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On Sunday, Shawn and I had several hours free, and a unbelievably beautiful day on or hands so we decided to make the 30 minute drive to Whiting Indiana’s Pierogi Fest for some stuffed dough goodness. I have had my share of small town midwestern festival goodness, but was really in for a surprise when I stepped onto the main drag at perogi fest.
Meet Mr. Pierogi! The Whiting Indiana Pierogi Fest official Spokes-pastry.
No Shit.
Are you kidding me? This festival was out of control. And everyone was so happy! The perogi guy was running around high-fiving everyone, there was a guy dressed as a stuffed cabbage roll running a found being grumpy and hot…
Insanity. It was really A DREAM COME TRUE. I had never seen so many folks happy about pierogies and summer fun since the now defunct 185th street festival days back in Cleveland. The Whiting Pierogi fest has been on for 16 or so years and is 90% focused on Pierogi, and 10% focused on Polka. To that end, and to add to the ever growing list of costumed characters running amuck at the festival, there is even a lady named Polka- hontas who is the festival’s official polka ambassador/ mistress.
That being said, the reason we came here was pierogi. And we had a lot to pick from, and many many lines to wade through to get to them. Which was not nearly as bad as one would think,other than the occasional asshole with a stroller every one we encountered was happy and incredibly polite. I sneezed three times while i was there and EVERY SINGLE TIME someone said “bless you.” Impressive. We waded through the immense and incredibly polite crowd, and found at the far end of the fest Kasia’s pierogi booth selling pierogi for basically a buck a piece.
The selection was pretty standard, beef, beef and cheese, sausage, potato, bacon cheese and potato, spinach, cheese and jalapeno, sauerkraut, sauerkraut and mushroom… Shawn did a survey of seven. I did the same, but only the meatless options.
Pretty standard serving size, coupled with the ubiquitous condiment of choice.This stand also offered the classic applesauce and not so classic pico de gallo, but we decided to keep it classic and creamy.
All in all delicious. It’s pretty hard to fuck up a pierogi, and it’s equally hard to reinvent the pierogi, not without risking pretentiousness. I would say these did the genre proud, but no points for invention. But to be fair that is not the point here, the point is to eat starchy stuff and get down to polka, and that kind of stuff never goes out of style.
To end here’s a little video treat of the annual pierogi toss.
There once was a thing called “Meatopia” (If I was a radio DJ I would be punctuating with air horn blasts the spaces between paragraphs, so imagine one sounding off now if you will.)
Don’t believe the hype. DON”T BELIEVE THE HYPE. I’m speaking for the little guy here. If you read a good thing about this farcical festival of food, you read an untruth.
Mista Bee buzzin with a review of the first annual “Meatopia” a so called food festival.
You’ve never seen a bee, a little flying bee, wait in a line of people to get some food before have ya? But wait I did in several lines, waiting for a meaty morsel patiently, waiting waiting, and then as each food vendor ran out of food, you read that right, (food vendors out of food?) I was told along with all the people in line waiting “sorry we’re out of food.”
As each of the 30 “Meatopia” food vendors ran out, so on it went each line getting longer, and before a taste of food the vendor would inform the line “sorry all out.”
For two and a half hours I waited and was not fed a scrap. The bullshit of it all was the food was pre-paid for, I’d paid 45$ for 6 tastes. I thought innocently “Meatopia…six tastes…hamburger…hotdog..ribs…pulled pork…lamb…maybe some meat i’d never tried like rabbit?Yumms! I’d bought a ticket online and I showed up hungry and with 3-4 hours left of this so called Meatopia. I expected to eat, heck I’d spent 45$, anybody living in Cleveland can feed their two kids for a week on that much cash. TRUE.
I’d say there was a hell and I was in it if I wasn’t a bumble bee.
Sad and Hungry, if it was Meatopia I’d witnessed the fall of it.
Final notes, I’d like to say damn Meatopia’s creators, kiss my bee hind now and in the next years to come jerks, and I’d also like to thank Meatopia for ruining my afternoon. lucky I don’t sting ya.
This happened June 26th, 2010. These photos have been sitting in my camera for a little while now, which is great because it was able to preserve this memory for me! So apparently according to these photos, I remembered that I hosted the Jell-o Mold Design Competition at the Gowanus Studio Space. I got to eat all the jell-o I ever wanted to eat, and there were some awesome ones and also some that looked really crazy! Jello is crazy because you can make it look and taste however you want, and what makes it jello is the fact that it is jiggly, and flavored, and molded. I had a great time!!!!
