ArcaMax

Jeffrey Zakarian attended. I wouldn’t mind meeting him. I watch him regularly on “Chopped” on the Food Network. He’s also an Iron Chef Champion. I respect his opinions and he’s certainly got a resume to back up his critiques. I think I’d rather meet him in a different setting though. I’m not a groupie. I don’t have one bone of groupie in me.

Art Smith was there. Art Smith was Oprah’s private chef at one point. He then opened up a restaurant called Table 52. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary at Table 52. Get it? 25...52?

Takashi Yagahashi is a James Beard Award Winner. His restaurant Takashi is about six blocks from my house. I can go there and Table 52 anytime I want. Yagahashi’s second restaurant is called Slurping Turtle and specializes in Japanese comfort food – meaning – noodle bowls. Too high-carb for me.

And the last big name I saw on the list is Rick Bayless. I have been a big Rick Bayless fan since he opened his restaurants in 2007. My guess is my husband and I were probably in the list of his first 1000 customers at Frontera Grill. Lines used to form of people waiting to get in. We had to travel from Madison, Wisconsin, at the time to go to the restaurant. We made it a priority. His food is great!

His top-end restaurant Topolobampo is on my list of the top three Mexican-gourmet restaurants in the country. It’s a favorite of the Obamas when they are in town too.

So that rounds out the glitterati. There were several other chefs involved from Chicago; dozens even, but their involvement was not spelled out.

Now imagine this huge, football field-sized tented area. Inside are all the wine and liquor vendors. On the perimeter are restaurants offering food tastings. It’s the ratio I have a problem with. This year I went through the advertising and counted approximately nine restaurants that might have offered something to eat. I count in excess of 200 who offered something to drink.

That harkens back to my “great place to get drunk but not a great place to eat” comment. Don’t get me wrong. I like a wine tasting and liquor sampling event as much as the next gal. It was interesting. No lines of any length at any of the wine and liquor tastings. You could keep going back for more and more…and more. At one food line I got in line with my glass of wine. By the time I got to the front of the line my husband had gone back to the wine tent two or three times to get us refills. That line was over and hour long and I was standing in the sun. I was not a particularly happy camper but I was trying to keep my excitement level up. When we did get there the chef was handing out tastings of a few items. None of them was bigger than a l’amuse-buche. So I was still hungry! I never got to eat enough to justify more wine and liquor consumption so that was enough of that.

We did go to one lecture on steak that was informative. I knew one of the speakers from my past. I had not seen him in over 30 years. I had worked for him at one point. So that was interesting and a nice flashback.

You could spend another $175 for a separate wine tasting that is Grand Cru level wines so that could have been a learning experience and a good tasting for sure but if I were going to spend $350 on a wine or two you can imagine I’d buy a couple of bottles of wine that I already know are GREAT and have a private tasting with a couple of close friends rather than risk standing in muddy grass or balancing on hardwood sidewalks.

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