No Introductions Necessary

Tonight my boss took me out for a little treat to the New York Taste 2008 Food Tasting because I've been working so hard. The event was really awesome. I tasted dishes from Adour Alain Ducasse, Per Se, Aureole, Craft, Le Cirque, Bar Boulud, and of course Morimoto. I was surprised to see many of the top chefs at the event such as Masaharu Morimoto, Marcus Samuelsson, April Bloomfield, Jonathan Benno, and Anita Lo. But then again some of these chefs are so big now they really don't cook too much in their respective kitchen so why not go out there and schmooze with the crowd. Anita Lo was walking around like a one eyed hunch back. She, maybe, should have stayed in the kitchen. My favorite dish of the night was Michael Laiskonis' dessert tasting of brown butter cream, sweet potato, pistachio, and red wine caramel. It was so fucking good I would have licked it off the floor. It was so good I went back for seconds, and then thirds but by that time it was all gone and they had to shut down their booth. It was like caramel pudding with crack sprinkled on top. No wonder Michael won last year's James Beard award for outstanding pastry chef award. My boss totally spoiled me by getting VIP tickets which was so worth it because you get to go inside an hour before the regular tickets. And let me tell you once general admission starts the whole place gets so crowded. With that extra hour you can leisurely visit each booth without fighting all the hungry people. And plus you get a really cool gift bag at the end. Oh my god I thought I was going to die carrying it! Inside a nice sturdy canvas bag was a big bottle of tomato sauce, an awesome Stella beer glass, two cookbooks, chocolate, vitamins, nail polish, eye cream, hand soap, soda, alcohol, mints, set of pajamas, etc. The best part of the night, other then dying after eating Le Bernardin's dessert tasting, was meeting Morimoto. His dish was an amazingly delicious Foie Gras Chawan Mushi, which I also had a second helping of. Morimoto seemed really sweet and nice and sooo friendly. He was being very silly and enticing everyone to try his dish, even spoon feeding them if they had too many plates in hand. He is an amazing chef, althought I'm not a fan of his NY branch Morimoto, the Philly branch has much better quality of food, and he seemed down to earth. The type of guy you can knock back a beer with at a local pub. I think I have a little crush on him!