Here are a few that I ate there:
Apple pie, everything here was jello, even the crust. This contestant made velvet cake and the pink coconut donut as well. These tasted awesome, and I’m pretty sure they won the Flavor Award as well.
This sushi was made with agar agar. Someone always pulls out the agar agar at the jello competition, and nine times out of ten they are asian and they know what they are talking about. This sushi was fruity and refreshing without the horse hoof aftertaste.
Tiles. These were awesomely sugary.
I can’t lie, didn’t eat these oysters, which were oyster and beer flavored? I pussied out.
I didn’t eat these either.
There were a few people really into this Pill theme.
This is classic. These were surprisingly pleasurably bitter as well because of it setting in the rind.
These CUPS were made of JELLO.
Not sure….
I can’t remember what this tasted like!! It was weeks ago!!
I was a little psyched on these really crazy tray presentations.
And CORN!! hahaha!! This person probably wins the WTF award, with their corn light bulb chandelier. The jellos here were deliciously savory.
This was the GRAND PRIZE winner this year. These bloody virgin mary’s were actually very strong in Vodka flavor as well. The flavor is unforgettably a solidified well-crafted bloody mary.
More pills…
I was really psyched on this as well and would probably win second place in the WTF category. These are inspired by the boobtacular turd processing plant in Greenpoint!! The flavor was a very pleasant raspberry vanilla.
This is supposed to depict the recent oil spill disaster.
This depicts something really crazy.
These crafty contestants made a Tiffany Lamp. The metal part is gum paste.
These trophy heads were my second favorite next to the bloody mary’s in the flavor category. It’s pork flavored and beef flavored. They tasted just like refrigerated pho broth.
These were the cute ribbons the winners took home. Congratulations!!!
This is a little love note to all the dumpster diving, freegan, gray water using kids out there, doing their stinky shameless best to use up all of the crap businesses throw out everyday. This takes a special sort of diligence and commitment to ideals to proudly and prosperously live off of other peoples less than perfect garbage. And it takes balls to have a bake sale, and make all of the pastries out of dumpster dived food..
but it takes extra big balls to make dumpster dived pastries in the shape of cat shit, and laugh and take peoples money in exchange for them.
The recipe for these is just a chocolate no bake cookie, rolled into a log shape, and then rolled in granulated sugar. Besides being delicious , these prove that basically anything can be a turd if it’s brown and you roll it into a log shape. These were a lovely treat after a night of videos and beer, and all of the proceeds went to Odd Obsessions Video, which is an independently owned video store that operates like a co-op, being run almost entirely by volunteers, and specializing in weird, out of print , and cult favorites. Check them out today!
FREE!!!
TUESDAY April 13th from 7-10 pm
Santos Party House
96 Lafayette Street, NYC
Special Performances by friends of Food Party:
Today is Thu Tran’s Birthday!!!!! Happy Birthday Thu!
Last night to celebrate Thu’s birthday we went to Fette Sau and ate our body weight in meat. After that we rolled over to Santos Party House to catch SHONEN KNIFE!! Here is a video I took on my phone [it's totally crappy].
Miho Hatori [from Cibo Matto and Gorillaz] and her new band opened up. They are called NEW OPTIMISM and the one and only Bad Brilliance got up onstage and danced with Miho and her hot male revue. Check it out!
Here is the cutest video from Shonen Knife’s new album, Super Group! Have a good birthday THU!
This week Shawn the BF and I went to support my pal Melissa from Pastries Not Potatoes in the 4ourth installment of Iron Cupcake: Chicago!
sugar sculptures
first a bit of history: Iron cupcake is a fun time. It is headed up by Colleen of Beautiful Cakes who put the whole thing together. But there is a whole bunch of bakers and chefs who have been doing the “cupcake as a genre” thing for a while. The contest was actually started in Milwaukee by the Milwaukee Cupcake Queen and her pal when they decided to challenge each other to a bakers duel. The gauntlet was thrown by the pal then known as the Unknown Baker; as is covered here on the blog prehumously named No One Puts Cupcake In a Corner. Things started when said baker presented the Queen with a Marlboro Cowboy Coffee Cream Cupcake With Starbucks liquor chaser. So rowdy! This dude steeped tobacco and then made a batter with it. So then the heat was on, and iron Cupcake Milwaukee was born, then Iron Cupcake: Earth, then spin offs including Iron Cupcake :Chicago.
