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Archive for category Events

Until We Meat Again

Aug 26

Posted by val in Events | 1 Comment

Behind the scenes at the Orange County BBQ Festival

Costa Mesa, California

Shuji Sakai prepares the Bacon Explosion

Shuji Sakai prepares the Bacon Explosion

Nothing brings back the feeling of summer quicker than the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat. Granted, this is accentuated by the sound of the surf lapping at the shore and the warmth of the overhead sun, but let’s focus on the smoke and meat for the time being. It was impossible to turn down the opportunity to visit the competitors in the annual Orange County BBQ Festival the night before the festival. Each year, corporations, weekend warriors, chefs and grill hobbyists gather at the Orange County Fairgrounds to compete for cash prizes in multiple categories, including chicken, ribs, pork and brisket. The event also raises money for Kristie’s Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Laurie Kotas in 2003 to help improve the quality of life for terminally ill children. Although a few of the contestants do barbeque for their day jobs, do not for one minute doubt the determination and tenacity of the BBQ hobbyists that participate. Many of the team names sound like they may have been derived using a random barbecue name generator. Big Poppa Smokers was comprised of a group of barbecue aficionados from Ernie Ball, including Sterling Ball (son of the guitar string king). Naturally there was representation from firefighters (Cooks N’ Ladders) and law enforcement officers who, in this case, smiled at the obvious porcine references. As the sun set, the air at the fairgrounds was filled with more smoke than at a Grateful Dead concert; many of the competitors were firing up everything from backyard Weber grills to smokers that looked like engineless Hummers. Propane torches were the accelerant de rigueur; we’re not talking one of those candy-ass Coleman blowtorches, but something more akin to the M1A1 Flamethrower. Most of the closet pyromaniacs were more than happy to demonstrate their literal firepower, drastically cutting down the time to create the ideal cooking heat. A film crew from The Food Network kept popping up filming scenes for a reality show called “Family Style” featuring Joey and Melissa Maggiore from the Maggiore restaurant dynasty; it was difficult to tell exactly what the premise of the show will be based on their presence at the BBQ festival. Read the rest of this entry »

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We Celebrate When The Gang’s All Here

Aug 23

Posted by val in Events | 1 Comment

Chinatown Summer Nights

Los Angeles, California

Miss Chinatown sandwiched between two other celebrants

Miss Chinatown sandwiched between two other celebrants

L.A. boasts a decent sized Chinatown, yet it is often culturally overlooked by the rest of the city. This recently prompted several civic organizations to plan and sponsor a festival spanning four Saturday nights in celebration of Chinatown’s diverse culture. Chinatown Summer Nights features DJs set up in several locations with live cooking demonstrations, street performances and participation of many of the local restaurants and shops who stay open late for the event. The festival also features many of L.A.’s food trucks, although oddly enough at the most recent event, only one food truck (Korean Ahn-Joo) was Asian-themed. Having the trucks at the festival was a double-edged sword; on one hand, some of the local restaurants objected to the trucks pulling away their business, but on the other hand, they attracted event-goers that might not normally come to Chinatown otherwise. The food truck population was well represented by the World Fare double-decker bus, Brazilian Ta-Bom, The Surfer Taco truck, Spring Street Smoke House (a BBQ truck), Tropical Shave Ice, the aforemetnioned Ahn-Joo, the Crepe’n Around crepe truck and the Grilled Cheese Truck, which seems to be everywhere these days. Even through the Grilled Cheese Truck had the largest line (which stretched up the block), the other trucks did a brisk business, some closing early after running out of food. Read the rest of this entry »

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Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Aug 9

