Back to Basis: NYC Good Food Festival 2010

This weekend featured a series of foodie events, only one was affordable, so guess which one I hit up?

You bet I did.

The Good Food festival focuses upon locally grown, sustainable foods and features specialty tastings from 30 local farmers and top chefs to celebrate the season's harvest.  Ticket proceeds benefit the Feed Foundation's 30 Project, working to provide access to nutritious food for all people.  So not only are tickets reasonable, they also are for a good cause, a complete win win for everyone!

The festival featured tiered levels of tastes with the lowest level of 4 tastings = $20, 8 tastings = $35, and so on.  Since it was just me by my lonesome, I rocked the 4 tastings.  Restaurants such as Craft, Gramercy Tavern and others were all present, but this is what I ate:

Pecan shortbread tasting made with special flour

Dinosaur BBQ pork shoulder slider

I have always wanted to try Dinosaur BBQ, since it is noted as one of the better NYC BBQ spots, and while the meat was moist and tender, I wasn't exactly swoonin' over it.  The sauce was plain and ordinary - no real zip or tang.  I think the pulled pork woulda been a better choice with the burnty skin (Mmm, burnty skin!).

Hipsters eating Dinosaur BBQ tastings

While I was eating the BBQ slider, these two older ladies sat by me and shared a sample of Colicchio & Son's grilled pizza.  They were having a complete Harry Met Sally orgasmic moment.  So naturally, I beelined to that station the very next moment.

Grilled pizza with greenmarket veggies: mushrooms, arugula and caramelized onions.  The flatbread was doused in olive oil and had just a tiny sprinkling of cheese, but was a beautiful display of flavors and textures from the chewy mushrooms to the charred, crisp bite of the crust.  No sauce.  Just olive oil, fresh veggies and thin crust.  I want to eat this simple number every day.

Colicchio, I think you know your stuff.

Minetta Tavern's oyster & sausage ball combo.  The oyster was deeeelish.

I think the sausage and oyster's flavors worked together, but who really knows.  I like sausage and oysters so much I could eat them together with just about anything.  The sausage ball was plain, not extraordinary.  The freshly shucked on-site oysters were the real star though.  I could eat buckets of them.

I was tempted to try this as my dessert: apple cake with a butternut squash mousse, but not to be gross, it looks like a giant pile of ... on top of a brownie, and I just couldn't quite get over that image in my head so...

I tried out Ample Hills' ice cream as my dessert

Sea salt caramel ice cream (bottom) and a taste of their Elvis ice cream special: peanut butter banana ice cream mixed with bits of candied bacon

And you know what?  That peanut butter banana ice cream was really great.  The sea salt caramel, though good, was super rich and indulgent, but the banana ice cream was much lighter.  And the bacon added a nice element of texture and flavor.  It wasn't overpowering or too smokey or too much of anything.  It was just right.  A definite recommend for any bacon lover out there (should be everybody, but whatever :).

All in all, a lovely event!  It was small, but had many options, and the area, Gansevoort Plaza is just a neat place to host a wholesome event like this one.