The challenges so far:
Iron cupcake Chicago has been ramping up. The first challenges were pretty tame, including citrus and something else. But the last two themes were actually interesting because of the open-end-ed-ness of them. Savory, which provided the obligatory bacon cupcakes. and most recently candy. This is the one i attended.
Ok! Let me start by saying all of the cupcakes were very tasty, but some were better than others, AND only two of the contestants were actual chefs, most of these ladies were just badass moms and grandmoms looking for kicks and bragging rights.
Entries included, M&M’s (which were sort of boring),
Mounds (which were definitely boring)
Candy corn which was good, but had a strange aftertaste not unlike eating actual candy corn.
there were two snickers entries… and like highlander their can be only one, and it was true!
snickers2
actually the lady with the superior snickers called them SINkers, and they involved a hollow cupcake, filled with snickers filling, and topped with a ring of caramel creme. these ROCKED US.
One of Melissa’s entries was cany dots cupcakes, which were flat pieces of fondant topped with piped candy dots. I really enjoyed this. However, similar to the actual candy dots of yore, this was fun to eat, but not terribly tasty to eat. Mostly because of the fondant,because fondant tastes gross.
In the end, Melissa and the SINkers tied for best presentation, and the SINkers rightly won for best taste. It was really no contest on that front.
here is melissa right before the crowning.
mel and mom
BYE until next time!!
As part of the Sunday School Summer Workshop and Performance Program at Deitch Projects, I, along with a small team from the highly-skilled and talented Food Party crew, will be presenting a live cardboard prop-making demo. You will be able to see first hand our process of making most of our props and sets. We will also be screening some Food Party videos. For all of you who are in New York without access to a cable-subscribed television, this will be a great opportunity to catch up on the episodes that have aired so far!
This will be followed by a performance of BAD BRILLIANCE‘s Red Carpet to Nowhere. People attending the event are encouraged to dress in FORMAL WEAR (ball gowns, tuxedos, little black dresses, basically look hot and expensive) for Bad Brilliance’s red carpet performance. Photographers with bright flashes on their cameras are also heavily encouraged to attend.
This Sunday June 28th !!!!!!!
Starts at 6 pm !!!!!!!!!
Deitch Studios
4-40 44th Drive
Long Island City, NY 11101
212 343 7300
WWW.DEITCH.COM
Also, if you come, you will get to see all the amazing art in the group show that is currently on view, featuring work by all these famous artists :
JIM DRAIN
PAUL CHAN
JEFF KOONS
MARIO GRUBISIC
PAOLA PIVI
GELATIN
SIMON MARTIN
ROBERTO CUOGHI
SCHUYLER MAEHL
Holy shit! I think this is going to be a very good event!
This Saturday, there is what looks to be an amazing thing happening that I was asked to participate in! It is called HAY QUA! Mini Fest, which brings together young creative Vietnamese people of New York City. “Hay qua” is a superlative that means a variety of things such as “so good!” “so interesting!” “so skilled!”, etc..
I will be on a food panel as an expert, tasting the best Vietnamese sandwiches New York City has to offer. All the speakers are extremely creative, talented, and Vietnamese. It’s an all day event, check it out this Saturday! Here’s the press release:
New York City, NY (June 20, 2009) – The elusive best Vietnamese sandwich, or bánh mì for fanatics, of New York will be within reach on Saturday, June 27th at the Bitter End (Greenwich Village). Some of New York’s top bánh mì creators are entering their wildly-popular masterpieces in the Tasting portion of “Hay Qua!” Mini-fest. The tasting will precede the decadent food-themed panel moderated by Serious Eats’ Tam Ngo, speaking to the likes of Food Party’s Thu Tran, An Nguyen Xuan of BEP, Food Blogger Mindy Lvoff, LUNCH blogger Yen Ha, and An Choi’s Tuan Bui. Audience members will have the chance to savor the passion that goes into each layer, slice, and spread of this new foodie favorite.
Hungry fans can register to taste and judge the bánh mì, amidst the exhilarating line-up of creative Vietnamese American thinkers, dreamers, and champions on The Bitter End stage. Join the room full of bloggers, designers, architects, writers, chefs — wide eyes, smiles, laughter, and that renewed sense of possibility and dreams. It’s going to be a good Saturday.
As with all good things, tickets are going quickly due to popular demand and limited seating. Register today to save your seat, as you won’t want to miss Tim Be Told bandmember Luan Nguyen, French-Vietnamese chef An Nguyen Xuan, Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui, Obama campaign photographer Bao Nguyen, architect Yen Ha of LUNCH blog, filmmakers, singer/songwriters, among many others.
