Restaurant Widow

A Few Pictures from Yesterday's Competition - FISH ONLY, all Chef Rosendale & Commis Seth Warren

I'm still sorting through all of my pictures (like a thousand in 2 days) and trying to regroup and ponder everything I've seen, heard, and thought about over the past 48 hours.  There were several recurring themes throughout the event that I can't wait to mull over and write about.  In general, I felt that this event was a good step in the right direction for the culinary scene in the US.  But more on all of that later.  For the moment, here are some shots of Chef Rosendale and Commis Seth Warren.  When I talked to Seth today about how he felt about things, he said he did the best he could and was proud of his performance.  I thought that was very Iron Chef Zen of him.

There were 2 parts of the competition; one focused on cod and the other on beef.  This set of pictures is just the cod presentation.  Stay tuned for beef, which I think is especially funny because Harmut Handke is a judge and his facial expressions are priceless.

Okay, there are a TON of photos in this post, so I am going to do the dreaded click-through, lest the few of you using dial up spend an hour trying to load my home page.  I do hope you'll click through, though, because there are some great pictures of the competition which tell the story, I think, of the stress and the madness and the sheer number of amazing chefs just strollling around being normal.

the fishbowl kitchen in which the chefs worked:

like I even need to say anything here, this man is the patron saint of American haute cuisine:

Chef Rosendale hard at work.  It was amazing how they never appeared to notice the crowds or the people and chefs judging them:

Chef Daniel Humm, deep in concentration.  Wonder what he's thinking about?

He's judging Commis Seth Warren's performance, and I mean all of it - cleanliness, precision, communication, everything.  There is an award for best commis which includes a trip to France, and probably a lot of job offers:

What Could be SO Tasty...

...that it caused an avowed non-clean plater to almost lick her plate?  If I were my friend Sam "Stuckey," I would have certainly licked this bowl without abandon.  I'll let you in on it tomorrow:

Chef Rosendale's Platters

Okay, since a reader asked, here is a picture of Chef Rosendale's platters for the competition.  I will have more later, along with details.  The foreground is beef, and the background is cod:

 

I Think I Might be a Real Writer

I'm sitting at the desk at my hotel room, making notes, writing updates, editing photos, listening to "Paint it Black" and drinking a little bourbon.  I almost feel legit.

Bocuse, Day One

WOW.  What a day.  I saw almost every famous chef in the western hemisphere, stood next to Hung almost all day, saw lots of little girls dressed as various Diz princesses, saw Chef Mickey Mouse, heard John Besh call Hartmut Handke mean and angry looking, ate foie gras on brioche, had free champagne, was given a tin of foie gras (don't worry, Husband, I'm saving it), took 500 pictures, stood in the hot sun way longer than I would have liked, waiting for the shuttle back to the hotel (tomorrow I'm totally driving), and drank beer on the rocks.  I met a man whose wife reads my website here in Orlando, and I heard an emcee misprounce Chef Sbraga's name so many times that finally the Philadelphia contingent screamed out "SBRAH - GUH!!"

Let's see, what else - oh!  I paid $4 for a bottle of vitamin water so I wouldn't pass out, saw some of the most amazing food preparations I've ever seen, and did I mention took 500 pictures?  I think my laptop memory is down to like 1GB.  Might have to run out and purchase emergency external hard drive.

I promise more detailed reports later.  I am headed to the Ravenous Pig right now for dinner.  Here's to having some pork belly.  Let's just see how many grams of fat I can consume in one day . . . oh well, that's what being a food writer is all about, right?

Here's a little teaser of my day. . .

   

Updates

What a great, relaxing day I've had.  Seriously.  It is so nice to stay in a nice hotel, have coffee and write next to a waterfall and a fountain full of ducks.  It's nice to have room service deliver a $20 club sandwich (top of post - I know, I really wanted it to be a little more traditional, too) (I know my eyes will full-on pop right of my skull when I get my room service bill) and munch on it while watching Law & Order reruns, decide I need a longer nap and move my dinner reservation, and then, to top it all off, have an amazing dinner, talk to a great chef and other single diner, eat some foie gras with pickled ramps (Chef Tez, I'm looking right at you here), and manage to drive to Winter Park and back without a hitch.

