloggers from around the country. In fact, the very first person I met was Coco of OperaGirlCooks, a blog I coincidentally found after the opera-themed party I held for my sister. I thought finding the blog then was serendipitous.. well how about meeting the girl herself! We hit it off right away and had a ton of fun.
When we went upstairs for the Welcome Dinner, I was happy to see she agreed with me on the right way to kick off the meal. ^_^
All of the food was delicious, but my hands-down favorite was the pork belly. It was cooked to perfection and shared the plate with pickled shiitakes, a chile morita vinaigrette, and roasted romesco florets. When looking through my photos I was stunned to find I hadn’t photographed the dish: geez, I must have eaten it too fast! Thankfully after a weekend with food bloggers, I got really good a remembered to photograph everything, and usually before digging in, too. Luckily I remembered to take a photo of my other plate before I’d devoured too much of it.
This was the food from the buffet station: Salt cod cake with caramelized leek compote; beet ravioli with goat cheese; snapper ceviche shooter; lentil “to-go” box with artichoke hearts, fennel and escarole; Vietnamese shrimp and veggie spring roll; and a savory tart of Tuscan kale, leek and ricotta salata.
After all that, I left feeling more than satisfied and excited for the rest of the weekend. I’d been feeling like I was on the brink of getting sick (which is a horrible feeling at the beginning of a vacation), not to mention jet lagged, so sadly, I skipped the classes on Saturday morning. I loaded up on vitamin C and got some extra zzz’s and headed down for the Taste Pavillion in the afternoon. What’s a Taste Pavillion, you ask? More food, and tons of it! Head over to part 2 to read all about it!