Posted by val in Events | 2 Comments

17th Annual Oxnard Salsa Festival

Oxnard, California

The stage and hopping dance floor at the Oxnard Salsa Festival

The stage and hopping dance floor at the Oxnard Salsa Festival

Herb likes spicy food, but isn’t much into dancing; his girlfriend Rosemary likes Latin music and goes out cutting the rug every chance she gets. Is there any chance for this relationship? You bet! Send them both to Oxnard, California’s annual Salsa Festival, now in its smash 17th year. It’s a fiery food festival and dance celebration centered on both meanings of the term “salsa”. The quiet coastal city of Oxnard heats up every July as downtown’s Plaza Park and the surrounding area is transformed in to a Latin block party of epic proportions. I was expecting a DJ to be playing Latin music, or one of the local stations blasting its music through a few stacks of speakers, but the event featured live Latin bands, and damned fine ones to boot. A wooden parquet floor was laid out in front of the concert stage, and it was difficult to carve out an area where you could get down without crushing someone’s toes. The dance floor was cordoned off, and just as many people were sitting outside the area enjoying the music. To the left of the stage was a beer garden and to the right a wine tasting tent; despite the free-flowing alcohol, people were well behaved, perhaps because it’s hard to start trouble when you’re having fun. There were several rows of tents selling the typical goods you expect to see at California festivals, but being that this is a salsa festival there was also a variety of vendors selling hot sauce, salsas and even pepper plants. One booth was devoted to the bhut jolokia pepper of India, commonly referred to by Westerners as the ghost chili. Guinness Book of World’s Records recognizes this bad boy as the world’s hottest pepper; for reference, the fiery habanero weighs in at around 300,000 scovile units (denoting the amount of capsaicin, the chemical compound that causes that wonderful burning sensation). The ghost chili boasts a scovile unit rating of over one million, making it a force to be reckoned with on both the input and output phases of consumption. The vendor, Red Hot Foods, offered four levels of hot sauce, with the “milder” versions toned down with that wimpy habanero. Level 4 with the black label is all bhut jolokia, baby, and ready to lay waste to all it comes in contact with. I decided to try some, and when asked which level I wanted, well, I always bet on black. The woman at the booth poured about a quarter of a teaspoon on a tortilla chip, which I subsequently popped into my mouth and let rest on my tongue until the chip started to dissolve. The ensuing chaos was reminiscent of the scene in the movie Alien when the crew of the Nostromo discovers the aliens’ blood to be highly acidic, burning through several decks of the ship. As the chip burned away I could taste the flavor of the pepper, until I swore I could smell the smoke of searing flesh. The sauce burned a hole through my tongue and then started corroding my lower jaw, opening a hole in my neck where the dripping mix of fiery bhut jolokia and liquefied flesh dripped onto the pavement, burning a hole into the asphalt. It felt like that, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

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Where The Streets Have No Name

Aug 2

Posted by val in Events | 2 Comments

LA Street Food Fest

The Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California

The Rose Bowl becomes the Meat and Veggie Bowl

The Rose Bowl becomes the Meat and Veggie Bowl

In terms of U.S. cities, L. A. has one of the largest street food cultures, made popular by the ubiquitous taco trucks and expanded by the somewhat recent gourmet food truck phenomenon. Besides the vehicular street vendors, there are also an army of push cart and folding table vendors, as well as fledgling restaurants springing forth from aspiring chef’s homes and spilling out on to the sidewalks and streets of L.A. The problem these days isn’t how to find something to eat, but how to select a single vendor to satisfy the munchies. Shawna Dawson and Sonja Rasula aspired to bring a seemingly random collection of these vendors together in one place, and to raise money for charity to boot. Dawson and Rasula are co-founders of L.A. Street Food Fest, which held its second extravaganza recently in Pasadena’s fabled Rose Bowl. Before you conjure up images of Kogi’s tires ripping up the finely manicured gridiron, the trucks were parked just outside the stadium with tented booths lined up on either side of the field. Food truck vendors cohabitated with restaurants, pushcarts, taco shacks and caterers essentially leveling the playing field to place the focus on the food, not the delivery system. Truck operators ran (literally) through the tunnels to their trucks where the food was being prepared, while other vendors cooked at the back of their booths or at makeshift kitchens in the bowels of the stadium.