Nice hotels are nice.  Hotwire is nice, for giving me this great deal.  Otherwise I would have never been able to afford to stay here, but seriously, the hotel is so nice I almost don't want to leave.  When I was leaving for dinner, I noticed that the area where I was writing this morning had turned into a lounge with a guy singing and playing the piano and lots of rich old white collar folks drinking martinins.  Tomorrow I'm going to have to join them. 

The nice thing about nice hotels is the tiny little trivial things - when the valet pulled my car around, the fan was on low and the car was cool, and the radio was turned to soothing classical music.  Considering I am probably paying about $20 a day to have my car parked, they should probably offer me a glass of champagne when I get in, too, but that's neither here nor there. 

At any rate, I was just informed that Chef Richard Rosendale & his commis Seth Warren will be the first team to present tomorrow, which is pretty cool.  Well, I would think it's cool to get it out of the way but I would worry about being the first to be judged.

I will be sending updates as soon as I get to the competition in the morning.  I will try to keep my anti D World thoughts to myself.

I can't wait to tell you about the great dinner I had at Luma, and will admit from the get go that I was totally caught taking pictures of my food and therefore might have had a slightly better than typical dinner, but I still think anyone would like it.  It's one of the best dinners I've had in a long time, and I'm not just saying that because of the oxtail ravioli or the Anson Mills grits.  Okay, maybe just a little . . .

Talk to you tomorrow!

Where I'm Writing From

If you only I had this kind of setting from which to write every day.  It's amazingly relaxing.  So much so, that many of the other people sitting near me are asleep.  The waterfall provides so much soothing white noise that you can hear only the tiniest snippets of conversation of people walking past.  A nice lady keeps coming to my table and asking me wouldn't I care for a martini?  (It's 2:30 in the afternoon - a little early even for a vacationing waitress!)

Here's the waterfall:

Here's my "workstation"

So relaxing I already need a nap... 

Greetings from the Happiest Place on Earth!

You know what palm trees mean right?  VACATION!!

Ahhhh.  Do you ever have that feeling?  After a day of delightfully smooth flights - I slept through both, and the baby sitting next to me didn't cry the whole time. I did wake up long enough to take this picture of something somewhere in North Carolina.  Foothills?

I of course got lost trying to find my hotel.  This is especially frustrating because I have a pretty good sense of direction and I hate getting lost.  It is also kind of hard to find your directional relation when you are driving in the dark in a strange place.  And a request to whomever controls the road systems: can we standardize everything from state to state?  Every highway in Ohio has mile markers.  This is helpful because the exits coincide with the mile markers, so it only takes seeing 2 mile markers to ensure one is on the right track.  See how easy it could be?

But I finally arrived at my hotel around midnight (plane didn't land until almost 11, lest you think I was driving around aimlessly for hours on end).  I am staying at the Peabody, which is on the Orlando Convention Center compound.  I can't think of anything else to call it, because it's an entire area devoted to the subject.

I was so loopy from all of the Dramamine and xanax (probably also contributed to the getting lost) that when I woke up this morning, I had to think for a few seconds if I tipped the valet or not.  They should put warnings on Dramamine - might turn you into a drooling idiot.

But I digress.  The folks at the Peabody were nice enough to offer me a King sized bed instead of 2 queens, and to put me on a high floor.  The windows even open about 6 inches, which is very nice because, even though it flies in the face of conservation, I like to have my room cooled by air conditioning and still have a breeze coming in.  Although it was down to 58 last night, so I doubt the air even had to kick on.

My room has TV in the bathroom:

and 7 feather pillows, all white-on-white stripe and embroidered with ducks:

It is probably for this reason that I fell into the bed and slept for 9 hours straight.  Something which never happens for me.

Before bed I ordered up a pizza for room service, which was strangely good.  Really good.  Curious:

I also treated myself to an elf-sized Knob Creek bourbon - these people are so nice, I wonder if they would get me Basil Hayden if I asked?

One complaint - no coffee maker in the room.  I like to have that little nip of coffee before I go out into the world to venture out for my real coffee.

At any rate.  This morning when I awoke I could finally check out the view from my room, which is a strange mix of nature and construction.  The hotel is adding on a sizable addition, so that is happening right outside my window, and then in the distance is a swamp:

Here is a picture of the construction - notice the hard-hat-wearing ducks, which I of course thought were super cute.

