TravelsinTaste (and some friends) celebrated all things culinary at the recent Food Network’s NYC Wine and Food Festival.  Meatpacking Uncorked was the first event we attended.  Ten Restaurants  provided tantalizing tidbits while over 100 wines were available at 45 boutiques thoughout the neighborhood.  We chose to stick to the food although we did have some delectable sips of sangria, Zipang sparkling sake and of course Coppola’s Chardonnay along the way!  We decided to start the evening with dessert - chocolate chip enhanced bread pudding a the Basis Good Food Market, based on this tasting perhaps the name should be changed to Basis Excellent Food Market!  Basis provides delivery, storage, and marketing services for farmers who wish to sell their products directly to wholesale customers and is currently opening a series of small markets in the NYC area.  Basis provides food which is traditional, localized, 100% traceable - and even more important these days - affordable!

From there we moved onto The Diner, whose station was like a well oiled machine serving goat cheese and chicken soft tacos with all the trimmings.  The Diner is a modern interpretation of the 30’s and 40’s diner - where they are concerned with getting American comfort food right.  Although it’s not fine dining, the chef and staff subscribe to the same “attention to detail” evidenced by their tasting over sixty different pickles to pick just the right one to garnish their sandwiches.

Not quite fully sated we stopped by Gaslight Pizza, which also includes G2, a popular after hours haunt for celebrities, and tasted meatballs and a different take on the roast beef finger sandwich.  Then we went for a little more spice - Jean Georges’ Spice Market.  The line was around the block and continued throughout the three hours of the event - proving  Jean Georges’ impressive following among dedicated foodies.  The beef, chicken and pork satays lived up to their well deserved reputation.   Don’t tell anyone, but we enjoyed ourselves so much we got back on the line again for seconds. 

 

Next stop on our culinary journey was Murray’s Cheese and Murray’s Real Salami outpost and were suitably impressed, but unable to purchase anything there - only online or at one of the several retail outlets.  It was a disappointment, but we’ll definitely be purchasing online soon. 

Then we attempted to try  Debragga.com - the website for fine meat distributor DeBragga and Spitler which has been in business since early 1920s. Ttoday the website serves restaurant and retail customers alike - we were anxious to try, but demand was so great that less than two hours in the samples were already eaten!  We guess we really missed something, but we’ll try online next time.

As we were winding up our journey we tried Los Dados for mini tacos and Gansevoort 31 for mini cookies - It was during these last stops we saw a number of the strolling entertainment from flappers to feathered ladies all making for a fanciful evening.

As the evening drew to a close we visited Macelleria for some pasta - and the last stop was our most surprising, the newly opened Tanuki Tavern at the stylish Hotel Gansevoort.  The restaurant is a gastropub and sushi bar rolled up in one delicious package in the heart of the Meatpacking District.  Named after the mischievous yet happy creature of Japanese folklore we knew whatever we had here would share the those qualities, and we were right! We had simply wonderful crispy kurobuto pork belly, which ranked a close second to those delicious beef satays…Of course, we had to stop by Spice market one more time for our fill!

Stay tuned for the panel discussion on “Is Fine Dining Dead in NYC,” and our sampling at the Grand Tasting!