This week’s post is a special edition covering our awesome weekend taking part in the annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival. Just a warning, it’s going to be a bit photo heavy and words light (yes, we said words light, deal with it.)
Each year online food publishing company FoodBuzz hosts a food festival for food bloggers around the country. This year we received our first invitation (hopefully not last. We didn’t embarrass ourselves too much) and gladly attended.
The festivities actually start at registration when you are given your festival goodie bag. Each bag was loaded with samples of chocolate, dried fruit, berries, caramels and tons more. To top if off, each guest is given $50 cash to spend at a restaurant of their choice that night. We were happy enough with the goodie bag and cash, but we hadn’t even started yet!
That night Foodbuzz hosted a cocktail hour in the Starlight Room at the Sir Francis Drake hotel. A great 180 degree view accompanied by some hors d’oeurves? Ummm, yes! Tons of happy people talking about good food? Cool. Open bar? Sweeeet.
While the bites were average (except the Spiked Watermelon bites; watermelon, sea salt, and serrano chillies, those were delicious) the cocktails and views more than made this a great experience and a fun way to get things started.
That night, feeling flush, we elected to take our pooled $100 and try out Italian restaurant Frascati. This place hadn’t been on our radar at all until a couple of friends highly recommended it. Just a few blocks away from our apartment in Nob Hill, Frascati looks like your classic little neighborhood restaurant.
The dining room is softly lit and nice and cozy on a cold SF night. The staff is very relaxed and helpful and definitely enhanced our dinner with their service. The sommelier helped us pick out the perfect Italian red to pair with our dinner choices and we were off.
After a lot of indecision (our specialty when it comes to ordering), we landed on: Octopus Salad with arugula, orange segment and chorizo vinaigrette. The Russet Potato Gnocchi with peas, mushrooms, parmesan and truffle oil. The Maple Leaf Duck Breast with herb spaetzle, mushrooms and huckleberry sauce. Finally for dessert we got Warm Black and White Chocolate Bread Pudding with hazelnut ice cream, caramel and chocolate sauce.
We’re going to keep this short, but each dish was great. The octopus salad had a great texture and went surprisingly well with the chorizo vinaigrette. The gnocchi was made in house and melted in our mouths with that deep umami flavor that parmesan and truffle provide. The duck was cooked perfectly and it’s savory flavor was balanced out with the sweetness of the huckleberry. Finally the warm bread pudding almost made us lose our collective shit. It was so gooey, warm and rich that there was almost a conniption at the table .
We ended our first night of the Foodbuzz festival staggering home in a wonderful food coma with the goal of getting some rest for day two.
Dig In,
A & K