Chuy Tovar (Arandas Imports), Alex Chu (Dim Sum Truck) and Javier Cabral (Teenage Glutster)

Chuy Tovar (Arandas Imports), Alex Chu (Dim Sum Truck) and Javier Cabral (Teenage Glutster)

In the open sun, the food wasn’t the only thing baking, broiling and frying – at the end of the field were two makeshift biergartens where Singha cooled off diners with one of the few cold beverages available (the only water available was from the fountains outside the restrooms). Along the walkway on the second tier, various food vendors set up shop sandwiching in tequila bottlers offering tastings in half-sized shots. A section outside to the right of the stadium featured vendors of non-food items and a small (but very popular) section where ice cream appeared to be the only thing actually served out of trucks. Attendees holding VIP tickets were granted access to the event at 4 PM before the teeming masses yearning to eat, yet the lines continued to grow, even before the 6 PM general admission crowd swarmed in. As if this amazing variety of unique and delicious food wasn’t enough, a DJ spun music to dine by followed by bands Warpaint and The Deadly Syndrome (who provided live music on a concert stage at the end of the field). Throughout the event, the stadium’s Diamond Vision screens were displaying tweets sent to @LAfoodfest, utilizing the system that put many of the food trucks on the map to the instant gratification of the iPhone-laden vendors and patrons. Read the rest of this entry »

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Reservations Required

Jun 19

Posted by val in Events | 4 Comments

An Evening With Anthony Bourdain

Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles CA

If Bourdain needs a stunt double, he has my card

If Bourdain needs a stunt double, he has my card

“Hey, Val, if you could do anything you wanted for a career, what would you choose?” Oh, I don’t know, I’d like to visit exotic and unusual places, immerse myself in the local culture, partake of the ethnic cuisine those places are known for, seek out some hidden treasures and then share my stories with everyone using a variety of media. “You mean like Anthony Bourdain?” Yeah, like Anthony Bourdain. That guy has the best job in the world, and he and I both know that. I know that because that’s what I want to do when I grow up; he knows that because he mentions it on a regular basis, including recently at a show at Royce Hall on the campus of U.C.L.A. Knowing that the irreverent and self-described snarky celebrity chef was going to be in town, my wife Claudia (who cheerfully puts up with my sense of adventure) treated me to a VIP pass to Bourdain’s show, “An Evening With Anthony Bourdain”. This set us back almost the price of dinner at The French Laundry, but included a copy of Bourdain’s new book, “Medium Raw”, a limited edition numbered poster, preferred seating and a meet-and-greet following the show with hors d’oeuvres catered by Wilshire Restaurant. I had never been to Royce Hall (let alone the UCLA campus), so I decided to leave early to negotiate the water buffalo stampede that is Los Angeles traffic. Since I arrived early and had some time to kill, I wandered around campus a little. Royce Hall features two grand brick towers, the entrance sheltered by cathedral arched ceilings and iron chandeliers – from the outside it looked more like an old English church than a concert hall. The hall itself is beautiful in its simplicity, with the interior lined with brick (a seemingly poor choice from an acoustic standpoint), capped at the top of the stage by a massive pipe organ. I’m not sure if Anthony Bourdain, his management, the promoter or Royce Hall decided that preferred seating was halfway back in Row O, but obviously I wasn’t asked for my preference or I would have been in spitting distance. Waving my laminated “backstage pass” on a lanyard did nothing to get me a better seat than people who paid regular price. Read the rest of this entry »