Get our $50 Combo Deal! Hay Qua in the day, KollabNY at night! That’s $25 to listen to over 20+ inspiring AA speakers in the daytime! (fashion consultants, bloggers, environmentalists, architects, publishers, film-makers, spoken word artists and more!) And for another $25, a chance to listen and watch Asian American Talent (singers/songwriters/comedians/hip hop groups/dancers).
Banh mi tasting at Hay Qua + Pink Berry reception @ KollabNY!
What more do you want?!
Register this weekend: www.thatsneaat.com
Follow us here:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/thatsneaat
Blog updates: www.thatsneaat.blogspot.com
Event Information: www.thatsneaat.carbonmade.com
Bitter End
147 Bleecker Street
New York, 10012
Saturday, June 27, 2009
from 10:00 AM – 11:00 PM (ET)
I had the honor of being a judge at this past Saturday’s Jello-Mold Competition at the Gowanus Studio Space. It was very exciting, this was my first time being a food judge, so I was careful to inspect each entry very carefully. Check out all these crazy entries::
This was cast from a halved plastic piggy bank. The flavor was nice– lime, chocolate and mint!
This black and white face is based on a character from Star Trek and has an underlying message about racial harmony. It is cast from William Shatner’s face. The flavor is coconut and rum.
This one is supposed to look like a little bird digging for worms. This is cast from tupperware.
This is one of the more experimental ones. The jello is used to replicate shrink wrap. The flavors were savory, pickly, and spicy. Interesting!!
I LOVED this egg carton.
This one was flavored with BEER!!
This one was called “Jello Roe.” It was made to look like giant caviar. There was roe in the jello balls. It tasted wild. And very beautiful!
This one had A LOT going on! It’s a jello cheeseburger with fries. Each color is a different flavor. Most notably, the ground beef is flavored with chocolate, and the tomato jello was very interesting as well!! The lettuce was cast in actual iceberg lettuce leaves! Nice attention to detail!!
Devilled eggs! Very accurate representation! I forgot what these taste like though, oops!
This one had QUITE the epic story behind it. It is about the story of how Vietnamese banh mi traveled on a boat to get to America or Vietnam, I don’t remember actually (nervously pulling my collar!) The forms are made with agar jelly which is a traditional ingredient in Vietnamese molded desserts. The artist had a disaster upon setting up and all that survived is the water and some rice noodle jelly fish. This shit is deep.
This was a very traditional take on jello desserts with different pie recipes. Let me tell you, these were so delicious. I really loved the banana cream one. Arguably the most edible dish at this contest, I would eat any of these slices in its entirety!!
Very interesting chess pieces!! Can you see the checkerboard underneath? Fruit flavored.
This is a boob. It was cast from the jello artist’s own boob. All the flavors were hand-squeezed. If I can remember, it contained watermelon, and peach, and then the inside was flavored with a creamy and smoky lapsang souchong. It was good!
This is cast from a fossil! Nice casting! Loved the white pepper flavoring in the white part!
This one had a really great tart and spicy flavor!!
This one was wild. It casts hollow jello spheres. Just think about it. It’s a spinning and rotating mold powered with a motor.
This one is a tribute to Jasper Johns’ lightbulb. This one also had a great flavor– a sweet creamy jalapeno flavor. Very delicious!
This was such a lovely tableau! Rainbow piano keys, martini glass, devilled eggs, ashtray, dollar bill, black plexi, this one definitely had a very strong jazz bar vibe to it! Very clean presentation!
This one was the ABSINTHE one !! Very strong intense flavor! WHOAA!!
This one was the GRAND PRIZE winner of the Jello-mold competition, and it looked meticulous as hell!! Even the gold parts are edible– it’s made with gold-leafed gum paste. The jello flavors were fruity and clean, and so were their gem castings. Nice Work!!
Sarah Lohman, who works with the Feedbag, and has a great historical food blog, put together this really great video about the event:
It’s on vimeo, click here!!
Dear Friends and Lovers of FOOD PARTY:
Here is a sneak peek from last night’s premiere at Monkeytown. It had to be a record breaking, standing room only turnout! Congratulations to Thu and the entire Food Party Crew. You are all superstars!! More photos COMING SOON!!!
Thu and a FULL HOUSE @ Monkeytown!
Live Transmission via cable via television waves via wonkavision!