Downtown Orlando in the distance:

For some reason, I love cranes:

I will not be attending the presentation of the chef's coats today, because my press pass only begins tomorrow, and I'm just not sure I can face D World yet just to pay $75 to get in and see the drawing of the order in which the chefs will compete.  Chef Rosendale's commis, Seth, will be keeping me posted. 

So pretty much today I am going to relax.  I am sitting here in the lobby of the Peabody watching the ducks splash around, and listening to a waterfall, and sitting just outside of the pools of light coming in from the roof of the atrium, having my morning latte (at 1pm).  It's nice.  Very relaxing.  I love my cats, but it's very nice to not have any walking on/sitting on/or clawing at my laptop.

Oh, and if anyone can tell me how to turn on the interior lights of my rented Ford Focus, I'd really appreciate it.

Later on today, I be posting bios of all of the chefs so that their names will make sense when I starting talking about them.  I have requested a few interviews, but there is only a 1 hour window each day during which the chefs will be available, so who knows if my requests will be granted.

Tonight I will be dining at Luma, a restaurant I found on Open Table.  I think tomorrow it will be the Ravenous Pig, a gastropub.

Well, I'd best get going - high tea should begin any minute now, and then I have to inspect those 7 feather pillows again; should make it back to the room just in time to doze of whilst whilst watching Law & Order...

How I'll be Updating from the Bocuse d'Or

I will using Twitter & Tumblr to update from the Bocuse.  For the time being, I am adding a feed over on the upper right side of the page, under the box which reads "Lisa's Columbus."  This way you won't have to visit those sites to see if I've updated.  My Tumblr updates will include pictures, which I can send directly from my phone.

Updates - RW Supper, Bocuse d'Or, this Week in Restaurant News, etc

I'm still basking in the bliss of electricity.  You never know how important something so simple is until you don't have it.  And how ingrained certain things are - like how you can be thinking of how irritating it is to not have lights to put your makeup on at the same time your fingers are instinctively reaching for the light switch in the bathroom.  Amazing.

I have a few updates and thought for the upcoming month or so:

• I had brunch at Sage this morning - I love that place, I love that it is in the neighborhood and is reasonably priced, great food.  It is the thing we really need in our neck of the woods.  I still haven't made it in for dinner, but after getting peek at the new menu, I think I'm sold.  The second menu for a chef after opening a restaurant is always better, I think, as the chef settles into his groove and finds what his guests like.  Highlights of the new menu, at least to the imaginary taste buds in my mind, are duck confi papperdelle with chestnuts and escarole; braised lamb shank with spaetzle!!! and mahi mahi with chorizo & mussels.  Thanks for the menu guys! (no, I don't work there, they don't know me, they didn't pay me or give me anything for free, I just like them and they're always very nice to us).
• I promise I'm going to try the other new restaurant in the 'hood, Giorgio, as soon as I get back from Orlando and make some money.
• The next week is going to be devoted to all things Bocuse d'Or - the history, the chefs who are participating, and then of course, the coverage of the event.  I'm really excited to go and above all, have a few days off work!
• I am planning my next two RW dinners, and have a few thoughts.  My October dinner will be devoted to things I was inspired by while at the Bocuse.  I don't plan to have things quite as crazily detailed and decorated, but I will be taking a lot of notes while I am there.  I hope to make this more like a cocktail reception sort of thing, where I can invite the folks who helped send me as a thank-you.  I hope to keep the price a little lower on this one, but we'll see how that goes.
• For my November dinner, I was thinking of one of two things, both with a Thanksgiving theme - either doing my tried & true recipes, or having a carry-in where everyone brings one of their tried and true recipes along with recipe cards.  That way we can try lots of things and get recipes and maybe new ideas.  Let me know what you think.  Maybe Husband can teach us about what to drink with Thanksgiving dinner and we can have a nice mellow evening.  Going this route would be free, so that would be good, right?  I think I'll take December off because no one can ever do anything in December, and then maybe in January we can resume.  Please give me your thoughts!
• Earlier in the week, I repeated something I heard on the news which turned out to be incorrect: I said that Meals on Wheels was not delivering during the power outage.  I should not have assumed that the news was correct, and should have done some fact-checking myself.  Meals on Wheels not only delivered every day - even when they lost power - they also helped other powerless agencies with food during the outage.  I regret the error, and thank the fine folks from Meals on Wheels for letting me know.