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Up

May 31

Posted by val in Events | No Comments

Temecula, California

Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival

Claudia and I wave from a tethered balloon

Claudia and I wave from a tethered balloon

Think of an annual festival where huge numbers of hot air balloons take to the skies and what comes to mind? OK, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, sure, I get that. But what if you add in the celebration of wine to the mix? Well, since 1983, that’s exactly what’s been on the bill at the Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival at Lake Skinner Park in Southern California. The festival has all the trappings you would expect from an outdoor festival – a variety of food, entertainment on multiple stages and rows of vendors selling crafts, wine and food – but the big draws are the balloons and wines representing the finest Temecula Valley wineries. To get the most out of the festival it is highly recommended that you get there early. Since the festival is held annually in June, the balloons take off early in the morning while the sky is still cool (the trick to getting them airborne is getting the air inside the balloon hotter than the air outside). When the air is too warm, the balloons have difficulty getting airborne. Don’t bypass the Temecula event simply because the New Mexico festival gets more press – I easily counted almost a hundred balloons, with most of them airborne at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

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Even Artichokes Have Hearts

May 27

Posted by val in Events | 3 Comments

Annual Castroville Artichoke Festival

Castroville, California

Everything is bigger in Castroville

Everything is bigger in Castroville

The artichoke is a confusing vegetable; Curly Howard once threatened, “I’d like to meet the guy who invented this barbed-wire pineapple”. The Globe artichoke we’re familiar with in the U.S. is a native of northern Africa and southern Europe, and is actually the unopened bud of the Cynara cardunculus (a member of the thistle family). It is a heavily armored flower with thick, broad, scale-like petals ending in thorns; these guard the purple, fuzzy part of the flower that in its immature stage is referred aptly as the “choke” (describing what will result if you try to eat it). One can only imagine the brave soul who first assumed that they were edible, and then figured out how to eat it – it’s highly likely that he collaborated with the first person to eat a lobster. Artichokes have been known in popular culture for millennia; as the story goes, the Greek god Zeus seduced a young mortal maiden named Cynara and brought her back to his swinging pad in Mount Olympus. Living the life of a goddess didn’t appeal to her, so she left Mount Olympus, much to the displeasure of Zeus (who quickly and neatly turned her into the first artichoke, thus the vegetable’s scientific name). Cute story, to be sure, but with all this European folklore surrounding the armadillo of the vegetable world, how does a California town on the Central Coast come to be known as “The Artichoke Center of The World”? Read the rest of this entry »

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Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog

May 17

Posted by val in Events | 2 Comments

Halloween in Salem, Massachuestts

Time in the pillory caps off a visit to the Dungeon Museum

Time in the pillory caps off a visit to the Dungeon Museum

Salem, Massachusetts is as synonymous with Halloween as Times Square is with New Year’s Eve, and with good reason; Salem has the dubious reputation of having burned witches at the stake in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Of course, reputation and fact are often muddy bedfellows – most of the “witch” trials took place near Salem, and of the more than 150 men and women accused, nineteen were hung and one was pressed to death in an effort to get him to confess. Since witches fall nicely into the imagery of Halloween, Salem has become the undisputed capital of Halloween celebration. It is the one night each year that local attractions are open late into the evening; the streets fill with revelers in what is undoubtedly the world’s largest annual masquerade party. In recent years it has digressed into more frat night than fright night, but it is still the definitive place to appreciate creativity and the art of the masquerade. Read the rest of this entry »

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Extending The Olive Branch

Mar 22

Posted by val in Events | No Comments

El Paso del Robles, California
Paso Robles Olive Festival

It is difficult to miss the Olive Festival entrance

It is difficult to miss the Olive Festival entrance

It’s hard to imagine a festival centered on the humble olive, but since 2004, the city of El Paso del Robles, California has taken celebrating the Middle Eastern fruit tree to extravaganza status. The inhabitants of the town (generally referred to simply as Paso Robles) needed something to help them recover from a devastating magnitude 6.6 earthquake that struck on December 22, 2003. The quake destroyed a historic clock tower and the Mastagni Building, as well as creating serious damage to other structures including the 1908 Carnegie Library building in City Park. The clock tower was rebuilt, the library restored and the park was selected as the site of the Olive Festival. The festival increases in popularity each year – the region has the perfect climate for growing olives and grapes, resulting in the participation of a slew of olive orchards and vineyards. You would think the festival would focus on selling jars of little green olives with their tiny pimento turtle heads sticking out, and you would be partially right, but it is dedicated to all things olive. Read the rest of this entry »