Thu on Television!!! HOLY S^@$#T!!!!
Bad B was there!!
Happy fans!
Everyone had fun…
Especially these dudes!
Matt was there too! In spirit and on-screen!!
See you soon!!!!!!!
So, you think you have what it takes to complete the Vegan Chili Rumble? You think your gizzards can handle the gut-grinding, seam-bursting effects of TWENTY FIVE different lightning bolts of pure chili? If so, then maybe you have what it takes – to enter the Chili Rumble Hall of Fame.
On May 30th, about a hundred and thirty of Cleveland, Ohio’s best eaters descended upon 1387 East Boulevard for the 2009 Vegan Chili Rumble, organized by my roommate Nina Sarnelle. If you convert that attendance (per-capita) into New York City numbers, that would be 2,935 people.
Sure, that’s a lot of people, but we live in Cleveland so our $280/month apartment comes with a bountiful 2-acre garden, all thanks to my landlady Julie Patton – shown here with Ryan, who manages a fancy Brazilian restaurant called Sergios. His Chili was Brazillian and featured tanning lotion and tiny swim suits.
Ryan and the other contestants brought their best crock of chili to be voted upon by a panel of Cleveland’s most discerning gourmets.
One of those gourmets was none other than Katherine Koenig, host of the Maximum Consumption radio show on WRUW, shown here with John G (famed local illustrator), and a tiny version of myself that I keep around as a decoy for mosquitos.
The chilis were all soooo good, it was hard to give any of them less than five spoons during the voting. Here is a woman named Tofu Cat and her Black Bean Chili. I gave it five spoons. Other chilis featured white beans, pinto beans, adzuki, great northern, black-eyed peas, and of course kidney beans.
This is Jennifer and Earl and Linda, and it looks like they’re feeding the sage bush, which is crazy because I just fed it a few days ago and it’s not supposed to eat that much chili.
And this is Judy. I’m putting her picture up because I keep forgetting her name, and putting her picture on New York’s most famous blog will help me remember that her name is JUDY. See, I already remembered!
Eventually the votes were tabulated, and Divya’s curry-flavored “Rajma Chili” took home the 1st place trophy (see recipe). She is from Chennai (formerly “Madras”), India, and came to Cleveland years ago with no idea that her D-E-S-T-I-N-Y was to win this competition.
That’s Nina in the red dress, she really did a great job of organizing this party, don’t you think so too? Of course you do! Feel free to move to Cleveland now, it’s really cheap and if you’re really lucky you can be roommates with Nina Sarnelle. My name is Ian Charnas, look me up when you move here and I will be your friend. Thank you and goodbye.
I’m going to be a judge at this jell-o mold competition at the Gowanus Studio Space in Brooklyn. The deadline to enter is June 12th! The competition will be on June 20th! Do it!!
More info here!
RSVP at http://monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html
Hi Everyone!
If you are in New York/Brooklyn on June 9th, you should come to our fun party at Monkeytown, celebrating our first episode airing on television. It’s a week and a day away!!!!!!!!
First of all, this place rules. Four giant projected screens on all 4 walls of the screening room. Amazing sound system. However, SEATING IS LIMITED!!. Reserve earlyyyy. Party starts at 10:30pm. Arrive early.
Here’s all the info::: 
Food Party Party
at Monkeytown
Tuesday June 9th, 2009
10:30 pm – ????
More info at http://monkeytownhq.com/6_9_09LATE.html
Also, we are now on Facebook, become a fan!
Oh, and obviously, if you can’t make it, you can watch it on a cable television near you on the Independent Film Channel, 11:15pm, Tuesday June 9.
L8R!!
Hello All. I’d like to say that it took me this long to post more Episode IV Production Stills because I didn’t want to give anything about the Episode away until it premiered. I carefully chose the stills released before. However, I am also lazy.
But now that you have all had a chance to WATCH it on YOUTUBE or PURCHASE THE DVD (which you most definitely should), I have put more stillz on my FLICKR Page, HERE: Episode IV Production Stills!
I also added MORE EPISODE IV PREMIERE PHOTOS!!!!!! So if you were there, or know someone who was, or wish you were, check them out HERE: Episode IV Premiere Photos!
Here is a small sample:
<3 eeeee
Thu Tran
misslisa
sandrachi
eggerelias
doanbuu
davekrofta
erikaneola
petervh
zachariahdurr
vinald
iancharnas
Christine Kelly
mistabee
jessicalangley
