At Le Fooding’s entrance and the lengthy line
For its fourth year, upstart French culinary group Le Fooding* used Brooklyn as its muse for their five-day long dinners and brunches, taking along the young modern chefs of the United Kingdom and France to cook.
Of their numerous events, I’ve attended their Campfire Sessions #02, an evening of what seems to be collaborations between two seemingly different food entities (for example, The Young Turks, UK with the Mile End Deli). Regardless, I attended this event mainly because of pastry god Pierre Hermé was supposedly going to be there. Lo and behold, he was there in the flesh when I was walking around their grounds before the event officially started (as I’ve tweeted and I was mentally kicking myself not to bring my collection of his books to sign).
Here’s some of the highlights of the event:
Pierre Hermé and I; Hermé’s dessert: Grapefruit
Even though I didn’t eat dessert first but am talking about the chef, Hermé collaborated with San Pellegrino based on their citrus flavored sodas. Each person has a choice between the grapefruit, orange or lemon cakes and pair it with the said company’s soda. I opted for the grapefruit – a crisp sablé, layered with a firm yet silky grapefruit curd, grapefruit marmalade, grapefruit mousse and topped with a white chocolate crisp with an imprint of the grapefruit.
Jameson cocktails mixed by Maison Premiere’s mixologist Maxwell Britten
Maison Premiere‘s mixologist Maxwell Britten for Jameson Irish whiskey, kept his cool as the lines built up on all four sides of the tent (with the help of three other bartenders). They shook up two different Jameson cocktails – a strong, bitter Jameson Black Star (Jameson Black Barrel, Demarara syrup, and Creole bitters) and a sweeter Jameson Grand Royal Buck (Jameson Irish whiskey, fresh ginger syrup, fresh lemon juice, orange flower water, and club soda).
Mile End Delicatessen/The Young Turks’ dish: Quince-glazed salmon bellies on the wood grill
The quince-glazed salmon belly on the wood grill by The Young Turks (London, UK) and Mile End Deli (Brooklyn, NYC). I liked the quince smoke flavor in that deliciously fatty salmon belly with crunchy strips of pickled radish.
Danny Bowien of Chinese Mission/PizzaMoto pizzas: Kung Pao Pastrami & Broccoli Beef Brisket
The other notable bites were the pizzas created by the collaboration of Danny Bowien of Chinese Mission (NYC & San Francisco) and PizzaMoto (Brooklyn, NY). Bowien created a portable charcoal gas grill that has decent BTUs to fire up his wok to stir fry the toppings (Kung Pao pastrami and Chinese broccoli beef brisket) and PizzaMoto’s crew cranked out fresh pizza crusts and fire it in their wood fired oven. It was one of the longest lines at the event and it took a while to get the pizzas out but it’s worth the wait whatever topping you ended up getting.
*I did photograph for Le Fooding back in 2010 but it’s a slightly different concept.
To view more of my photos of this event, please scroll through the slideshow below (or click through my Flickr set):
[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”26389565@N00″ sid=”72157631616564521″ imgl=”flickr” shuffle=”1″ style=”gallery” row=”4″ grwidth=”1200″ grheight=”800″ size=”640″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]Information:
Le Fooding 2012
Official Website