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A Story That’s Not Hard To Swallow

Mar 18

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San Juan Capistrano, California

Fiesta de Las Golondrinas

Close up view of the swallows nests

Close up view of the swallows nests

In 1776, while the English colonists were throwing down with the British in the east, Spain was having its way with the Acjachemen band of native Americans in the west, founding a mission in the place now known as San Juan Capistrano, California. San Juan Capistrano was the 7th mission founded in Alta California, and boasts the oldest structure still in use in California (the Serra Chapel). When the stone church was built (a departure from the adobe used in the other mission churches) it was one of the tallest structures in California, making its high walls an attractive substitute for the cliffs where the Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) had built their homes for milennia. The swallows built their mud nests at the mission, flying off to the western coast of South America in the winter, returning again in the spring to procreate.

Ruins of the old stone church

Ruins of the old stone church

The mission inhabitants noted that the swallows “miraculously” returned to the mission on the Catholic feast day of Saint Joseph (March 19) each year, giving the event divine significance. Not being naturalists, they failed to realize that the reason the pagan feather dusters returned on March 19 was not because of Saint Joesph, but because of the vernal equinox – spring. Yes, spring, when thoughts of procreation fill their pointy little heads. Swallows reuse their nests year after year (not surprising knowing the amount of time it takes to make them, one beakful of mud at a time), so returning to the mission or any tall cliff-like structure where they had previously built their dream home is a foregone conclusion. The odd fact is that the individual bird does not reuse the same nest; the colony shares the nests, and it’s first-come, first-served. Their aerial dance when choosing their nests is a sight to behold; solo pilots drop out of the swirling cloud to claim the choice real estate. Read the rest of this entry »

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I Think I’ll Go Eat Worms

Mar 14

Posted by val in Events, Tasty Animals, USA | No Comments

Eat Bug Eat Event

Machine Project, Los Angeles, California

Cooking the wriggling superworms

Cooking the wriggling superworms

Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines a worm as “any of numerous relatively small elongated usually naked and soft-bodied animals (as a grub, pinworm, tapeworm, shipworm, or slowworm)”. In my mind, I picture the night crawlers I used to get to go fishing in Barton Creek, but since the term applies to the shape of these invertebrates, it also covers the creepy crawly larval stage of beetles, butterflies and moths. When I heard that Machine Project (a storefront space that experiments in technology, science, and the arts) was holding an event entitled “Eat Bug Eat”, I was intrigued. Although it sounds like the title of a Japanese monster movie, the event was held to educate people in the culture and custom of eating insects. Although I’d eaten insects many times before, from the crunchy snack-like hormigas culonas to the grassy-tasting silkworm pupae, I succumbed to the come-hither of wax moth larvae tacos. Read the rest of this entry »

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King For A Day

Mar 1

Posted by val in Events | 3 Comments

Pismo Beach, California

Monarch Day

No expense spared to herald Monarch Day

No expense spared to herald Monarch Day

Europe has its crowned heads, and North America has is own monarchs – the Monarch butterfly. Probably the most recognizable butterfly in North America (or at least a close tie with the yellow and black tiger swallowtail), the Monarch’s reign ranges from the southernmost parts of Canada in the summer to Mexico. Unlike other American butterflies that can survive the cold weather, the Monarch migrates south to Mexico and in the west congregates north through California along the coast. One particular vacation paradise for the Monarchs is the Pismo Beach Monarch Grove, located in a thick stand of eucalyptus at the south end of the North Beach Campground. The Monarchs begin arriving in October, and the height of their population is at the beginning of February, prompting February 5th to be declared Monarch Day by the California State Legislature (California Western Monarch Day Bill/SCR 66). Read the rest of this entry »

