This weekend was the weekend of a la carte.
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| Chefs everywhere! |
I’ve been getting some great product sample offers lately (more to come in a forthcoming post!) which has been a really fun new venture for me. Something about being on the forefront of new technologies, new foods, and new ideas just appeals to me greatly.
The stuff I was up to this weekend, then – namely sampling a bevy of the best in food and drinks the Twin Cities has to offer, as well as a bunch of one-time-only theater performances – really fit within this theme. Let me break them each down for you:
Cochon 555
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| Everything pork and everything delicious. |
This event nearly snuck by me, but I was lucky enough to get a chance to attend and WOW – what a stellar show. If you’re not familiar with the Cochon program, you can click here for the website. Basically, it was founded 10 years ago as a way to educate about and celebrate heritage breed pigs. It takes the form of a contest in which the top chefs of a chosen city are each given a pig and very short time frame to process it and cook six unique dishes. The public buys tickets to sample each dish from each chef and vote upon their favorites, and all proceeds are given to a farm sanctuary that raises and shelters heritage breeds of pigs. Many cities host a sommelier competition in tandem – the Minneapolis event did so as well as a party punch competition, both of which rocked – and everyone is treated to a culinary experience that really sparks innovation and exciting new ideas. Local winners are then catapulted to a national competition against the top voted chefs from other cities and receive a slew of really cool prizes like an all-expense paid trip to Rioja, Spain.
This year’s competition was stiff; competing chefs included Timothy Fischer of Loew’s Hotel; Daniel del Prado of Martina; Russell Klein of Meritage; Remy Pettus of Bardo; and Karyn Tomlinson of Corner Table. Tomlinson took home the prize (yay female chefs!!) with a menu of:
- Swedish Meatballs with Sauce Supreme, Dill and Caviar;
- Blood Pudding with Crispy Cured Pork Jowl, Lingonberries and Lady Apple;
- Sunday Ham Sandwich with Milk Roll, Pleasant Ridge Mornay and Black Truffle;
- Swedish Spareribs with Allspice, Apricot and Black Poplar Mushroom;
- Assorted relishes and Chicharron Toffee for the table and
- Apple Pie made with Lard Crust topped with Liver Ice Cream and Pancetta Caramel
Lucky me! I also got to sample the winning wine – which was a spectacular sparkling rose called Les Capriades, NV Méthod Ancestrale ‘Pynoz’ Rose from the Loire Valley, France and was chosen by another smart lady, Sommelier Erin Rolek of Bachelor Farmer – that totally made my night (literally the best wine I’ve ever had. I want to drink it in gallon buckets). My favorite punch of the night was not a winner, but the champion – Dustin Nguyen of Martina, who crafted a “Murakami Tea” combining milk-washed, tea infused Breckenridge Bourbon, makrut liqueur, spearmint, hibiscus, citrus and carbonated water – was certainly no slouch either.
It was a totally luxurious spread and I tried a ton of dishes I’ve never had before. The room was absolutely packed and it was so much fun to see local chefs be challenged and celebrated for their incredible work. My guy is a chef (so I get the inside scoop on this stuff!), and it was so refreshing to hear his excitement about an inclusive, judgement-free zone for people to get extra creative with their dishes. I think this is such a great idea and I’d love to see this happen with different kinds of foods – say an all vegan or vegetarian competition, seafood based, pasta, poultry, etc. Chefs of America, please unite and make this happen!
24 Hour Plays
The next festival was the 24 Hour Plays. I attended the inaugural Minneapolis session last year – click here for more info – and it’s interesting to realize how much an event can change based on who’s involved. I mean objectively art always changes when different people are involved, but I felt that this year was such a leap (into being kind of a downer) from last year. There are many reasons this might be – my money lies squarely on our political climate, the specter of which was deeply embedded throughout these shows – but either way it just felt less fun than last year. There were still some great moments, but overall the tone was so much more somber, and it felt like the artists were a little more jaded than they otherwise might have been. This is a shame, but it can’t be helped.
My favorite sketches were the last two in Act II – a riff on a mashup of Romeo and Juliet and a Shape of Water-style monster love story that only succeeded thanks to the tireless efforts of Tyler Michaels and Stephen Yoakam; and a Pink Panther-style kidnapping parody that started with a huge bang and a delightfully devilish Tony Vierling but unfortunately veered too quickly into overthinking itself. The standout of the first act was a somber, modern remniscence of The Wizard of Oz in which actors of color lost their voices and identities and had to seek them from a wizard; it had lots of potential and a super talented group of artists all around.
Either way, the 24 Hour Plays supports the great cause of arts education, and it allowed me to see my first ever Laura Osnes performance and discover the Hornheads, an absolutely spectacular small brass group that has me eagerly googling any and all upcoming gigs. It’s always a delight to be in the Pantages, which is to my mind one of the most underrated venues in the Twin Cities, and it’s awesome for these artists to have a chance to spin their creative wheels and try something risky and new. I do want to emphasize how HARD this is to participate in. Writing a play under the most luxurious of circumstances is difficult, but to fully realize something in literally a single day is a huge feat, and the fact that anyone is willing to even try it is miraculous. Even if I didn’t find these to be masterpieces they are still a worthwhile and exciting endeavor, and a huge round of applause to all of the artists on and behind stage who donated time, sleep and sanity to move this program forward.