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O What A Glorious Sicht

Feb 8

Posted by val in Events | 2 Comments

Scotland, UK

Burns Night Supper

The guest of honor - the haggis

The guest of honor - the haggis

Few events celebrate both a famous poet and a national dish quite like the Scottish celebration that is the Burns Supper. The event is traditionally held on the birthday of “Scotland’s favorite son” and national poet, Robert Burns. Burns was born on January 25 in 1759 and on that night it is not uncommon throughout Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom to gather to memorialize not only Burns, but also haggis, the national dish of Scotland he made famous. The annual Burns Supper generally follows a particular structure, with the dish immortalized in Burns’ “Address to a Haggis” being the guest of honor. A true Scotsman would either be touched by Burbank’s Buchanan Arms holding a Burns Supper, or recoil in horror of having Americans give it a go for olde Rabbie Burns. Read the rest of this entry »

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Spam, Wonderful Spam!

Jan 18

Posted by val in Events, Tasty Animals, USA | 6 Comments

SPAM (Honolulu, Hawaii and Austin, Texas)

SPAM, wonderful SPAM

SPAM, wonderful SPAM

What do you mean, “Ech”? I’m not sure where Spam gets its bad reputation; perhaps it’s because it comes in a can. Food snobs turn their nose up at it, likening it to the meat version of Cheez Whiz. Even the great food explorer Andrew Zimmern expresses his disdain for it. You know a food is feared when people prefer blowfish to it, but Spam also generates somewhat of a cult following. We’ll talk about where Spam gets elevated to cause célèbre status, but first let’s discuss its humble origin. Spam was originally made by Hormel Foods of Austin, Minnesota way back in 1937. Although alternating versions of the name attribute it to an alliteration of “Shoulder of Pork and hAM” or the simpler “SPiced HAM”, Hormel maintains that the name is an adjective, and insists that it is spelled with all upper-case letters. One of my personal favorite plays on the acronym is “Something Posing As Meat.” The ingredients state it is chopped pork shoulder with added ham meat. It gained a surge in popularity during World War II, especially in Hawaii where fresh meat was difficult to come by. American soldiers ate it with most of their meals, and it continues to be eaten by more Hawaiians that anywhere else on earth per capita. As I discovered on a trip to Austin, Minnesota (for non-Spam purposes), you can smell it throughout the town (those of you living near Heinz in Pittsburgh or General Foods in Woburn, Massachusetts know what I’m talking about). Read the rest of this entry »

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Camptown Racers Sing This Song

Dec 21

Posted by val in Events | 1 Comment

Pasadena, California
The Doo Dah Parade

Senor Groucho performs a public sax act behind a trike

Senor Groucho performs a public sax act behind a trike

What if you lived in Pasadena, California and woke one Sunday morning on New Year’s Day to take in the annual tradition of the Tournament of Roses Parade only to find out that it wasn’t being held? This isn’t unusual, since the parade is never held on Sunday when New Year’s Day falls there (it is held January 2nd). In 1978, that exact situation occurred, and several friends who were regulars at a now-defunct bar called Chromo’s took advantage of the situation to present what would amount to the anti-Rose Parade, the Doo Dah Parade. Although the Rose Parade is something everyone should do once in a lifetime (and probably only once), there’s only so much flowers, happiness and joy you can take while nursing a Gran Patrón Platinum hangover. Sometimes you just want Rickey Rat instead of Mickey Mouse, and when that happens, the Doo Dah Parade is your ticket to paradise. For the Doo Dah, there’s no need to do the overnight street camping required for a good free seat at the Rose Parade, but you also don’t need to worry about getting covered in eggs, tortillas, shaving cream and Silly String (if only I were making this up). Of course, this year it appears you need to be good at dodging tortillas and marshmallows. The worst that could happen is getting dragged into the action on the street or getting hit with a meat projectile (more on this later). Read the rest of this entry »

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